So much to learn, so little time

I found this post from this time last year which I never got round to publishing.  The subjects may have changed, but the principle still remains!

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Sept 2014

I've re-connected with my piano.  Last week I had it tuned, and just before he left, the piano tuner played a short but beautiful piece of music on it.  I sat in the other room and listened and it reminded me how much I love playing the piano, and how much I miss playing it.  So I've started playing again.  I picked up a piece of Chopin that I've tried to learn once before, and practiced, and it's been a joy.

What I need now is lots of time to practice.  But wait, I don't have lots of time.  In addition to getting back to the piano, I'm also two weeks into an online Mobile App course, learning about the ins and outs of Android applications, Eclipse, SDK's, Java and XML.  I'm really enjoying the course, but it's very hard with so many system tweaks and downloads, and complex programming and packaging.

And then in a week's time, the Introduction to Guitar Playing starts on Coursera.  I've already delayed starting this course twice because of lack of time, but I think I'd love to be able to play the guitar, and apart from a couple of chords and one short piece, I've never really dedicated much time to it.

I'm also getting to grips with MIT App Inventor for one of my modules at college - that's great fun too, and I'm looking forward to getting the learners enthused about what they can do with it.  I'm writing lesson plans for my Website Production class - next week it's client and server side scripting - that'll take a while to put together.  Soon, I'll be joining a Preparing to Teach class, so I'll need to refresh my memory on learning styles and theories for that.

I'd also really like to get to grips with a bit of Visual Basic programming, so that I can tinker further with my home automation system, getting lights to turn off after a certain amount of inactivity in a room - but I've never done Visual Basic before so that's proving quite challenging.

And of course, I'm trying to allocate a bit of time to training my border collie for his agility classes - we're even planning to enter a competition next month.  Gardening, housework, taxi driver for three kids, and I'd like to have a go at making my own bread without cheating with the bread machine.

Life for me is about learning.  I love learning.  If I don't know something, I google it.  If I don't understand something, I read about it.  If I want to get better at something, I practice it.

Now if I could just stop time for a hour a day of dedicated learning, that would be perfect.  There is so much to learn, so little time.  Perhaps a course in astro physics is what I need...

Getting back in the Swing

It's been a while since I last posted, but term is back in full swing now, so here's a run down of what's going on.

Teaching wise, I'm doing several Photoshop courses, a Web scripting course and my Foundation Degree in IT Security again.  Actually, it's a rather nice timetable, unlike this time last year when I was bombarded with new things to keep me busy.

Work is starting on my dissertation research, and I'm in the process of enlisting all my learners in order to gather data on whether their use of online collaborative tools can improve critical thinking skills.  One group are already on board, and I'm working hard now to build the foundations for successful online working by getting them logging into our VLE and wikispaces site, just to post a few lines and say hello.

We've migrated to Moodle 2.0 - I quite like the interface so far, but the wiki still looks hit and miss - which is why I've opted to stick with wikispaces for now.  It means the learners have an additional log in to worry about which is a pity, but I think it's an easier place to work in once they've logged in.

My main gripe so far is that in the Centres the paperwork is almost overwhelming.  With ILPs, Induction packs, Centre log ins, different Moodle log ins, and also the addition of research consent forms to add to the mix, the first few sessions can easily get rather tedious and paperbased.

My Year in FE

I thought that as the end of term is now approaching it might be time to review what I've learnt this year.  It's funny really to think of it like that - after all, I'm the one whose supposed to be delivering the learning, but I think it could be me who's learnt the most!

Academically, I've learnt a lot.  I've added some strings to my bow - teaching a new course at Foundation Degree, a new level in Web Design, and a fair few new BTEC courses (new to me, if not to the world at large).

I've researched, read, studied, absorbed, sorted, analysed and then rewritten what I've discovered all over again, in my own words, in order to get it clear in my own head.  I've then passed what I've learnt onto my students, and encouraged them to follow suit.  I've honed my classroom and time management skills.  I now work smarter and more efficiently, because time has been so precious.  I've also developed my own academic skills as I've got through the second year of my MA - next year I will be starting my dissertation.

