#becomingeducational – the first session!!

STOP PRESS:

We have a new room – and for the whole first three hours of the day!! TM-G-45!!

So from next week – meet in TM-G-45 at 09.00 – and relax knowing that we can be there all morning!

Thank you

Thank you all for a lively and stimulating class on Wednesday morning! By now you should all be in the process of composing your own reflections on the session, considering:

• What we did
• Why we did it
• Why we did it that way
• What you gained from the whole session – as a student now
• What you gained from the session as a future educationalist: are there strategies that we used that you will want to note down to use later in your own practice?
• What questions you still need to ask
• What you are going to do next – that is:
  • create a blog – write your first blog post
  • illustrate your blog post to bring it alive
  • join Twitter – tweet out the link to your first blog post – using the hashtag #becomingeducational
  • check out the WebLearn space – read the Module Handbook – follow some links in the WordCloud…
  • create a list of all the module assignments – with their deadlines
  • start writing your first thoughts about all the assignments that we have set you…
  • start your own Subject Dictionary – with all those key words that we have started using – what do they mean?
  • read something: What? Why?
• When you are going to read and comment on the blogposts of some of your class mates.

Metaphors for teaching/learning

In class we suggested that you think about your own metaphors for teaching/learning – and suggested our own: VIKING – not a pillager or plunderer – but someone who plunges into the unknown with comrades and high hopes! What’s your metaphor for ‘teaching’ or ‘teacher’ or ‘educationalist’? Here’s a blogpost from a #creativeHE course on that topic: https://debbaffled.wordpress.com/2015/10/01/creative-he-travel-guide-metaphor-week-1-connecting/

Why don’t you illustrate your first blog post with your own picture of what a teacher or a learner is?

Becoming… and ‘skills’

You also asked us what ‘skills’ we would be learning in or on the module – too many too count!! But if you are particularly interested in how ‘study and academic skills’ are tackled in University these days – read this paper: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED434152.pdf TIP: A very useful paper for the whole class to read in preparation for their RESEARCH PROJECTS.

If you are interested in developing your own study strategies, you might want to look at this crowd-sourced guide to study success: https://ugc.futurelearn.com/other_assets/learning-guide/the-crowdsourced-guide-to-learning.pdf – as well as our very own Study Hub: http://learning.londonmet.ac.uk/studyhub/index.html

What is a successful educationalist?

And if we’re getting digital – check out this video record of a Webinar on sharing expertise and power in the school classroom: http://connectedlearning.tv/distributing-expertise-classroom

Module Handbook

Don’t forget to log-in the WebLearn version of this module and access the full module handbook which covers in more detail all that we attempted to cover in our first Object Based Learning session.

Explore the other resources that we have placed there for you. The WordCloud for example consists of key words used about becoming an educationalist – if you click on the words you may be taken to articles to read or other things to think about. These are all useful for the module generally – and definitely useful for your Research Projects.

Peer Mentors

And finally… we mentioned that from next week we will be joined by the Peer Mentors in the fourth hour. We have scheduled the Peer Mentor sessions to take place in ICT labs – so do use the peer mentors to help you to set up and customise your blogs – and later on you can work with them on your ‘Develop a Digital Me’ projects… You might also think about what questions you might like to ask the Peer Mentors – after all – they are second year students –they have survived this first year – they can help!

All the best,

Tom & Sandra