Time to reflect and write

..... well, I do that every week or two really, don't I?

Today I had to bring my library books back, now my desk is half empty. For the first time I had them there in front of me for two months, and did not look at them except to go quickly through the chapter headings.  As a result I had to choose very quickly what to make note of and sacrifice the rest - that's what happens when you break your new habits.

When I got back home I was straight on to Amazon to look for some more books, but better to wait a bit - might need to see where my study takes me next year as I am still working through that.

Class on Saturday was great, a lot of insight into teaching, others thinking and a lot of laughter, that always helps the day get better. Feedback was good overall despite me giving my feedback with Page 2 first, as you couldn't really tell this week where it started and ended (and I saw that most of my paragraphs were quite self contained when I wrote it out....)

Going through the criteria for the second assignment I noticed that we are to reflect on and evaluate our learning taking per feedback into account. What I have written in my Patchwork texts is not a problem, but what I have neglected to do, is to take stock of our collaborative conversations offering insights and interpretation, that went so naturally, I better go back through this blog and see what I might have hiding as comments or noted statements. It refers mostly to the first and the third reflection, so I should be able to gather something out of my ramblings. It was all so organic I haven't consciously captured enough in my waking thoughts - so that might take some effort. Going through the Community should help as there will be some comments and queries to trigger my recollections.

So my goals for last week were all achieved and on time, yay for that, there was a LOT to get done. The voice over to the TE application turned into a marathon nightmare, I couldn't get the microphone and sound settings to stick and ended up going to bed at 1am an 3am for 2 nights. However I was very happy with the end result and so was Marc, who has always been a very fair critic to me. This has taught me that each computer will sound different though and the quality of my laptop speakers is really not that great - am I thinking about investing in a laptop again after all that and working from a usb stick after all? I'm not yet inclined to do everything through Google Drive although I can certainly see how and why I would ......

Goals for this week:

1. Make a good start on the MLT Assignment - I really have to dig around in my brain (due on Friday, 21 October) for how I can set out the collaborative and interpretive part of the feedback process
2. Make a great start on the TPA Assignment, as that is due in 4 days earlier (due on Monday 1 October)
3. keep a few in the moment times as well, Myrddin posted a great reminder of that this morning as he was enjoying his morning coffee in the sun.

The seeds of learning have all been germinating and now it's up to me 

to nurture them into strong trees for knowledge 

Action Plan and Learning Outcome

The action plan is complete, and I'm happy to say it was for 80% acceptable. As far as what my students need, is concerned, not a problem. As far as my own goals - that needed to be stated more clearly and explained throughout the action plan. Without that then there is not a lot for my own professional development, that after all was the point of this whole exercise. I think I under estimated how much harder is it so see what you need to do for yourself and to write that in clear terms. 

I need to bring the learning outcome for the Mobile course.

I came up with this:

Here is the outline of what I plan to do.

1. The context.  Where will the learning fit in the big picture? It might be a lesson or a link between lessons.  It might be a 'must know' topic that can be deepened in class.

Students in Level 4 Baking participate in 2 shop days. They plan for and carry out the preparation of baked goods for sale, which they sell themselves through our shop outlet.

2 What is the intended learning outcome?

'Calculate the ingredients require and the cost of that food for Shop Day using the Excel template provided.'

As a part of this process they have to work together to produce the food order based on the product list while also states how much of each will be made.

In level 3, students have learned how to calculate the cost of a recipe do they know how to calculate the cost of ingredients.

Using the excel temple provided will give student the opportunity to complete the recipes and product specifications as a part of the shop exercise. The template will also calculate an estimated selling price per unit, as long as the recipe and yells are put in correctly.

3. R2D2. How can the learning outcome/s be achieved and fulfill all 4 parts of this model.

The main part of this task will be 2-3 short video clips explaining step by step what students have to do to complete the order 

Part 1 will be a short video of how an excel sheet works.

Part 2 will show how to put in the recipes and yields.

Part 3 will describe how to link the ingredients to get the cost of each recipe

Part 4 will show how to refine the costs by deleting information such as the way eggs are sold per unit but the excel sheet says per 1000. This changes the cost and makes it unrealistic.

Part 5 will teach students to gather the ingredients and sort them into the final order format ready for processing.                   

Looking at the R2D2 model, what do the students need to do?

• Reading - locating resources find the videos and the file to work in
• Writing – communicating the process - filling in the required field communicating how that went - if the numbers are making sense or not and why that may be
• Doing - diagnosing needs, locating resources - who needs further assistance - who can give that from the group?
• Displaying - evaluating learning - 

Here are two really useful blogs relating to adult learning and engagement:
http://dynamind-elearning.com/2013/11/can-we-develop-e-learning-that-respects-adult-learning-principles/

http://blog.cathy-moore.com/

This week's goals:
Once the goals and action plan are set then WORK on them!!!!!! Time is marching on and it's a matter of getting on with it now. In 4 week's time we will have a whole lot of new students that I can try out my revamped learning event on.

