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?

Thats a wrap.

So, that’s it, nothing more to see here… for this year anyway. Its now Toby Adams, CertHE, but this is not tobyscerthe blog, so we have a way to go yet. So what has the first year been like? Interesting, that’s all I can say. I came to all this with severe apprehension of higher education, but I now know that all bachelors are NOT equal. There are the institutions that adopt change and innovation with open arms and exploit it for all its worth in a learning environment and there are those who would have you writing with quills if they could. I am fortunate enough to be associated with the first of the two.

I can see precisely how this course has helped me and expanded my horizons in only the first year and how it really can map to any job role.

Above is a graphic from wordle.net

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

The word cloud is created from this blog, the larger words appearing more often. A great tool for visual reflection and presentation.

My project over the summer is to develop my other blog over at http://techintnl.wordpress.com

I hope to get this to its own domain and all sorts, but I would like to see the readers, hits and comments before I commit. Please do have a look and read, why not leave a comment?

‘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???

Application application application

All the things i have learnt over the past few months have really helped me enrich my work and add value to my teachings. After a brief stint of research with Greenwich University about diversifying teaching large groups through a possible ICT infrastructure, i have now started to build a relationship with Wiley publishers.

Me and my Academy have used Wiley for many years and following a meeting i had with one of the people in charge of development of future media, i am now working on a project with them, testing how we can get the concepts from a book and traditional media and make it applicable in the classroom.

I look forward to seeing how this one develops and how the BALTR can contribute to it and vice versa!

Spotify my mind

Communal, free and revolutionary, Spotify sets out to change everything. Spotify will feel rather similar to anyone using iTunes but with one vital difference. Spotify connects to Spotify servers to stream over three million track from all major record labels for free. The only catch is that you never own the music, but that is also its key aspect to the £0 price tag. Spotify is also almost all server side, so how ever many computers you sign in on (can only be signed in on at one at a time) its always the same, Windows or Mac. Because of the de-centralisation of the whole thing, collaborative playlists are also possible, endless potential and fun. You will have to sign up to register and wait for an invite, but invites can also be given out by current members, I have a few remaining, so leave me a comment if your feeling lucky!

Community involvement at a new level

Now, if your also following the curricular of the BALTR course, you will know all about community participation in the aim of an output, but i have now come across something that brings this now to a new level.

What is being seen with the “YouTube Symphony Orchestra” is communal involvement on revolutionary global scale. Something that hasn’t been done before. I wont blab on, just look at the video, isn’t it fantastic? I might even rake out the violin again and see if i have still got it!

Plone

The fantastic FirstClass does a brilliant job of bringing students of the course together, but a big hands together for Plone, which i think brings everything together so nicley. Tomorrow is World Plone Day which is an event to celebrate the product, its uses and how it has impacted so many scenarios for the better. Take a look here to see what its all about.

Creative type?

I first watched this lecture back in 2006 and it really has to be one of the most inspirational i have ever seen. It captures many of my views on education and i think of the BALTR course ethic. Sir Ken Robinson is a very funny man and this lecture is no exception.

I will let the lecture speak for itself, but i really do implore you to watch this, it might just change the way you think about education forever…

The official page of the lecture is here. I would also encourage you to look at some of the other talks on this website as some of them are really quite moving.

Working life in photos

So like i finished this about a month ago, but am just trying out a new feature of embedding vimeo videos into wordpress. You may not have seen this video before as i did not post it directly on FirstClass. The description is held on the main page of the video page on vimeo and is also in HD if you go to the site!

Enjoy!

Added value again!

Have just delivered a Y12 lesson on diversifying the AS/A2 pathway. Nay on everything i have learnt from my course has been applied to the lesson from project management, to learning style analysis and the then on application of that information to their individual subjects. They have also learnt the value of keeping a portfolio of their work whether it is a requirement of the course or not and how that is usefull after the course has come to a close in later life.

Open Source

When doing any work these days, there is invariably a heavy use of software. Software is expensive, cumbersome and difficult to use / learn in many instances. In an attempt to lessen these negatives, i would suggest a trip over to http://www.osalt.com/ to see how the open source community can help you.

Simply type in a piece of software you are going to buy, or even one you already own, and see what the open source (free) alternatives are. You may be pleasantly surprised!

Did you know

Of all the media i have ever seen, there is one that has stuck with me. For every new class i take on, not matter what the key stage, i show them this video. Its truly captivating and is simply excellent.

Its a little outdated now, but it still has terrific impact. It also sums up perfectly what my mission is in education and the mission statement of my department.

I hope you enjoy it as much as i did.

Check out the website at the end of the video on how to download higher resolution copies of the video and to find out more about it.

p.s. i think YouTube is over used and there are many better video sharing sites out there such as vimeo, but wordpress was having none of it, so back to old faithfull i went.