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Practice and rehearsal

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 1 Nov 2020, 17:40

A Crayola-drawn plate of food on a paper plate

As my 15 minute micro-teach takes shape the idea of having students draw a plate of food to show what they had for breakfast is turning problematic when I give it a go in practice.

My 24 year old daughter things its childish (I don't. I think wax crayons and felt-tip pens are comforting and fun reminders of nursery school).

The issue in practice is the time I give to people within the 15 minutes.

This is not the test of their ability to do a drawing of a piece of bacon (fairly easy) or baked beans (a little more tricky) or porridge (advanced to impossible).

A paper plate on which a black pen drawing of a bowl of porridge has been attempted

It is simply to create a talking point. The solution therefore is that they use a black felt-tip pen only to draw and outline and then write what it is.

I can say they'd have a chance to colour it in after the class, or for homework smile 

It might be 10 years since I ran something like this; that was a 'creativity, innovation and change' workshop. I had what amounted to a swim coach's lesson plan with strict timings of when we should be moving through the tasks.

With only 15 minutes I'll be doing the same on Thursday.

I will even script it and record a video (we may not be able to go into an evening session at college).


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A poor learning experienced remembered

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Joining a class that would run over several weeks that would teach his improvisational writing and rehearsal technique used by Mike Leigh I found that the class would watch as a direct, three actors and a write did exactly this. We didn't get to improvise - I enjoyed acting at the time. We didn't get to work with the actors - I wasn't so much into directing yet. And we didn't even write. This was meant to inform our own projects. I didn't. I found it hugely frustrating to be watching others do stuff, have fun and learn from the experience, while we in the 'class' were meant to pick it up from a chair at a distance. All we were taught was how, through demonstration, to run an improvisational session. 

LESSON > if you aim is to teach someone to do something, have them do it not sit on the sidelines.


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Time, Place, Activity

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 1 Sep 2011, 13:42
The intersection is the next generation of designs.
(context mobile learning, author AKH)
My interest is to free up fingers and legs so that I can tongue- type or contol/ influence actions directly from my mind, indeed to have not something of my mind reading and writing up my every thought, but as a distinct 'other' entity. Churchill had his secretaries. Didn't Barbara Cartland have three? Though they weren't independent or contributing thinkers.
Or perhaps the personal assistant is the personal device of the future.
What it requires is no technology and closer living, in my case not three men in a boat, but three like minds in a Yurt.
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Applied Learning

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 2 May 2014, 11:18

Odd how I can treat a TMA like an essay, research it to death and build towards an essay crisis. Having to write the TMA equivalent, a strategy paper on Social Media, I find I am a couple of days ahead with the first draft written, expectations of a meeting where expert colleagues will have input before finalising and presenting in a week.

Applied learning, or practice-based learning ... action learning, they're all the same idea that attracts a good deal of interest; it increasingly makes sense for people, especially if they are settled in a position that they enjoy and need, to study as the work, the learning occuring alongside what they do, rather than separetely from it.

In some respects this is the immersive learning that game-like learning environments are supposed to re-created; but why do that when you can have the real thing?

I had thought of creating it as a wiki, password protected for contributing stakeholders. As long as we're on the same wavelength from experience of doing this in the MAODE I'd trust the end result to be better as a result, the equivalent of lifting something from the 70% mark towards 85% and beyond.

Blogging here My Mind Bursts more than here, where the audiences have far more choice and haven't the focus of hear of learning with the OU.

Its been an interesting environment to hone some more advanced blogging habits and skills, not simply the generation of regular content, but how it is linked, where it is linked and the important of tags which I've used simply to identify content, but of course of seach engine optimisation purposes too.

If you have a moment and can put the right hat on, perhaps you're an Open University Faculty of Business and Law student anyway, then do please visit our website as I will be listening to all comers on valuable enhancements we can make here.

To 'blogify' is my mission.

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H800: 59 Seeing the wood for the trees - the activity and the module they sit in

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 30 Aug 2011, 04:35

I sit next to a senior learning designer in the Open University Business School - he is wrapping up a new module for the MBA course. I'm in late doing course work - we talk as we return from the kitchen with coffee.

This is clearly way beyond what an online course can deliver in terms of the impromptu face-to-face, one-to-one mini tutorial. I'll just milk it and promise to share insights.

He knows I have struggled with getting into this week's activities; however, late in the day (last night), having finally got through all the reading and made notes and looked back on previous weeks, I told him how important it was, indeed how significant Richardson's set of papers, the reference to the previous work is.

I shall revist this week repeatedly not only as we head towards TMAO2, but for the duration of H800 and beyond.

Perhaps I can hear in the back of my mind the conversations that were had when creating H800 and each academic chose or was allocated a week, or set of weeks. Did they sit down with a learning designer? Did they work it all out from home? I do at least now fully respect and understand why they should and will refer to their own reports, papers, research and books. These are but the published corners of their minds ... and we, after all, are trying to get inside their heads, just they want to tickle the contents of our brains.

Marton, Sfard, Saljo, Richardson ... there is some quality thinking in hear to extract and play with.

(54023)

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H800:57 Learning design and moderating students online

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 17 Apr 2012, 07:12

Some thoughts on e-moderating from Gilly Salmon all from 'E-moderating'. (2003)

Perhaps we ought to call them Tutors or Associate Lecturers though, rather than moderators.

What do you think?

