Bringing it all together

      Well this has been a very useful week. I was able to get the time off so I could sit down and WRITE and I did that! I submitted one draft and one final version today, and that feels really good. I have one more to complete which is not due until June 13th because as a reflective essay it should incorporate the writing process for the final essays. I am always wary of saying how I feel about these things until I get feedback, because I've got it wrong plenty of times in the past. The high school exams I found easiest gave me the lower marks and the ones I thought I bombed out on were my best marks. Upon reflection I guess that means that what I worked harder on gave better results, and that makes sense to me.
Don't we say if it's worth doing it's worth effort? Hopefully I have now been critically analytical enough, it really does get hard to tell because every sentence we write becomes our 'precious'! I did learn this week to slash and burn though, and I don't miss those whole paragraphs I got rid of.

The last reflection I wrote was much better than the first ones I did. Partly because now I get it, and can see how to write reflectively, and partly because I have been practicing in here as well. 
So, dear diary, where to from here? I'm not going to share much about my first 2 essays today, other than they are both very different even though they started out with the same introduction, and that I am quite surprised that the process for writing each one has turned out to be very different.
I tried a different tactic this time as well. My class notes were so confused that I really couldn't see what to do with them. I printed them off, cut them up and stuck them onto big sheets of A3 paper that I divided up into the Criteria, and started to add in the thoughts and themes I had running round in my brain.
Bingo! All of a sudden I had a plan! Actually 2 plans! and it was nice just to hand write in different colours and highlight things, and be away from the screen as well. I am not quite sure yet if I want to do mind mapping electronically. Today someone drove into a power pole just down the road - it needed to be replaced completely so I ran out of laptop battery by 3.30, and would have been stuck if it wasn't for good old pen and paper, and I have now set out my last essay  for this trimester. ( when I saw the pole so bent and broken I just hoped they were all right, it was pretty bad)

What else has worked to keep me on track?
I love that Linda gets us to put together a summary of where we are at. Not only is this grist for our reflection essay, but it really got me thinking, so, really, where am I and where am I going with this essay of mine?
Part of the fun has been putting together the reflections, in PowerPoint form and styling it, also to see what visuals I can use, the word clouds are  a bit if a thing with me -  here's my latest one showing some of my learning these past 3 months:

Here's my Special Topic Summary too:

Monique Special Topic Summary 2

It's 6.15pm and I better take a look at what's for dinner. I've come a long way this week and I'm feeling pretty good about things, but there is still tomorrow and one more essay to draft out, this one too, needs to relate not only to my learning but link with relevant theory. I think I'm getting a handle on how that works, and I think I like the effect of that - am feel more able to share what and how I am learning, and I no longer get as nervous as I used to, when it comes time to share.

Goals for the next two weeks:
1. write a decent draft of the reflective Patchwork essay
2. finalise the Special Topic essay when I get feedback
3. take the time to tidy up my Mendeley pdfs, they are pretty good and I want it to stay that way!
And that will do for now!

Books, books and more books!

I've bought BOOKS!
I've never bought books for my teaching before, I go to the library and borrow theirs, or I read extracts from what I have been given as recommended readings, and up to now not really thought too much of it all. I tend to work instinctively and allow my referencing to fit around that, and move on to the next thing.
So what prompted this then?

I am a voracious reader and always have been. Part of my aim for this stage of my learning in the Graduate Diploma was not to create too much printing and paperwork - but the Research topic has caught me and I need to be ABLE to write all over stuff to get my thoughts around what I am learning. The word clouds are a fun way to visualise the mess in my head and from there I need to articulate my way into a cohesive body of writing. On Saturday I need to present where I am at for the Research Topic as well as for the Special Topic, and I want to present them both on different ways. They are both about my learning so far, not necessarily what my essay will be about. So I want to present what I have found in my bookish adventures and see where that will take me, for the following two subjects:

Research topic will be to describe how I would research the following question:
Why is reflective writing helpful in a practical course?

Special Topic is to summarise my learning journey so far on this topic:
How can students be encouraged to engage in deeper learning during a more compressed time frame?

What does that have to do with books?
I read Kathleen Gabriel's Teaching Unprepared Students in one sitting and realised that this book gave me so much insight into my own students and the issues we face, I can do a lot with that for the Special Topic, and that will lead to the Research in time as well.
Jonathan Bergman's Flip your Classroom I haven't read yet, but some Google Scholar articles helped me realise that more detail and examples will inform how I engage students more deeply. (Special Topic)
Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do is somewhat familiar to me since I read a portion of his writing during the Tertiary Teaching Certificate in January this year for our Team Teaching exercise:
Looking at this photo of where we started I can see the beginnings of my current topics quite clearly. Reflection, action and an ending are all pointing to the directions I want to take in my Special Topic as well as relating to the Research.



