What a crazy week it has been. I think I am rather out of practice of completing assessments and have found the whole episode of getting my first assessment a rather bewildering and stressful experience (they tell me the first one is always the hardest). I am so very relieved to report that a couple of hours ago I was dancing around the sitting room celebrating the fact that I had completed and sent the assessment off to the powers that be. I actually have a little more sympathy for my students who have assessment deadlines. So this week was all about learning theories and research informed practice. The below clip is rather amusing. Do you think you would get fooled in someone came in as an expert and gave a lecture? Have a look, I reckon he does a very good job at bamboozling the experts.
Our task for this week was to look into the 10 most popular learning theories...they tell me there is 100's - I had a hard job getting my head around 1...Luckily I had the lovely Meeta and Karima to work with this week. I have to admit to just wanting to be around some creature comforts as I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with my struggle to get a handle on the assessment so I made a beeline for them as soon as I got through the door.
The thing is, it wasn't so hard coming up with a 'digital and collaborative learning innovation, and even writing about it and planning how it would work seemed straight forward-ish (I don't want to get too ahead of myself there - as I don't know if I have even passed it yet!) Anyway the bit I struggled with was the fact it had to be presented via a 6-8 minute video. This I found very difficult as I just had never done anything like this before...and I didn't actually want to be in the video. I have only used I-Movie a couple of times and that's my lot. I eventually, went for movie maker on my laptop...but from that It then turned out that I couldn't just copy and paste my power point over....instead I had to use a 'snipping tool' and then from there I had to put my photos on and then voice over it all. It doesn't sound like a long process at all does it.......
Enough said.......
Anyway, I suppose that is 'applied practice' in action. It did make me think a little about next year when a few hundred students could potential turn up with new 'devices' courtesy of Santa Claus... but I will save that for another time.
The session challenge this week was to pick one of the education theories from a hat and create a stop motion animation explaining the key principles of the theory. We got 'Social Cognitive Theory' by Albert Bandura (born 1925). The video clip below give you a bit more detail..
.......and below is our stop motion clip....you have to keep your eye out for the poor frog on the left of the screen.
Thanks Meeta and Karima...as always it was funny as funny to work with you :)
I totally relate to this blog post Alison! I too struggled with the video submission. Give me an essay to produce any time. I'd never done one before. In fact I thought I had to publish it to You Tube first (had some help from my 11 year old to do this I must admit) and then got an email congratulating me on my very first You Tube video. Well I guess there has to be a first! So one down and one to go! Might need to upskill or borrow my son's ipad for next time. I too used Movie Maker on my laptop. Mine just made up of quite a lot of still photography, voice over by me and then rearranging frantically the order of the 'slides' to sort of match. I am reassured that I can resubmit should my first attempt fail miserably. On the upside I've learned a lot about Movie Maker over the last week :)
ReplyDeleteWell done Alison and Mary. This first assessment takes most teachers out of their comfort zone so you are certainly not alone. The applied nature of the postgrad course perfectly reflects the process your own students go through, having to take on board new concepts, new skills and knowledge on a daily basis. I know when I undertook postgraduate studies as an adult I was confronted with just how 'uncomfortable' the early stages of getting back into learning, but the feeling as each hurdle was met was truly amazing.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the great work and try not to overly focus on the assessment grade but the learnings you have along the journey.
Hi Mary and Frances, thank you for your comments, I really appreciate them. It does make me feel a little more at ease knowing that I am not the only one who found it so difficult. Human nature as such, everywhere I looked everyone seemed to be way down the track of e-learning skills and such experts on making videos for assignment submissions. I think it is great having this blog and the weekly get together's to allow us to share how we are doing and also touch base with others and know how we are feeling is quite normal.
ReplyDelete