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Kim Aling

H808 Core Activity 5.3

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Edited by Kim Aling, Tuesday, 9 Apr 2013, 09:26

In teaching it has always been good practice to use a variety of resources to make lessons interesting and to cater for different learning styles.  Instructional design recommends the use of multiple ways to deliver information and encourage interaction.  As the Penn State advice argues the main thing is to be careful that your different modes of delivery don't conflict, so for example, images should relate to the subject text.

With advancing technology and web 2.0, not only are there a whole range of media that can be used by individuals, but storage systems such as eportfolios are also able to upload many different file types.

Recording audio and video is easily done on pocket sized devices, even phones, and files can be converted to compress their size and to be compatible with different storage facilities. There is free software available to do this such as Freemake. For recording evidence for eportfolios the whole range of media can be utilised.  You can do audio recordings of your thoughts and idea, or even video all from a home computer. You could record your blogs as audio blogs using something like Ipadio (Phlogs).  For capturing extracts of audio you can record on a phone, or using software on the computer. Windows 7 has a very handy snippy tool for quickly capturing screenshots as jpg, gif or png files and so you can capture your forum or blog posts in situ, web pages, PowerPoint slides, wiki pages, or your tutors comments on a piece of work.  I used the snipping tool in TMA01 for some of the evidence. Screencasting software could be used to convert PowerPoint presentations or extracts into wmv or mp4 files.  Jing is a handy free tool to capture audio and screencasts. For capturing hand written notes and drawings, and newspaper cuttings or other hard copy I use an iphone app called Scan Pages which does just that and saves them as  pdf files that you can email to yourself.

I think the key thing is that it's so easy now to do these things that previously required expensive equipment and software and exclusive sharing methods.

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Kim Aling

H808 Core Activity 2.4: Reflection and Learning

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Edited by Kim Aling, Tuesday, 9 Apr 2013, 09:26

I've been in education both as a student and teacher for many years and believe that reflection is an important aspect of both.  Being able to reflect on one's learning develops strong independent learners and being able to reflect on content promotes deep learning and real understanding of a subject.  Reflective practice helps a learner build a much clearer picture of their own strengths and weaknesses and to develop strategies to improve.  However, as Moon (2001) suggests this does require some training to help the learner develop good reflective practice, including clear and constructive feedback on their work to inform their reflection.  As Moon also suggests, explaining the value of reflection and providing examples is also important.  On two modules I teach for the OU students have to do a 'self reflection' of 50 words at the end of their assignment on a specified aspect of the experience and this enables me to guide their reflection a little.  In H808 reflection is a large part of the module activities and assessment. Blogging is a useful way to reflect and I've started adding a weekly post to the blog on my eportfolio about how I'm feeling about the module so far and where things have gone well and why things haven't gone so well.  Moon made a very good point about emotion in reflection which I believe is thoroughly underestimated in all learning theory.  Much of my learning and work does involve quite bit of frustration and anxiety, as well as pleasure and elation at times, and I intend to also explore my emotions with regards H808 as well.  My reflective blogs remain private however as I think that if I know they can be read by others then they won't be true reflections as Crème (2005) suggests with regards assessed reflective activity.

 

References

Moon, J. (2001) ‘PDP working paper 4: reflection in higher education learning’ (online), The Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/resources/resourcedatabase/id72_Reflection_in_Higher_Education_Learning.rtf [Accessed 23 September 2012]

Crème, P. (2005) ‘Should student learning journals be assessed?’, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 287–96. Available from: http://libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02602930500063850 [Accessed 23 September 2012]

 

 

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