The Apple of my ii
To be fair, I had little time to play with the iPhone today. Sharon had synched it up with her iTunes as she was in mourning for her iTouch which died on Thursday. The phone is now a fully loaded App-rich, music playing, podcast listening tool. I'll be trying out other aspects over the next few days. Still gutted about the lack of MMS but the emailed image to Flickr today was blisteringly fast.
Just heard of a MMS App - more when I have it.
D ;-)
Having seen my friend Frieda's comments about learning styles - i replied thus:
I’m afraid that ‘Learning Styles’ do not ring my bell – particularly the way they are presented to us. I acknowledge that there is such a thing and that we all possess them, but as they change so often during our lives the science is flawed.
I remember reading once (but have since struggled to find) a paper that suggested that there were over 100 learning styles, a position I fully agree with. Often we try to cram these many styles into neat boxes such as Kinaesthetic, Auditory and Visual (VAK) http://tinyurl.com/b79hnh but then forget to address other theories of learning (I’ll park that there for now).
If we label learners as ‘this’ (and that is what LS Questionnaires are designed to do), they can often miss opportunities to learn in ‘that’ way. I suspect that we all have preferred learning styles and that we know that these change over time; sometimes as frequently as during the day.
For example, let’s take Honey and Mumford’s Reflector, Theorist, Activist, Pragmatist approach – every H & M Questionnaire I’ve ever taken suggests that I’m an Activist. But when I get up on a morning, I’m very much NOT an activist and take a theorist position to my work (because I’m more awake and my brain is working) – as the day progresses I become more of a reflector. And that’s me doing office stuff which involves me learning (all the time). When I’m out on the road and delivering sessions, I become very much an activist (I am rarely pragmatic). How then would someone label me on the VAK scale? I enjoy all three modes of learning.
Moving back to my parked comment, and having (very lightly) explored seven types of learning styles let’s look at how these relate to Kolb. http://www.businessballs.com/kolblearningstyles.htm. [Also see Honey Mumford on same page] Concrete Experience is followed by Reflection on that experience, which is followed by Abstract Conceptualisation, which in turn is followed by Active Experimentation before returning to Concrete Experience and beginning the (Bruner’s spiral curriculum?) cycle again. Isn’t that what Benjamin Bloom was suggesting too?
So – Learning Styles (and particularly LS Questionnaires) – who’d have ‘em?
;-)
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Appropriate use?
Background
Yesterday I delivered a 'mobile-learning' session to Masters Students at the University of Huddersfield. Over the years, I must have done five or six now, the clientele has changed, as has their experience of 'e' and 'm' technologies. Yesterday's session therefore, was designed to be a mixture of history, pedagogy and brief case studies. The case studies were just asides really, as my main aim had been to illustrate the rich variety of uses that mobile devices and the mobility of the learner could be put. I normally ask about their backgrounds first – as a sort of icebreaker, but on this occasion I forgot – which came back to bite me later (not hard – but on reflection, I would have delivered differently if I'd known the backgrounds better).
Many in the audience were from a school background, from special educational needs or from the National Health Service (NHS). For probably the first time, non one was present from Thomas Danby College – so no one knew Lils.
Much of what I deliver and seek discussion of is around the pedagogy of appropriate 
http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/bloomtax.htm" align="right" width="390" />use – and this applies to 'e' equally as much as 'm'. To help the discussion along we interrogate Bloom's Taxonomy (original and revised) and McLuhan's theories of Medium v Message – much like we do during the MoLeNET m-Teaching and m-Assessment events. This works well, but with such a diverse group of backgrounds, I may well have needed to present it differently. Although I'm not a fan of labelling someone with a 'learning style', I suspect that adding learning styles to the mix might have helped me in my battle to get someone (school teacher I think) to back off his very determined position:
I'd gone though the various bits and bats above and started to show some of the 'stuff' that various people up and down the county had done to make resources and/or activities available on handheld devices when this guy attacked the Bolton Community College video about Art – pastels.
He would just not have it that some learners like to have videos to watch any time any place and on any device. He said that he used to teach art and that there could not possibly be any way that they could gain anything from such a video on such a small screen. I asked if his learners always remembered what he had demonstrated and he said "yes". I told him my 'fish' stories and that my learners had begged me for videos of my demonstrations and other stories about how videos had helped learners in many institutions to remember what they were to do. He conceded that if might work for filleting fish but would not concede about art. Confusingly he also stated at one point that he couldn't see how any subject could be taught using such small screens – including filleting fish. Yet no matter how I talked about aide memoirs, revision and confidence building as opposed to 'teaching' – he wouldn't shift.
