Work @ TAFE

Just did some reading about another activity based learning system called LAMS, developed at Macquarie Uni. Like Moodle, it seems to be based around social constructivist ideas - there’s lots of links to the IMS Learning Design specification.

Both LAMS and the IMS Learning Design specification have already been discussed on one of the moodle forums. Interesting to note that LAMS is a Java/Flash application, so quite different from Moodle (HTML/PHP). Also interesting to note that Moodle 2 is looking towards the IMS LD Spec!

Really enjoyed the Cert III macros class today. I spent a lot of time on Thursday building activities to scaffold a few concepts/skills in MS Access. I’m particularly enjoying seeing the participants investigating and learning themselves!

For example, one of the focuses today was to see how we can use VBA within Access. We’ve already done extensive work using VBA in Excel, but Access is quite different in that it tries to make things a lot simpler, but inevitably makes things more difficult. We had a discovery task (based on a Moodle forum), where the participants ran out of the blocks to discover themselves how they can display a simple MessageBox from a button on a form (displaying something like “This database was designed by [whoever]”. The participants really got into the activity and raced to find different ways to do so in Access. When some students found a way, they then posted to the forum (with some encouragement) enabling others to try their method.

I then extended a scenario from their Excel VBA coding to Access, enabling participants to build upon their previous knowledge from the Excel exercises - again, letting participants discover and help each other.

I guess I’m really enjoying seeing students discover things themselves through carefully structured activities, rather than just listenting to me telling them how to do it then practicing themselves.

Just some more musings on the thought I had the other day for us, the web-design facilitators, to carry out a web project ourselves each semester.

Perhaps it’d be better to use a single web-project as a case study each semester that we can do together as a class… This’d be a great way to involve the class in the experience, almost like an ongoing workshop, so that they (hopefully) are more confident and clear about their own client project (the main assessment).

I just finished reading Martin Dougiamas’ reflection A Journey into Constructivism. It helpfully presented Martin’s own reflections from learning about constructivism in a format that espouses the benefits of constructivism - as best as one can in an essay! (I guess this essay designed to demonstrate his understanding of constructivism).

The five modes of constructivism identified by the author are as follows:

• Trivial Constructivism
• Radical Constructivism
• Social Constructivism
• Cultural Constructivism
• Critical Constructivism

(The fact that I just remembered all five without referring back to the essay is testament to the clarity of the essay!) I want to overview these concepts briefly before going to play with Mim (daughter) before they slip my mind!

Trivial Constructivism

Trivial perhaps because it is obvious, trivial constructivism is summed up neatly in the essay (?) as

Knowledge is actively constructed by the learner, not passively received from the environment.

Radical Constructivism

Bordering on relativism, radical constructivism sounds similar to the common ideology that everyone constructs their own reality inside their head. While I think this is in some ways true, I wouldn’t go so far as to treat each reality as equally valid nor without context! Most probably my very new understanding of this term is overly simplified and incorrect!

Social Constructivism

Social Constructivism tempers radical constructivism by saying that we construct reality within our own minds yet in the context of our social learning environment. A social-learning environment in the classroom provides a very obvious example of participants learning from the interactions with the facilitator and each other. Each participant’s own landscape of knowledge, beliefs and experience will receive the flow of liquid “content” differently, with meaning gathering or dispersing differently within each participants mind. Furthermore, participants can interact with the flow of the meaning through each others mental-landscape as they question/discuss/encourage each others’ input.

Actually, in hindsight, the analogy of a mental landscape is a bad one in this situation (I think it came from some Edward deBono book that I read years ago about the mind as a self-organising system - I am right, you are wrong: from rock logic to Water Logic). It produces an image of meaning being determined by each participant’s mental landscape, rather than meaning being actively constructed.

Cultural Constructivism

Outside of the immediate social learning environment is the cultural environment of the society, group or school within which the learning is taking place. I’m a bit hazy on the distinction between social and cultural constructivism… guess I’ll need to read more. Does anyone else have helpful input here?

Critical Constructivism

Assuming social and cultural constructivism, critical constructivism seems to be like the term meta-cognition (thinking about thinking). I think the gist of it is reflecting on the constructivism occuring within a learning environment so that constructive steps can be taken to modify the learning environment itself, perhaps challenging social or cultural assumptions. Again, I’ve probably way over-simplified the concept, but it’s a start… am I on the right track?

All in all, a very worthwhile piece of reading! (the original essay by Martin that is!)

I’ve been trialling different methods lately to enable the web-design students to learn at their own pace… but combined with 8 hours of web-design on a Tuesday, it’s progressing at the cost of a headache each week! (For me and the students!)

I think, within a social constructivist framework, it is inevitable that all learners will be at different points of the course… If someone misses a week, I don’t think it’s valid to say, “well, you’ll just have to catch up!”, and expect them to construct this weeks new learning activities on top of a hole where the previous weeks foundation should be. And in and adult learning environment, it is inevitable that participants will be away for substantial amounts of time.

