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London Aquatics Centre for three days

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Three days, with a 7.15 am poolside start each day with some 20+ swimmers from our club Mid-Sussex Marlins. 'Working' poolside rather than just visiting as a tourist or even a spectator meant I experienced something of the buzz around competitive swimming.

8 Sessions, 7 to 20 swimmers in each. Every stroke and every distance, from 1500m Freestyle to 50m sprints. Quite a tasks to coral the swimmers onto a patch of the poolside which all the London clubs mark out with beach chairs. I had just the one. It was easy to get squeezed.

The 2 hours between warm up and a swim had many swimmers setting off for trips around the Olympic Park with their parents and then doing a poolside warm up before their race - not ideal.

Work on their underwater phase is paying off, with great distances. Often they are the last to surface and do so ahead of the pack.

All of this tied in with an Institute of Swimming 'Certification' which I have been completing on the ePortfolio 'Pebblepad' that I was first introduced to here in 2010 as part of the MAODE - it has changed considerably. It is a sophisticated, detailed Workbook with multiple test sheets and 'evidence' to be submitted - often via the App 'Pebblepocket' so that a video or audio clip, or photos can be uploaded easily. The downside is the volume of material that is easily generated and the need for both a mentor/supervisor rather than simply an assessor looking over my work.

 

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Design Museum

Working Towards Google Educator Level 1

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 12 Apr 2018, 05:56

 ’Getting stuck is part of the learning process. Take risks and don’t worry about getting it right the first time. There are lots of learning opportunities that can come from failure’.

This quote caught my eye first time round as I completed the 17 hours that make up the 13 units. It isn’t a slog, more a case of making the time, taking your time and taking breaks. The learning pattern is a familiar one: a short encouraging introduction and explanation, one or a few very short talking head interview - always with transcripts, a formative quiz rounding off with a tougher one to indicate how much you have picked up.

I find my short term memory excellent so scores are high most of the time. I only need to redo the test a couple of days later to discover how much I have forgotten.

I am now heading back through the entire process. Once again I am taking to and doing to my notes. Once again I am taking the tests.

Soon I will join a few short classes with an Educator and even ’buddy up’ with someone. The goal is to take and pass the certificate while beginning to run such classes myself.

The progression continues, to Educstir Level 2, say in 6 months to a year the onwards to becoming an ‘Innovator’.

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