Sadly, this took me back a number of years to a time when people really couldn't see the point of 'm' – and I know that times have changed but this session made me feel like they hadn't.
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It would seem that all is not well on the chalk face.
I now know of two teachers who have fallen foul of their college's lesson observation system. It seems to me that the authors and proponents of this particular system are so far out of touch with learners as to make it a useless, destructive instrument. Although lesson observation training takes place, there is no consistency of purpose. Surely the purpose of lesson observation is to improve teaching and learning - not to demoralise staff to the point that they become ill. But this is what has happened here and is happening all over the country. Instead of treating lesson observations as an opportunity to support and encourage good teaching (and learning), they are used in negative soul destroying ways.
Obviously I cannot name the two teachers or the college(s) involved but one person involved is someone I have placed on a pedestal so high that I often urge others to look up to her skills and achievements. With her learners she enthuses, excites, chastises, encourages, advises, helps and educates in a way that makes those same learners love her and which gives them the means with which to progress their course and their lives. Both teachers were marked as unsatisfactory in recent lesson observations.
Whilst one observation is hearsay to me and I cannot comment further, I have seen the instrument and the comments on the other observation. I was appalled and not a little glad that I was now 'out of it' – because had I been 'in it' I would have become demoralised, dispirited and downright angry. But – that has happened anyway - I'm furious that these two eminently successful women have been slighted so badly. Hence this blog post – my only practical release for the frustration I feel.
There's very little I can say here that will change things, but consider this - the instrument used is a grid to support assessment decisions – 2 x A4 pages (landscape) each with five columns (assessment statement in 1 and then grading 1 – 4) and a total of 19 rows, each detailing an assessment statement. Statements such as:
Learning materials/resources - including e-Learning. Are marked across four levels. Picture shows the Statement
plus the criteria for Outstanding
The criteria for Good and Satisfactory
and finally the example criteria for Inadequate
This teacher was marked as inadequate. She was using NING with some learners and others were creating Christmas video-montages using Photo Story 3. The subject was enrichment and it had been agreed with the course coordinator that the learners would use this session to increase their non-Office I.T. skills. Where was the lesson observer? Why wasn't this use of technology recognised? I can only assume that the lesson observer - whoever that was - wouldn't know e-Learning if it crept out of the gutter and bit his/her leg! The teacher was similarly marked as either Satisfactory or Inadequate for Attendance (it was Eid!), and for demonstrating Photo Story on a computer that was too small (no other display equipment in the room) - anyway I could go on (and on) - this should never happen.
Lesson observations like this are destructive! They have a design that destroys the confidence of teachers and which suggests that everything they do is wrong. But is it wrong? These tutors have a world of experience dealing with learners' year on year and bring countless years of industrial experience to the job. So they can't be all bad. So why not implement a more supportive regime? One that recognises the outstanding features of a lesson and which encourages the development of better skills where they are deemed unsatisfactory. Peer observation is one solution - not widely used in this establishment. Oh - and there is no appeal!
Disgusting
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Today has been the first day's delivery of the new eCPD PDA programme in the North. Four of us were present to deliver this first of two days face to face delivery.
Lilian opened the day with session one and performed remarkably well. The 50ish delegates (PDAs) remained engaged throughout and as she closed and passed over to me I spoke briefly about Frank Coffield and his LSN publication: Just suppose that teaching and learning became the first priority
I then began to deliver session two. I wasn't particularly happy with the way THAT went. I'm not a great deliverer of words and that is the essence of what I had to do. I've talked since then, to the two 'head honchos' and hopefully come up (between us we have come up) with a better flow for this session.
If we deliver session two around the headings:
What's in it for me?
What's in it for my colleagues?
What's in it for my institution
What's expected of me?
instead of the way I delivered it today – it would flow much better.
I don't think that my preparation for the session was at fault, it's just that I'm more of a demonstrator/speaker than word reader. The 'flow' didn't do anything to help – hence the discussions.
We've now prepared new sets of slides which might help future session two deliverers (I'd have preferred to wait until cohort 2) which allow the speaker/deliverer to focus the session on the PDA without having to worry about flow ...
Hey ho.
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Crafty Buggers
I was shopping in a well known supermarket in Stockport, just alongside the M60 last night (I won't mention them because this is problem with food labelling across the sector).
I was planning to buy meat for Albondigas or Italian meatballs for tonight. My usual choice will either be minced pork (Albondigas) if I have some bacon in the house to mince or organic beef mince for the Italian Job. I was intrigued to find that they now stocked two versions of the organic mince – normal and finest (less fat). So I checked out the labels.