For this reason I’ve been keeping individual progress sheets for the students in class, and setting individual learning contracts. This seems to be working well so far. Most learners are grouped together with one other person who is doing the same activity, and people work well together in these small groups.

Yet this also means that it is more difficult to have activities where we are all together. I’ve been trying to use the forums a little for this purpose (as people can contribute at different points in time without a problem), but I don’t feel this can replace actually working together as a class on some activity or game or discussion etc. I’m instead trying to disperse a few interesting “break activities” that give people a break from the activities that they are working on at their own pace, and to come together to discuss/try/play with something useful but not necessary. For example, yesterday as a break activity, we all had a go at downloading the Web Developers extension for FireFox, played with it for a while, and then talked about the features that we found really useful.

So, all-in-all, it seems to be going well. Students seem positive about the work they are doing and amazingly managed (yesterday) to work well for the whole day (9-5). Everyone is progressing without feeling too overwhelmed. I’m able to keep up with where everyone is up to (using the individual progress sheets) so we don’t waste time trying to work that out each week. But at the end of the day, it is a long day for everyone!

Just had an idea… get it down in writing while it’s still in my head!

What if Jude, Gene and I (the teachers of the Webdesign course), were to take up a local community web-design project each semester, just like the students! It’d be a great way to keep our own skills technically current, while also better prepare for the content that we teach! It’d also be a great way to get TAFE out there in the community and raise the profile of the Web Design course… must talk to Colin/Sherrie/Jenny about this idea!

I finally got around to printing the Technical Currency TAFE material from the Intranet site. Some of the material is really useful, such as the “Getting Started: A guide to planning your professional development”, which is quite motivating and encourages reflection on current skills etc.

The “Suggested Activities for Technical Currency” also looks helpful, lots of ideas to motivate one to get involved!

The “Technical Currency Diary” is a bit disappointing though… looks more like a sign-off for superiors to make sure that professional development activities are being recorded… nothing about reflecting on the activities in a journal for your own development as a professional.

Either way, I’m inspired to set out my professional development plan in writing, and hopefully this journal will be a great place to develop and reflect on the ideas! I’m currently thinking of integrating some of the social-constructivist learning and blended-learning that I’m already doing, but to formalise or focus my learning… i guess just make it more intentional.

The group activities that we ran in class on Friday seemed to work really well! Although not all participants were keen to work in the larger groups, everyone seemed to interact quite well and “socially construct” their knowledge together I spent quite a bit of time on Wednesday trying to build the learning around a social constructivist philosophy.

The paired activities went well too. Participants came up with designs for a database scenario and posted their designs to the discussion forum I had set up, before posting comments on each others designs. We were able to use these to discuss 1st and 2nd Normal form for databases! This was really exciting for me - to see learners discovering the database theory in the context of their own database designs!

Hopefully I can become a bit more efficient in creating similar activity-based learning sessions!

What a mouthful!

I’ve been making a concerted effort lately to apply some of the social constructivist ideas (that I’ve read about during and after my Dip. Ed.) in lessons. I’ve been using Moodle (a Learning Management System with a social constructivist bent) over the past 6 months, as it emphasises activities rather than resources.

I recently posted to a moodle forum, asking for ideas from other people regarding how they use Moodle in a classroom environment to nurture a social learning environment - and this was helpful… (see Moodle strategies to nurture social learning environment). It was quite interesting… most people use the forums and workshops to encourage learners to help each other… most people seem to be quite strict in terms of making sure that people post their questions rather than asking them verbally.

I’m not certain yet myself of the balance… I like using the forums and workshops to stimulate further discussion in class etc.

Anyway, I’ve spent most of today putting together a session for Friday, that will hopefully involve the participants in activities to learn about database normalisation… we’ll see how it goes!

While at work yesterday (Blue Mountains TAFE), I noticed a few flyers on the pinboard outlining the importance of keeping a diary to record professional development activities… hmm… I thought… why would I want to do that? The only purpose for such a diary (that I could imagine at the time) would be to record all the development activities that I’ve attended, possibly to “demonstrate” my professionalism as a teacher (as if attending activities demonstrates my professionalism!)… I should read the flyer before jumping to conclusions… typical me.

Anyway, I thought that it might be more helpful for my own development to instead create a reflective journal where I can process some of the activities or events that occur throughout my work and personal life… not because I think my life is oh soo interesting, but just for my own benefit (learning through reflection). The added benefit of a blog is this: if I ever need to show my professional development activities to keep my job as a teacher I can simply point to the URI. Yay!

No doubt I will flood this journal with entries over the first few days, perhaps weeks, before my enthusiasm receeds back to a normal trickle of activity