yay we get to eat the elephant one bit at a time.

Stardate 3 October

Well dear listener turns out all this time I should have been writing a personal development journal not a reflective journal but what’s in a name. We were instructed to divide the piece into 3 parts description analysis and action but as that’s sort of what I’ve been doing just less obviously. I have to read back through this later at some point so I chose to make it entertaining and relevant to me and my class. I find the reflective process perversely valuable, as it allows me to analyse what I’m doing both during and after a session.

How do teachers teach? That’s an Interesting question and a temporary change of tutor provided an opportunity to see a second way. Something I’ve noticed about my road into teaching is that my opportunities to see other teachers teach have been somewhat limited. Didn’t u go to school Dan? Well yes that’s a point, but before I Learned to play guitar or drive a car, id never really looked at how other people did these things. I had just been driven and entertained or in this case educated and not attempted to understand how the trick was done.

So to the lesson I quite feel I skipped a generation in the education field in that Gill was using a flip chart and markers yes I’ve seen them but when I was in college and school we were still using black boards (the lo-fi low lag alternative to the interactive whiteboards which I’m still waiting to get my hands on).I’m hoping technology has caught up in time to save me from publicly demonstrating my “Artists Handwriting” but Gills presentation style was a interesting contrast to Steve’s but equally valid and effective.

We looked at description analysis action and sorted some cards into the relevant sections. This proved more difficult than anticipated as we all derived different points from the cards but as usual fisticuffs saved the day.

Secondly we were told to bring in our reflective journals that I had previously been informed were private and not open to assessment growl well were all on the net you just have to find us

http://dan-reflectivepractice.blogspot.com/

What motivates a learner to learn? A kick in the ass, those were the days. We discussed reasons which may drive a learner to take up education.

The next section of the lesson troubled me an even vexed me a little.

Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic.

Not wanting to be cynical or disparaging in anyway but it felt like one of those sex tests they have in cosmopolitan “How sexy are you, who is your perfect partner” .The preferred learning style element got my heckles raised, it seemed to be more astrology than anything of worth. I’m sorry but what does where I breathe from have to do with how I learn? Deep breath

Enabling effective learning, I realise this ties into the previous heading that I was so down on but this is infinitely more useful and I can understand that a variety of different methods of explanation can help sit a idea in a learners mine in a more useful way (the way a pi chart can visually confer the data in a list, the way a recoding of a piece of music lifts the notes from a page)

The assignment

Yay we get to eat the elephant one bit at a time. That’s better for me, I was feeling unsupported and slightly over faced, but the way the lessons have progressed has been tailored to this first task. Dan like manageable chunks dan thinks that good

Interpretation of instructions

A few group tasks illustrated that differences in perception are not always apparent and whilst you can make a task fool proof, you cant make it damn fool proof,