Well, I'm not stupid (honestly), and I've always understood that when they show an item as [per 100g] – then the figure is really a percentage. So 18g of fat per 100g tells me that the pack is approx 1/5th fat. Which is probably about normal for standard minced beef? I'd expect 10% for lean meat.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3101/3220023222_3ab350d919_m.jpg
But the current move to a sort of traffic light system of contents listing is, despite the claim to be the opposite – quite misleading. If you zoom in on the above label - you'll see that the highlighted figures are for only 25% of the pack and that they represent a totally arbitrary figure representing a guideline daily amount. What does that mean? I am aware of RDAs – recommended daily amounts but what on earth does this particular supermarket mean by guidline daily amount. And why only state the amount for ¼ of the pack? This is so confusing as to verge on the criminal. Only true saddoes like me would go to the trouble of turning the pack over, getting out their pound-shop 3x spectacles and reverting to the old but reliable system (see pic below – sorry for quality) 
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3421/3220024380_4dd5c1c7a7_m.jpg
Note the difference it makes to someone who checks the calorie count. Image two is a 500g pack so the 125g example shown is again for ¼ of the pack – so the casual viewer might think that the pack itself contain 315 calories. In fact it contains 1,260 calories – 64% of the guideline daily amount. (This means nothing as the requirements for men and women differ).
Does anyone agree?
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Last Friday (Times Educational Supplement: Friday January 9th 2009: www.tes.co.uk/fefocus)
.. Stephen Crowne, Chief Executive of Becta, continued (or maybe for some, raised) the debate about computer suites and their use. These great 'prairies' of computers just don't lend themselves to good and effective use of technology in teaching and learning (even, if I might be so bold, for the teaching of IT). Luckily, this sad and outdated use of costly technology has now been noted at the highest level – thank you Stephen. Perhaps we can begin to do something about it now?
Crowne goes on to complement many examples of excellent practice and notes that there are many more such examples (probably more than he thinks). But these are just drops in the ocean. He goes on to say "Only one in four [colleges] is able to deploy technology to full effectiveness with excellent teaching and learning and very effective business support". That many?
The LSC in '2007: Our statement of priorities: better skills, better jobs, better lives. Coventry: Learning and Skills council' suggest:
"We will embed and extend the use of learning technologies across the whole sector"
They publish other priorities. Under Transforming F.E. they list four strands, one of which is goals. Under goals they say that a priority is to "extend the use of learning technologies (this is alongside such bold priorities as: invest £2.3 billion in college buildings; invest in other facilities beyond college and (wait for this) Drive the professional development of the system (however there's no mention of funding here).
I see a synergy here with Frank Coffield's paper: Coffield, Frank. (2008) Just suppose teaching and learning became the first priority: London: LSN. In this Coffield uses his professorial influence to ask institutions to remember (realise?) that their prime purpose is not 'making the ends meet' but that teaching and learning is what we do! He bemoans the steady but widespread creep of administrative duties in F.E. (usually needed because of the demands of national bodies like the LSC) and pleads for an upskilled professional workforce.
".. time which should not be taken up by completing administrative forms for educational maintenance allowances or awarding bodies" page 35
Crowne mentions the IfL in his TES piece and suggests that "there is hunger amongst" its members for "technology related professional development" but what of all the other forms of CPD the workforce has to undertake? How much freedom do staff really have to choose their own development? If a college demands that its workforce (for example) undertake basic skills training, or if they demand subject expertise be maintained – what of learning technologies then? I have no problem with ANY staff development – all of it is essential and most of it is done as a matter of course and of professional commitment: but when are we going to see institutions putting their weight behind the one thing that many of our colleagues fear?
ILT; e-Learning; ICT; learning technology – call it what you like, there is a fundamental fear of it. And sadly, that fear resides most of all amongst those who teach teachers.
Teaching teachers to teach has always been a highly skilled, highly professional and highly respected profession and remains so, but there is a risk that we will continue to turn out new teachers who are fazed by technology simply because they are not given enough 'instruction' or experience of the tools tips and techniques required before use with learners.
There is still much to be done and perhaps now that Becta is 'going public' we might see some changes on the horizon?
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I don't seem to have done much today (Sunday) as I've been sat in the same chair most of the day. it started with Sunday papers (and will continue shortly) and then went onto collating 'stuff' for various upcoming gigs. I also downloaded Picasa 3 from Google!
I'd read that Picasa could trun images into videos (and assumed - an Ass of U and Me) that this would be something similar to mighty Photo Story 3 from Microsoft. See video for results:
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