Learning, Change, Engagement and happy students are the products I wish to achieve through this deeper engagement and reflective writing. The challenge to me is in how I can unpack this and how can I measure the depths of the outcomes?



This is exciting and motivating, and what I have to recognise is the bit in the middle:



Patience will bring its own rewards - but I only have 14 hours to save the earth (oh no that's Flash Gordon)  a limited amount of time to instil that into my studies and my students....so IMMEDIATE engagement has to be the key - how to get that - RELATIONSHIPS, empathy and being accessible. Building up an equity of trust will develop the engagement so necessary for the deeper learning, and the best way to encourage that is to be myself.
This is what I have learned from not only my own adult educators, but from my bosses, my peers and from my readings, including Jane Vella, Ken Bain, David Boud, Kathleen Gabriel, Nathalie Depraz et al, Carr and Kemmis, and Mcniff and Whitehead, among others in my reading adventures over the past 6 weeks.
My own students have helped to crystallise a lot of half thoughts that have been lurking in the basement of my thoughts, and by asking the class on a regular basis how they feel about the use of technology and what they would like to see improve, I gain better insight into how to keep them better engaged and what does and does not work, particularly where it comes to how they find out the information needed and how we can confirm that more clearly in class.

Goals for Friday so I can get 9 copies for the class and Linda:

1. Separate this out into a presentation each for Research and for Special Topic - take a clear stance I think.
1. Research needs to be about the reading
2. define the terms of engagement - what is the question and for whom is it asked? Where and how will the paradigms and methodology be? What are the kinds of research that I need to take into consideration and how will I choose what wold be the most appropriate form of research? How did I get there?
2. Special Topic about the learning journey
1. define that - what have I learned - where did that come from? What do I feel about that now, in comparison with 6 weeks ago - what have I done with that time? What do I need to do next?
2. Why do I still feel I am skating around the target? I just found a list of questions to help with reflective writing - better use that then!

And now it is Saturday and class was really good. This combination of a few weeks away to think, read and work, then come in to class for 3 hours and share and discuss, is very helpful. The act of summarising where we are at and then sharing that for feedback is a very powerful method of informing us how we have progressed and whether our direction in thinking is not too far from the criteria we are aiming to meet. I had a 'phenomenology moment' after lunch today (Sharon from class called it that when she noticed how I had an AHA!! moment at our last class in March. Today's moment was realising how an answer to my questioning why even as facilitators of learning, when we are students, we make the same errors as our own students. My thought is this: as a teacher, we are one step removed from the learning, and are looking from the outside in, to what the student is doing, and that distance allows us to see where things need improving. When we study, we are emotionally involved, because now we a re the ones striving to achieve the goal of passing the assessment and ultimately the course. This closer proximity clouds our judgment and means we don't always see what we need to do, to be our ultimate best, so we make the same kinds of mistakes and leave bits out, just like our own students do.

For our next class we do one last Patchwork Text, now I know to just keep to my own journey and not put too much about my class or about reference my writing, but stick with how the events affect me and how they help me to learn.

Hamsters and Guinea Pigs

Before the Easter break this past week, I asked my students what self directed learning means to them, and the Learning Tree I made up from their concept ideas is something inspiring. I can certainly take a leaf (or a few) from this! It shouldn't surprise me anymore that even though as their lecturer I know exactly what I want from my students, as a student myself I make the same missteps and neglect the full circle - what is the topic and what are the criteria? My 'consciousness' knows what to do, I have a 'direction', yet my 'preparation' does not always see me making sure I have actually covered all of the ground needed for the next class as I found out pretty quickly for the Special Topic class on March 19th. Certainly I have an 'interest',and most definitely a 'goal', so that's all right then.

I thought I was well prepared, I had my wordle in the shape of this hand below all ready, and had printed off my last blog to share with everyone. So far so good, right? Well, yes, but for two small factors:

1. I didn't specifically share what my actual topic would be
2. I didn't make clear how I felt about my learning journey up till then 

Sort of the whole point, which I didn't quite twig, until Linda's feedback asking me exactly those 2 points. Felt a bit sheepish and kind of clicked that I had sort of felt that but liking what I had written, left it as it was. Hmm.

Lesson learned? I hope so! Instructions are there to help as I am so good at letting my own students know - why do we revert to exactly that as students ourselves?

Another contemporary issue worth exploring I think?

But I AM going to stick to my original thoughts and so here is my Special Topic Question after some input form Linda and my own process of deciding what the question will be:

How can students be encouraged to engage in deep learning during a more compressed time frame?

