absolutwillie

Tag: Writing

  • I'm a model!

    This year’s first PGCE lecture in Digital Pedagogy could probably best be described as… well… a bit of an explosion, to be honest. The distinct impression of a sudden and rapid release of a vast amount of information and mental energy still echoed in the lecture hall some time after class had been dismissed. Did I just manage to traumatise a group of nearly 200 postgraduate students? Did I get through everything that I needed to get through? Did I really speak at a hundred miles a minute, or was that just the natural high of being in front of a new class again?

    There are few spaces as eerie as an emptied classroom after a first lesson, but were there any more conducive to wide-eyed reflection for newly spent pedagogues? At least, that was what I was wondering as I wandered through the deserted isles of the lecture hall, gathering sticky-notes and picking up rubbish. (Banana peels?  I have to remember to include a class hygiene moment at the end of my lectures.) With piles of colourful bits of paper finally (albeit not so neatly) stacked on my desk, I got to thinking about what had transpired in class, as opposed to what I had planned.

    Turns out including an activity of writing an “I am here to…” message on a sticky note (which was consequently stuck on a vertical surface) did bring a measure of physicality to the concept of micro-blogging. Surprisingly, the physical act of “posting” these notes turned out to be immensely more interesting than the actual content of the notes (with exceptions, naturally).

    Contributions varied in levels of profundity.
    I was fascinated to see students not only boldly posting on the walls and blackboards as many do on social media (here’s my latte), but also sticking notes on their own foreheads, or hiding them in the nooks and crannies of the room. I tried sharing the intrigue by raising awareness of the varying degrees of intimacy that reading these different “placements” would require:
    • How close do I need to get to you in order to read your message?
    • What does the placement of a message say about the author’s expectations i.t.o. engagement/intimacy?
    • What are our assumptions about intent, character, value of different contributions?
    • How does all of this relate to our own classrooms/pedagogies?
    I am, however, not entirely sure how successful/rich the attempted link between sticky-notes and Twitter was. In retrospect, I think it would make sense to separate micro-blogging and blogging into distinct introductory lessons. This should provide greater opportunity to delve deeper into the nuances and implications of such an activity for teaching and learning practice.

    One significant weakness (in terms of a SWOT-analysis) of the lecture was how, and how much we got to deal with the different aspects of blogging. I still forget that the everyday terminology of the blogosphere is, in fact, not so everyday and familiar at all. The difference between a site-URL and a post’s permalink poses a potentially debilitating challenge to many who struggle with the creation of a blog to begin with. While it is a significant challenge for one person to provide individual technical support and teach an already compressed module – there are ways around it. It would, for instance, be incredibly useful if we could find a way to incorporate a Digital Literacy short course into our faculty’s orientation programmes in future. 
    (Sidenote: must investigate this further.)
    Getting back to what did or didn’t work in class – explaining how the class’ blogs and tweets were expected to “kick off” formative, peer assessments didn’t go all that well. Modelling the process was more successful. In fact, I have just decided to use this post (with the accompanying #PGCEmix #taskmodel tweet) to further my modelling prowess:
    You know what I mean… Fred?
    (Decoding: this post represents the blog-post PGCEs are expected to produce in response to the work.
    Next, this post’s permalink gets tweeted, giving our peers access* to it.
    Peers are encouraged to respond and engage with several blog posts in the comments section but
    are expected to tweet at least one reply to a colleagues’ permalink tweet.)
    *blogs should therefore preferably not be set to “Private”

    Happy blogging!
    🙂

  • Moving our noodles

    As I prepare for my first class with our university’s PGCE group of 2016, I realise that I’m asking my students to not only wander outside their comfort zones, but to choreograph and perform their own command performances in alien environments. That’s quite a mouthful (and some shaky grammar to boot)! That is sort of my point: When we’re tiptoeing around an idea that seems too complex to be let out of its packaging; we won’t learn much of anything.

    In a programme characterised by complex language, dense literature, and very unfamiliar academic scaffolding… adding Digital Pedagogy to the mix could break a few backs. This is not my intention. In fact, my goal is quite the opposite: I hope this fledgeling module can highlight cohesion and synthesis between various strands of teaching and learning coursework, whilst facilitating a mediation of student-teacher identities.

    So why move this particular module’s interface away from our official Learning Management System, and onto the open web? Sean Michael Morris (2016) says it best:

    “Something happens when we go to write our very first page inside the LMS. We suddenly become the very old, white, male, tight-lipped scholar who can’t use contractions or ellipses or emoticons or ironic parentheticals or risky language (or run-on sentences). Even those of us who are not grammar guardians become hypervigilant about sounding like the stony, unapproachable expert. Most teachers sound nothing like themselves when they write online; and yet voice sets the tone in an online course. Perfect grammar shakes no one’s hand, gives no hugs.”

     

    And I want this module to be one where we take each others’ hands, and give each other hugs (albeit in virtual, sensitive, and ethically responsible ways).

    Shall we dance?