'It is worth structuring your course to provide participants with rhythm, enticement, flow and pace to their online study.' p63

'We have found that the first few weeks of being online is a critical time for group forming and confidence building'. p64

You've got to make a good first impression, enough, but not overpowering, leading the way?

'Participants in online learning are involved in a variety of communities of learning and practice at the same time, and have a myriad of other responsibilities. Some of these may be similar in values and beliefs and norms of behaviour to those of the course groups and some may not. You need to build enticement, inclusiveness and pacing to make your experience stand out'. p65

Should this come from the Tutor or from Learning Design? Who sets the pace? It depends on whether the module is an obstacle course or the shot-put.

'Long message take time to read and respond to (but may be more worthwhile than short ones). p66

I guess to stay friends with your fellow students and the Tutor you should keep the length down a bit ... but do they read it at all?

'Summarizing, archiving and weaving are the key skills for the e-moderator. They save participant's time, and enable participation in new ways. Furthermore, the more successful an e-moderator is, the more likely he or she will be overwhelmed by success in terms of many student messages'.

A note in relation to countries with poor fixed-lined telephone systems:

'Mobile connectivity through cellular systems will provide access to many more people who will 'leap-frog' over others, technologically, by missing out interim stages'. p70

And a note in relation what learning means.

'What we know of learning is that we want people to change what they actually do, we need to offer experiences that shuffle backwards and forwards between what they already know, and what they are prepared to develop, between specific details and their implications in wider contexts, and between practice and reflection.' (Harvey and Knight, 1996)

Meanwhile I have 60 pages of course work to read, take notes, and comment on ... and then comment on the comments of others in the Tutor Group Forum .. and then I can climb into a hot elluminate session.

(Or should that be a bath?)

REFERENCE

Harvey, L and Knight, P (1996) Transforming Higher Education, SRHE and Open University, Buckingham.

(52294)

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Love your memories in a blog

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012, 16:35

Nabakov.JPG

“I think it is all a matter of love: the more you love a memory, the stronger and stranger it is." Nabakov

I thought 500 page views was a landmark, then 1000. There has been steady growth to 10,000. It went crazy for a week in April with 1,000 views a day then settled back to 150-250  day. Whose counting? Basic analytics are a form of recognition, even reward for the blogger. 50,000 is a biggy that has taken 14 months to achieve. 100,000 is unlikely within the Masters in Open & Distance Education, though a MRes, another module in the MAODE (because it interests me so much) or a MBA are all of interest for later in the year and all would be blogged upon right here.

Are you saying something worthwhile to this audience?

Even if I feel the PC Screen is a mirror and I'm writing this for my benefit first as a reference I can return to later: what did I think? Where is that quote? Where was I in the learning process? Aren't I glad I've moved on! Editing old entries, bringing them up-to-date develops this. As Nabokov wrote,

Read Backwards

e-Reading 'A New Culture of Learning' backwards in a large font isolating interesting gems I may have missed. Also reading it by search word; 'play' works and is appropriate with over 160 mentions.

I liken this to panning for gold.

Once I've done this a few times typing out notes may be irrelevant; I'll know it. 'Play as the new form of learning?'

One final thought. Two decades ago I liken learning to a nurturing process, of an educator/teacher or course designer/principal sprinkling water on the heads of students buried like heads of lettuce emerging from the ground.

This no longer works for me.

What I now see are kids in a large paddling pool having fun and making up games with toys offered to them by supporting parents and older siblings.

The mantra for e-learning is 'activity, activity, activity', perhaps it ought to be 'play, play, play'; that's what you'll come away with if you read John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas 'A New Culture of Learning; cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change.'

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What is a learning activty? Grainne Conole

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 1 Sep 2011, 09:40

Beetham provides a simple definition

"an interaction between a learner or learners and an environment (optionally including content resources, tools and instruments, computer systems and services, 'real world' events and objects) that is carried out in response to a task with an intended learning outcome." (Beetham, 2004)

Conole has developed a learning activity taxonomy (Conole, 2007; Conole, 2008) that attempts to consider all aspects and factors involved in developing a learning activity, from the pedagogical context in which the activity occurs through to the nature and types of tasks undertaken by the learner. The taxonomy is based on the premise that learning activities are achieved through completion of a series of tasks in order to achieve intended learning outcomes. The taxonomy was derived by working with practitioners to elicit the stages involved in the design process and consists of three main components:

  • The context within which the activity occurs; this includes the subject, level of difficulty, the intended learning outcomes and the environment within which the activity takes place.
  • The pedagogy (learning and teaching approaches) adopted. These are grouped into three categories – associative (acquisition of skills through sequences of concepts/tasks and feedback), cognitive (construction of meaning based on prior experience and context) and situative (learning in social and/or authentic settings).
  • The tasks undertaken, which specifies the type of task, the (teaching) techniques used to support the task, any associated tools and resources, the interaction and roles of those involved and the assessments associated with the learning activity. In particular the types of tasks which a student might do as part of the learning activity are described in detail and grouped into six categories; assimilative (attending and understanding content), information handling (e.g. gathering and classifying resources or manipulating data), adaptive (use of modelling or simulation software), communicative (dialogic activities, e.g. pair dialogues or group-based discussions), productive (construction of an artefact such as a written essay, new chemical compound or a sculpture) and experiential (practising skills in a particular context or undertaking an investigation).
  • http://cloudworks.ac.uk/cloud/view/2473 (Accessed 4/4/11)
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