Work @ TAFE

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

I can’t say how happy I am to be finished!! Hopefully it will be more than 2 years before I undertake another course .

I ended up going quite well in the last assignments, which made me happy… I’d really got to the point where I didn’t care much anymore!

Just finishing two weeks holidays… I spent a large part of it setting up a new computer as well as ADSL. Enjoying the convenience of always being online.

Fran’s just gone with Miriam to take some dinner (Quische) to Scott and Anne who have just had a baby (people from church). I spent 3 hrs with Alan and Wendy today as Ian and Megan needed to go separate ways for work. We did the Overcliff walk at Wenti.

I must develop a learning contract template for use in class! Just read Heimstra’s (1994) article “Helping learners take responsibility for self-directed activities.” from a book “Overcoming resistance to self-direction in adult learning”.

Initially I thought the book was about overcoming learner resistance, but it is actually about overcoming the resistance of teachers/facilitators.

So excited about the possibilites!
Next term I hope to give learners much more flexibility in choosing how they will learn and evaluate their own learning.

Today is another day of study… I had my TAA2 assessment for work on tuesday of this week. This went well, Margi Marsh and Brian Clarke, my two assessors, didn’t have any negative criticism at all - which was encouraging. I handed in another assignment yesterday (2 weeks late, but it required my TAA2), and now have only two to go… yay.

Time to read.

Spent most of todays preparation trying to make sure that it would work as a self-paced session.

This generally involved ensuring that there is sufficient information for more advanced students to move ahead, while not providing too much information to ensure that independent problem-solving skills are developed.

Generally it’s a lot of work, but should be re-usable next session after an evaluation.

I’d like to use the Connexions (cnx.rice.edu) architecture for the PHP/MySQL course at TAFE. It looks excellent in terms of collaborative development of courses/modules.

I need to check with the business development unit to see if i can do it as a pilot program.

I also need to check out the authoring tools and course composer etc.

Yesterday I had my Teacher Advisory and Assessment supervision with Colin (my supervisor), as part of my permanancy at TAFE.

Overall it went well. A large practical component of the lesson was getting the students to ftp their files up onto our webserver, but during the lesson the server kept disabling the ftp account. It was a bit frustrating, but a good opportunity to see how I behaved under pressure (Colin said).

During the second part of the lesson, the students ftp’d files up to their own webspace. This was great! It’s so good to hear students going “aaahhhhhh! That’s really easy! I always thought it was something really difficult!”