I am keeping the compression as that is the whole point - yes deep learning is important, and we will get that  - but HOW do we get earlier and sustain it,when the Certificate and Diploma programme I deliver is now finished  within 4 trimesters, not 4 semesters? This is a 5 month difference overall, and that will show somehow, I would say. 

I've also got my Research question:

Why is reflective writing helpful in a practical course?

Actually, I think the two are clearly linked but I wont go into that, there will be a time for that at a later stage I think. I'm really pleased that I left the class 2 weeks ago feeling much more clear about how to find the questions and formulate them more clearly, and was even more pleased to feel I had got a much better grasp on what the terminology means. Ontology, epistemology, methodology and paradigm now actually have meaning and don't confuse me so much. I spent 5 hours critically reading a 700 page book in Research in Education, (thanks to Mona from MIT Student Support who taught my class how to read effectively - it works!!) and I could actually understand it!!! Progress has been made!
Today I set up my assessment work and tidied up my research notes - what a mess! but now it all makes sense and I can get down to the business of more reading (about 6 books to go through for both courses) and getting my introductions written.
Another useful day under my belt, so feeling ok about things again!

Getting back to my learning journey so far, I want to acknowledge my classmates and Linda too, for their feedback on my presentations. I was blown away by the recognition from a lot of people about my scattered thinking and the need to find my focus - the footprints resonated well here, starting off alone and expecting that soon more would join me on the learning journey.
I did not realise how powerful the image of the hand with words would be let alone the impact of the colours - high five, hands on, heaps to carry with me...
I felt inspired, uplifted, humbled and really touched by how peer feedback has the power to set you thinking even further on what you have just shared - so I did that while we were giving each other feedback.
I found the act of giving feedback on everyone else's summaries very powerful as well, as it helped me to see the variety of interest among 8 people, and hopefully I can take some of that with me to enrich my own journey. Just looking at the hand and reflecting on the words there actually helps me to focus on what they mean both singly and collectively to me at this stage. The hand is not trying to be confrontational, but to invite you to 'stop' and 'think' about what the words themselves mean to you. The colours were also meant to 'pop' and stand out, the dark background helps with that I think- we can find light by learning.
The blog I am happy with, I love the staircase representing my learning journey, and the fade into the distance gives me the same feeling as the footprints - this was the beginning, and there is so much out there!

Goals this week:

• Read the books and get the relevant extracts
• Start on the introductions for my essays and put my subject matter into context
• SAVE the blog as I write - I nearly lost it all, thank goodness for the history button! Google Drive is great, but teaches me VERY BAD HABITS! 

Hamsters - saving up my thoughts and words to share them on my blog for further perusal
Guinea Pigs - finding out how I want to continue is always somewhat experimental - as long as I keep the goal in mind it will be all right

beyond !Learning - the beginning?

Well, not really. I first thought about starting a blog a couple of years ago when I did the Grad Cert in Applied eLearning and wrote reflections about the Special Topic I had chosen, but figured it was enough to use the forum within that online course. Here I am again, easily 6 years later starting another reflective Special Topic study, this time for the Grad Diploma in Tertiary Teaching.  (as well as a foray into discovery about how research works)
I've been using Google+ since July 2015 and really like the Community features, so why not take the plunge and actually start blogging!

A great inspiration to me is the blog that Selena Chan from CPIT began in 2005 for her own digital learning  journey: learning elearning which I first came across after attending a workshop with her (as it happens, also in July last year) about enhancing teaching and learning practices. What an amazing record of her journey with mlearning, research projects and so much more progress over the last 11 years! I'm sure she'll pop up more in this blog as my own journey unfolds.

About the title of this blog - inspiration from Marc, my better half. I can always rely on him to interpret my vague notions into a creatively succinct piece of genius, and it's so much fun when he gets it and articulates what I had back there in my head somewhere. Thanks Marc!
I hope to be able to share many moments of realisation here that will transport us to another layer of understanding.

To stop waffling: it is so easy to ramble on when you first start - after all I am beginning by talking to myself! But I was intending to reflect on what I am learning and thinking about that learning journey. 
2 questions 2 topics - one for research purposes and one for Special Topic.
I had quite a few half thoughts since July and December 2015, and spent the last 3 weeks wondering what would pop out.
This afternoon  2 came out:

1. How can we encourage deeper learning by students when their time for learning is getting more compressed? - Special Topic
2. How can we define the effectiveness of reflective writing for a practical course by students? - Enhancing Professional Practise Through Research

They'll need some refinement but for a first day I'm happy