A new semester has started and I have 2 new courses to enjoy, Teaching practice in Action and Mobile Learning & Teaching. The first class was yesterday and it was great to see everybody again, ready for the next chapter.
Teaching Practice in Action:
We had been given our new communities and paperwork 2 weeks ago and that was a really smart move because our first assignment is due on August 8th. We are to write an analysis of our teaching practice, develop our teaching philosophy, and identify potential areas for professional growth. That will be presented with an action plan designed to improve an aspect of our own teaching, as a form of professional development. I delved into what it means to write a teaching philosophy and was overwhelmed with the variety of formats and examples. Downloaded a few, and read a few as well. I filled in a template from Ohio State University and did the Grasha-Reichmann Teaching Style Survey. Interesting how I see this on a day to day basis and how I interpret questions. Overall my style is fairly even, just like my learning styles according the Honey and Mumford Learning Style Survey, or Fleming's VARK Questionnaire.
I think this is because I seem to be more open to ways of being and seeing than I used to be, and am more willing to try new tools. At the same time I found myself squirming a lot this week over the thought of having to dig deeper into the whys and hows of my actions and reactions in a teaching sense. I suspect this is going to get rather personal and I will have to face a bit more than I might be ready to.
Knowing someone would be taking my place for the theory classes this trimester, was quite disconcerting and I had to really scramble to make sure both Ralf and James had decent plans for those first three weeks! It made me see how much more detailed my lesson plans have to be if someone is truly to take over - we tend to have so much noted superficially and mentally that any one else would struggle to take over - despite our belief that we are quite clear! The act of explaining my approach and having someone else carry that out was quite strange yet very good for the both of us. I think for Ralf it was really strange having to follow someone else's methods that use technology in a very different way than he does. The fact that I didn't have the most complete lesson plans ended up being a bonus for both of us: Ralf got some control back by revising and updating them and I had to explain what and why I was wanting certain things in place. I think together we have made a much better lesson package that a lot of other people would be able to work with.This collaboration is highlighting our strengths working together and hopefully improving our students experiences while they are with us. I feel that we are making good progress which is already enabling us to take the next step in creating more meaningful learning experiences. This process has made me question more deeply what I mean to achieve in any given time frame, and the value of each exercise. It's also given me more confidence to explore with the students what their own thoughts and motivations for study are in an attempt to see how I can encourage them into more successful engagement.
Mobile Teaching and Learning:
Confusion reigned in my head for some time here. Were we supposed to include our peers in our current teaching groups? Were we supposed to evaluate each person's activity? If an exercise and a test was not enough then would it be acceptable to get students to learn how to do the order system I currently use for their shop planning? By the end of the day all my questions were answered and happily I can get on with planning and implementing my original thought, which is to record how to use the order sheet properly, and chunk that into bite sized pieces. Along the way I'll plan small tasks that allow users to review how successfully they are getting on with the exercise.
I'm really pleased I decided to spend time last week researching and trialing some screen casting software. I think I'm happy with the SmartPixel format, and I'm excited to be getting a decent microphone to record with. I think I'm ok now with the idea of doing voice overs. Since making assessment videos in the last 2 years I include much more of what goes on in class as that makes it more authentic and personal to the students viewing. Hopefully over time they also get to recognise each other in the clips.
Lonely Screen lets me cast my iPad screen to the computer. For now I'm not sure how much screen sketching I'll do for this activity, but it's good to have all of that in place. I'm excited to be getting on with this as its been in my head for the past 3 months since I had to hand over the theory classes to Ralf. That really brought home to me how individually we all teach and how specific my teaching has become with regards to how I hand over more responsibility to the students. It helped me to confirm what is going well and highlighted areas that need refining, especially how to teach the ordering system for the shop day has been a work in progress for a really long time and I hope this final step of recording the process will really benefit everyone. The intention is to free up class time for helping solve problems with inputting, and let students confirm they are on the right path. The students will have a tool they can refer back to and let that guide them even if it is the middle of the night. They'll be able to give each other more support because there will be the step by step recordings to refer back to while they use the shared file to complete their work.
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