Education is linear?

A title and image shamelessly stolen from a great thought provoking video on YouTube that really gets you thinking. It covers many points that go perhaps a bit out there in the grand scheme of things, bit the first 1:13 of the video really hits the nail in my opinion. What do you think?

Reflection in the workplace

Although not my brain child, my Academy is now rolling out a trial scheme with the view of creating reflective students. The whole idea comes from developing ‘parent tutor day’ which is where form tutors meet with individuals from the group accompanied by their parents to discuss a multitude of different things. This time around, instead of the tutors whaling on at the students about what they are good at, bad at and need to improve, students are taking the stage.

Students will present a reflective dialogue for around three minutes to their tutor and parents identifying key areas that they themselves have identified. This is developing several initiatives in the students:

• Development of reflective ability
• Presentation skills

Above is a sample of some of the things they are talking about in their dialogues, but there is a range. Some have done a SWOT analysis and others have gone with a more traditional exploration of themselves.

I can only hope that this idea is developed into an ongoing initiative as i think being a reflective learner is vital to progress. In education, students are pushed to the limit, rarley being offered structured time for personal constructive reflection, seeing what has been attained and what needs still to be done.

I hope to update soon with further developments.

‘The Purpose of Reflective Practice’

Now being used by the Universal College of Learning in New Zealand for an undergraduate course on Nursing, this is one of my assignments from the Reflection in the Work Setting module.

Thought I would share as I have not posted this here as yet.

Basic principals of my study

Here is a bit of an off-beat post to outline the components that I am so thankful for and could not imagine doing my studying / researching / learning without. First up its the underpinning element:

This is the framework on which I do 90% of my work (the other 10% is my learning journal which is a blue lined book, nothing special.) I have been involved in the IT industry for a while and without (hopefully) sounding like a bit of a bandwagon tag-along, Mac OS X has really facilitated the work I have produced so far with its simplistic file management, redundancy and time machine.

I suppose the enclosure for the previous (and all to follow) would be my fantastic laptop the MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo 15″ The best laptop I have ever had. It keeps on surprising me with most things, could not recommend a brand/model as much as this!

This little gem would have to be the secondary framework. Doing a research / distance learning degree would be rather difficult without web access and Firefox allows me to access all I need to on the web with the ability to support plugins such as Zotero.

The common room / lecture theatre / tutorial space and everything else, FirstClass is the University. It brings the Cohort together to engage in a communal learning environment and also allows students to connect with other cohorts, past and present.

Another Apple product now, still not a fan-boy, iWork 09. I have only been using it really in Semester 2, really to try it out. I have had all versions previous to 09 (through site license) but never really ran with it. 09 has really been a saviour for me, alleviating the need for buggy, slow, putrid Office:mac 2008 that I am only using for my reference page for each module as it has interoperability with Zotero, a feature iWork has yet to support.

Oh, now my favourite, Spotify is a service like iTunes that provides all music in its database (around 2-3 million) for free, streaming and instant. See my previous post to see the love!

I suppose this would be another component of the mix. Zotero is a FANTASTIC premise, but not fully developed in my opinion, head over to their website to read all about it and see how it can help you.

Oh come on, not everything is good with hiher education, this is how the descrepancies are dealt with!

What could you not do without???

BA/BSc what’s the difference?

A question i have always tried to put my finger on. Traditionally you would think that scientific subjects are BSc’s (Bachelor of Science) and everything else would be a BA (Bachelor of Arts,) but this is not the case. I have seen an array of courses ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous with BA/BSc seemingly picked at random as a classification, but i think i have now hit the nail on the head. To put it simply its BA = qualitative data and BSc = quantitate data. These are the different types of data used by the different courses, so a dissertation (3rd year project) for a BSc course would include statistics, maths and results from a study to do with numbers whereas a disertation for a BA would have conclusions based on responses and assumptions that could not be classified as 20%, 0.05, 4:1 and so on.

Have i hit the nail on the head? Anyone think different? Answers on a postcard in the comments.

p.s. couldn’t find a more appropriate picture, so there!

Models, cycles and all sorts

Looking over many a research article and journal, it is becoming clear to me that the best way that i can actually demonstrate ideas is through the use of models. Below is my depiction of how i believe artefacts play a part in the process of reflective practice. What i was also trying to demonstrate was that artefacts can be captured during or after the critical incident.

Next up is the way i have concluded an artefact would then fit within Schön’s model of reflective practice.

And lastly, my ‘brain dump’ of how i can see the Action Enquiry module panning out with my model of its place in reflective practice

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Whether these are correct or not is another thing, but this is just me putting my own learning style into my work.

Final reflections on Level 1 – Semester 1

So I’m at the finishing line again for the second module of this course and 1/6 of the overall thing. Very pleased to have made it this far, but what have I taken away from it all?

Firstly, upon reflection I can see the value of the concept behind the ‘Original Ideas’ thinking. This is when you have a task presenting a learning outcome and deliverable. Traditional, you would set about forging together a load of text based upon reading materials to answer the question. I have been encouraged to challenge this idea and present work through video, audio, diagrams, charts, visual representations, imaginary letters and the list goes on. It’s all about the individuality of presenting an idea through whatever medium you like.

The biggest thing for me was to get the citations in order. To say something is so is not good enough and most of the time this must be backed up with material that has been published and cite the original author and the year the work was published. This was all very new to me, so it was a challenge to get into this mindset. This is one of the most pronounced points I will be working to improve next semester.

And finally, being critical. I have always been told that the whole part of doing a degree is about being critical in your thinking and analysis. This is something that I feel that I have fully identified with (I hope) and I feel that this has made me a more aware and engaged individual.

The level above

With most things, to grasp what you are trying to do, its good to look at the level above. I have come across a fantastic resource from an affiliated University of my Academy; The University of Greenwich. The pack pictured above contains three PhD thesis’ from the field of education. Its really interesting to read through these and then compare it to my work. It gives a great perspective on referencing (were talking about two per sentence) and statical analyses.

There is supposedly an open on-line respositary of these, if and when i find it, you will find the link here.