Reading and Writing

In preparation for Saturday's class I need to summarise my learning over the past fortnight and share that with my classmates.
We were kindly give access to an amazing PowerPoint analogy of a garden as well as a poem describing how this persons felt coming into study as a adult. Very inspiring and touching, and got me to wondering what I could do. After some consideration I realise I want to keep updating this blog, and use this for my summaries. I'll keep adding links, pictures and my thoughts and everything will be in one place.

So......the first two weeks of Special Topic are nearly done, and it's time to share where I've been, when I'm not here. My thoughts are still scattered through my class notes and the beginnings of the assignment. This blog is now well underway, and I went to the Library this week for some literature. I came across Teaching the Unprepared by Kathleen F. Gabrielas an extra reading. What a helpful book!
It reinforces a lot of my current thinking and will articulate a lot of the half thoughts I have about how to improve the relationships I build with my students. Learning centred learning  is the  main topics here, one I fully support but need to keep evolving. This book has great strategies to increase student engagement as well as give them solid support. In particular, by establishing a learning inventory early in my next course, I hope to begin empowering students to take responsibility for their learning, thus letting them take control and make the transition to become a successful student.

Next I need to establish the order of investigation into my subject, the wording of which still needs refining. Some discussion will clarify what I need to tweak. Setting goals will help me round the search out, and then to gather all of the reflections and findings into a coherent body of work for presentation. Focussing on that should prevent too much procrastination, something I do very well.

I have made some good footprints, now to continue the journey by making my own path - with the help of my students, classmates, teachers and colleagues, oh, and a bit of well thought out referencing, something amazing is sure to happen.