Learning, teaching, assessment and doughnuts
Some great reading this week; some of my students have gleaned inspiration from Friere’s work and referred to it in their assignments, but until this week I hadn’t engaged with it myself that much. Ideas on freedom and oppression arise in many strands of pedagogic theory and there was much here that I was already [...]
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I’ve hidden myself away from the world this week; I printed off a load of the readings on complexity theory and enjoyed being Keith Hamon’s ‘starving poet scribbling away in his lonely garret, plumbing the depths of the human soul in solitary obscurity’. Did you miss me…? No…?! My cat died a week ago (www.twitter.com/snoodgit). [...]
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A few days ago I wrote down some practical thoughts on what connectivism might bring to the way I teach and the way my students learn. As a result, I did a concept mapping activity with both my tutor groups last week. They are currently starting small-scale teaching development projects of their own, and a [...]
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I’m on a high after two days working with a small group of staff and PhD students on the Developing Educational Practice course we run at UAL. It’s like a crash course in the context and purpose of Higher Education and some key pedagogical themes and theories. I feel one of the strengths of the [...]
Category: CCK11
Inspired by Thomas Baker’s blog, in which he begins to explore some practical implications of the connectivist perspective, here are some initial thoughts about how I feel Connectivism might have an impact on my own teaching practice. I work with Art & Design teachers at postgraduate level; mostly those who are working towards their PG [...]
Category: CCK11
I watched and listened to about two-thirds of Neil Selwyn’s session from earlier today before I lost the sound on my Macbook. I checked out the geek forums and it’s not looking good. I feel paralysed; unable to access crucial content and have a share in one of the key experiences of the course. It’s [...]
Category: CCK11
So it’s Week 2 of CCK11 and I’m thinking about Frames (which seem pretty much the same thing as ‘context’ – am I right?). I really enjoyed George Lakoff’s talk – not just because of his magnificent beard, which I am incredibly envious of – and have started watching the full-length version. I’m valuing my [...]
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I suppose there is a risk of this all getting a bit *circular* – being on a connectivist course about connectivism. There are two complementary routes to achieving the learning outcomes; engaging with the content and artefacts about connectivism and reflecting on the connectivist learning experience itself. Does this complicate matters? Would it be better [...]
Category: CCK11
In ‘What Connectivism Is’, Stephen Downes says that connectivism is different from other theories of learning in not being ‘grounded in language and logic’. I think I understand what he means when he says the properties and constraints of linguistic structures are not the properties and constraints of connectivism. But it never occurred to me [...]
Category: CCK11
We’ve had a kind of staff development day today (feeling bit angst-ridden after it). Anyway, here are a few personal action points resulting from the strategic objectives we came up with: One of our objectives was ‘to find ways to innovate in our own practice‘. The final two pieces of work I’m undertaking to complete [...]
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