Another year, different students, but how far have we come together with e-learning? Speaking personally, I’m older (I hope wiser) but a lot more savvy in the way I use and continue to experiment in e-learning. As the old Chinese proverb has it … it’s the journey not the arrival (or some such) through which satisfaction and true acheivement arise.
But is there a sense in the air that we’ve moved on, in however small a way along the road? Are the majority of students we work with any more savvy and less technophobic than they were 12 months ago? Are institutions making it easier for teachers to develop their own e-learning skills via professional development and/or easy to use CMS (course management systems)? Have telcos brought down the costs of web access ensuring that ubiqitous little ‘fourth screen’ can become a handheld e-learning device? Do pigs fly?
The focus of this post concerns the changing nature of our ‘classrooms’. School’s in for the year and we’ve hit the ground running as they say; at least we’re there on the ground in traditional classrooms, in workshops, and online. The electronic revolution is nibbling insistently if not biting hard yet … at least as far as e-learning is concerned in my neck of the woods.
Last night I worked in a virtual classroom in a live chat with a very small group of students … hope this grows! Memo to self: strategise getting them on board! They still need help, as do my colleagues, to make sense of this Web 2.0 world. I’ve also been working in a traditional classroom in the stand and deliver mode this week, but even there I’m more interested in getting the students to do the learning, rather than to stroke my own ego by giving them the goods culled and mediated through my own experience.
Continue reading ...The more work you put into the preparatory phase of a journey … and barring disasters or unforseen circumstances … the smoother the ride. Right? Knowing where you’re going and how to get there is also useful. When it comes to prepping course materials for delivery to students, it’s helpful to switch thinking from what
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photo credit: Greg Melia
Next Monday is day 1 of teaching for a new academic year… or should the emphasis be on learning! Change is in the air. It’s a change in thinking, a sort of ‘can-do’ feeling that is beginning to nudge colleagues into giving this e-learning stuff a go. I’ve experienced this several times this week alone at my place. Now change at institutional level can be notoriously slow in uptake, and never more so than in academe. Tried and true ways that ‘work’ are hung on to perhaps long past their shelf freshness date, and for all sorts of good reasons. One of the prime excuses is time-poverty, and free-thinking academics are notorious for resisting the kind of change that comes from above … administrative mandates being one of the most resisted. But I digress a little.
Continue reading ...Now this I like. More please … everywhere!
Continue reading ...An enormously important and formative experience in my life as a young actor was that of being on tour for many weeks, and schools’ tours at that. It was 1971, and I was fresh from drama school in the UK, and back home in Queensland. The new state theatre company (Queensland Theatre Company or QTC
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