Developing a teaching philosophy and Teaching Action Plan

Not much to report on the Mobile Learning this week apart from the fact that I have a great looking microphone and a good desktop stand for it. Very happily I received good feedback in last week's reflection for Mobile Learning, that I had written clear deep reflections giving me a firm foundation on which to build my Mobile learning activity. This gave me a great deal of satisfaction particularly since while reading it over, I began making notes to myself where I thought I needed to be more specific about what I was trying to get across. I think this is that thing called meta-reflection. I haven't even tried the microphone out yet, as it has been all about developing my teaching philosophy and writing an action plan for professional development. Both sound a lot easier than they seem at first sight...

I'll share all of this when I have my marks back. Suffice to say after having done the teaching perspective inventory in the past fortnight I am quite comfortable with the fact that I seem to be sailing on an even keel. It's nice to think I have found a certain equilibrium within my teaching self. That allows me to see what I want to improve based on student successes and struggles, without feeling the need to chastise myself over my 'failings' as it is not necessarily anything I have done wrong rather than that I would see things needing to be changed. The action plan began writing itself purely with what I wanted to achieve from the student's perspective. At some point today I realised that there needed to be a lot more about what I want to achieve as a practitioner so another hunt for teaching action plan templates ensued. With a bit of tweaking I now feel as if I am developing a plan that will improve my delivery as well as the student experience. The background work will be the most demanding. I have a busy month ahead of me getting the templates all organised and using the screen casting software - that also needs to be storyboarded so I have a good guide for what needs to be accomplished. Formulating what needs to be improved from two perspectives has been quite useful in that I have a more clear idea of what work needs to be done and how much will need to be rewritten - that I will try to minimise since there is limited time and I want to spend more on developing the screen casts. Suddenly I have more than one in mind - I knew that would happen but was hoping that the ideas would wait a bit longer - perhaps a few static screen shots via a website will be a good substitute? Does that mean I have to develop a Wix website as well now?

Let's keep it simple. Start with a storyboard and go from there.

There are some great visuals and concepts forming both in my head and on paper, yet also a lot of empty spaces around them that need to be filled in to complete the whole scenario. With time and thought that will happen.

Goals for next week:

1. assignment to be submitted on Monday
2. prioritise what needs to be worked on next - the action plan will help with that. There will be a fair amount of tandem projects 
3. refine this journal and write a new summary for Teaching in Action for next Saturday's class. This week's blog post will help me out.

Let's see how the reflective writing comes along - shall I make a new wordle again? I guess it depends on what terms and concepts I come across in the next few days. Oooh, I could put this into a Word Sift and see how that turns out.

what kind of researcher am I?

I came across this today. It has a downloadable log book which helped me to define my first thoughts into which paradigm and which methodology I would want to use. I found there seems to be quite an overlap as to how to see the differences and am starting to see this comes from the way in which schools of thought have evolved in the last 100 years.
Getting started as a researcher

So where am I going?

Research question

has adjusted from A. How can we define measure the effectiveness of reflective writing for a practical course by students?

to B. How is students’ reflective writing effective for a practical (food producing) course?

Methodology:

Questions and answers, find the evidence, reflect on that and draw conclusions.

I am liking the idea

a  Appreciative enquiry

Joe Hall & Sue Hammond; Lessons from the Field 

Paradigm:

I quite like the Post Structural paradigm:

collaborative – the researcher is as much involved as the researched, not just an observer and recorder – I can add in my own reasoning and experiences – this could bring about a faster result/conclusion if  I am working in it rather than on it. Uses historical  as the base on which to explore how the relationships of the researched validates the subject of the research.

from Grant & Giddings' Making Sense of Methodologies 2002.

That was quite a heavy read and I needed to get back to it a few times in bits to see if I got it, and to see how my thinking changed - careful reading helped me focus where my own paradigm would fit.

It makes me think of Piggott’s Problem Resolving Action Research model (with its emphasis on change), but now it is people, not concepts, so it might end up being too big a concept to use in this case. Better start off little and see how it develops – brings me back to the positive  paradigm (in which I could remain objective with anonymous subjects), or radical paradigm (which is about effecting a social change - and that is what would happen with successful reflective writing in a course teaching food production). I still prefer the collaborative idea in a Post Structural paradigm though as I can use my own experiences too.

Special Topic

How can we encourage deeper learning by students when their time for learning is getting more compressed?

a quick Google reveals a lot of literature on this subject with surprising findings. Google Scholar has some work, but not specific to this subject, and what I found interesting was not available to me unless I sign up to something else. Then I came across Interleaving as a method of teaching and learning in everyday Google:

Interleaving

I do this instinctively with my course work, but had not connected that to our new Baking programmes at L3 and L4 which actually also interleaf, come to thin of it. So a part of my original question may already have some answers

spacing-and-interleaving

 This is what we are now delivering across all levels. The proof will be in a year's  time when we have had 2 years of teaching and have feedback from industry as to the ability of our 'new' graduates.

It is good to know I am not making stuff up, but that this subject has the potential to be researched well, and supported by others in education.

GOALS: So over the next week I need to start constructing more questions to guide my study, set some timeline goals and continue to identify what literature will support my writing.