So reflecting on my own development, I can see a huge change in myself.  I feel much more confident in what I know (and indeed what I don't).  I don't see that the gaps in my knowledge are bad things - just gaps that over time I'd like to fill.  I know I can survive FE if I ultimately choose that path, and I know how much I've enjoyed stretching myself with the HE courses I've taught.  I've also found immense satistfaction in my Community Education activities.

It's been a stressful, challenging, but fruitful year, and now I'm looking forward to a well earned rest before it starts all over again!

Enjoying teaching

I've had a busy few weeks.  Teaching observation one week, Estyn visit the next.  I've upped my game, there's no doubt of that, and I'm better equipped to include useful ILT, differentiation, classroom management techniques and many of the other elements that make up an 'excellent' lesson.

Now, the pressure is off - at least in the respect of being seen to be doing the right thing.  And yet, my two lessons yesterday were equally effective despite being much less well prepared on paper.  I didn't have PowerPoints, printed activities or videos to watch.  I didn't have group work lined up, with clearly defined objectives, and well stated differentiation.  I didn't write about literacy or numeracy.  I just did it.

The 'magic trick' I did with one group (which went wrong because of lack of clear instructions) proved an excellent way to revisit earlier learning on binary and parity bits, including an example of the reason it can be less effective because of where it went wrong.  The installation of a hardware device that I did with another group (which went wrong because I forgot to include a vital instruction) meant that the learners worked out for themselves what was wrong and resolved it.  Instead of giving diagrams out and explaining them, I doodled on the board, taking on board comments from the students as I went.  The lessons evolved naturally, and the skills that I have developed wove into the lesson with seeming ease.

It's reassuring to have a day when you feel like you've done things right, and your students have gone home having had an interesting and fun lesson, whilst still learning something.  Let's hope there are many more of these.

Letting my learners do the teaching

In my web design class yesterday, we did a recap of adding an image to a site.  Well, I say we - I decided at the very last minute to pick on a capable students (who was at that moment being distracted by some other feature of Dreamweaver) to talk the rest of the class through the process.

She started to talk - and I politely asked her to take my seat at the IWB monitor - and talk it through from there.  The rest of the class were delighted, and it was a successful few minutes.  We gave her a round of applause for her efforts, and I then decided to take it a step further and asked another student to talk the class through adding a rollover button.

What was most interesting to me was to sit back and observe the learning process taking place.  I could see who was struggling much more clearly, and found it fascinating to see how the 'teacher' dealt with stragglers.

Not only was this a more engaging method of learning for the students, I think I really learnt something here as well - it gave me breathing space to take stock of what learning was really going on in the class.  I will definitely be doing this again.

Assignment plan session

Went pretty well.  Title good.  Less focus on search skills per se and more on teacher as facilitator.  Have got some books to read from the library (first hurdle overcome!).

These notes are the key points from my assignment proposal:  ICT to enhance learning and teaching; can teachers ignore ICT, changing role of teacher ie managing information; very little interactive ICT; aim to explor how to implement ICT, disjunction between teachers & students, opportunity to engage (ie close the gap).

Slide 5 notes - Models - tutor, tool, tutee (TTT) does touch on this, pluralistic model of pedagagy - ie different models for diferent subjects / aims.

Slide 6 - Thinking can be expressed in a variety of formats (ie not just written down, but vocally, graphically etc).  Can we / should we use technology to express thinking creatively.

Slide 7 - Often computer use is Ritualistic - ie using computers very unimaginatively.  Teachers skill set is an issue.  eg I produce my workbooks as a long, full course document, and then split lessons up to go on Moodle.  If I 'thought' differently, and produced my notes in separate lessons, I would save myself a job.

Digital immigrants and digital natives is the interesting slant.  As is pedagogy - talking about lots of pedagogies (can't remember the exact term but wrote it down), different use of ICT for different courses.

Thoughts for research project - Facebook environment for learners? - trial it and evaluate it's worth in our setting.