Thanks to Derek for this pointer to a 23 minute Google video about games in education. There seems to be a lot more resistance to gaming in corporate learning than in formal education, although there does seem to be the beginning of a change of heart.

The pedagogy of play has long been appreciated in early years education – teachers have been teaching through games and songs since time out of mind. With older kids, though, there has been a tendency to move away from any learning activity that could be considered fun. Perhaps there is the fear that this would devalue the learning experience by equating it with entertainment. There seems to be a growing number of secondary teachers who are beginning to use games as a tool to teach a wide range of subjects from economics to history. Consequently, there is a growing number of providers who are developing simulations to fit this purpose.

By extension, some providers have ventured into the world of corporate learning, but it is a tough sell, and I think the reason is similar to that encountered in secondary and higher education. Not all Training Managers are happy to spend their tight budgets on something that could be lumped together with entertainment rather than learning. There are those who are forward thinking enough to see past their own assumptions and knee jerk reactions to harness the power (and pedagogy) of play.

I for one am looking forward to the day one of my clients joins these ranks…

Once,  several years ago, I showed my ignorant arrogance by telling an Austrian woman new to South Africa and due to stay for 3 years that she would be sorry to leave. I was surprised when she disagreed. And when she explained what was wonderful about Austria, I was puzzled as to why anyone would think the things she was describing were so wonderful.

I thought I had grown up a bit since then, but I did exactly the same thing the other night during a lecture.

One of my classmates is Indian. I had heard that the preferred style of instruction in India is strongly behavioural. I asked her about this, and she confirmed that this was indeed the case. She commented on the different assessment styles between the Uk and India, citing the example of economics. She had been interested to note that, in the UK, students would be taught the principles of economics and then expected in an assessment, to apply those to a case study drawn from the commercial world. In India, however, the questions would be things like “Define supply”, “What is demand?”

On a previous occasion, speaking to representatives of a hee-uge organisation in India, I was told that Indian students would be shocked if a teacher asked them to have a group discussion on a topic. Or if the teacher referred them to another resource for material on a module. This would be considered a deriliction of duty. It is the teacher’s job to teach. For the duration of the lesson, the teacher is expected to earn his/her keep by doing just that. And “teaching” to them means disseminating knowledge and information. A friend of mine recently spent two weeks in Bangladesh teaching English to medical professionals. Her experience echoed this. What was expected was rote learning. They were most uncomfortable with the idea of group discussions – although to people in the UK, this would seem the obvious way to learn a language: to practise it conversationally, rather than repeating stock phrases.

I just assumed that my classmate would be won over to the more constructivist style of teaching and learning practised in the UK. That she would immediately appreciate that behaviourism was an outmoded approach based on flawed principles.

I was wrong. We have yet to have a discussion in which she is given the space to explain what she perceives as the advantages of behaviourism, but I look forward to it. Who knows, maybe she will convince me… although I doubt it

Ho hum. Memories of my school days are flooding back to me. I never got into trouble for misbehaving or physically breaking any rules. What I did get into trouble for, was being a vocal square peg in a round hole. For marching to a different drummer, for thinking outside the box.

I hadn’t expected to find myself back in this situation at postgraduate level, and yet, here I am!

I struggled to get approval to submit a paper on Connectivism recently, because there is little or no peer reviewed writing on it in any of the recognised journals. I’m obviously not built for this world, because my immediate response is “So what?” I don’t understand why someone else needs to have written about something before I can write about it!

During a lecture (essentially) on the art of getting published last night, emphasis was placed on citing appropriate references in appropriate journals, to which I responded with the retort that this presupposes that someone has already written on the same subject, meaning you are prevented from doing anything new. The Prof responded with “I defy you to come up with anything completely new.” I understood from what he had to say that originality is the provinceof the doctoral student, whereas criticality is the province of the masters’ student. I am only too aware of my limitations as an orignal thinker, but I resent the assumptions and the ceilings that appear to be set in place, simply because one doesn’t have the right letters behind one’s name. How flimsy is that?!

At another point he also cautioned us to be patient. In the social science journals, there is apparently a 2-3 year delay between acceptance of an article and its actual publication in the journal.

Since one of my driving interests is the use of the affordances of technology in learning, I can’t be sticking around for two years – by that time the technology will be obsolete, Web 2.0 will have been superseded by Web 3.0 and maybe even web 4.0. Things seldom stand still long enough for a significant body of writing appear in any of the “respected journals”.

I guess I will just have to accept that I am not going to get published in any “respected journals”. I  will stick to publishing on this blog and this one and possibly explore some professional journals if it seems appropriate further down the line.

But it leaves me with a huge question mark around my dissertation. How can I possibly write about something that matters to me if I’m restricted to a topic with an adequacy of been-there-done-that from recognised luminaries?

What an exciting initiative this is! I wonder what the viability of this is in terms of cost implications, though – there are enough kids in the UK with no computer at home. But if that barrier can be overcome, well the sky’s the limit.

Last night was the first session of our ICT in Teaching and Learning module. The subject matter for the evening, once all the introductory bit was over, was around learning styles and how they can be supported/accommodated by the use of ICT.

I have trouble with the basic premise, since I have little faith in the concept of learning styles. There are so many different models, and much of the theory behind them seems either sketchy or suspect. So much so, that Becta came out with a rather skeptical report in 2005. My understanding is that National Strategies withdrew their material around learning styles last year, having lost faith in the concept. In my own community of practice, the concept has little currency.
Nevertheless, many schools are enamoured of the concept and some of my classmates have shared some anecdotes that reveal practices of questionable ethics in the adoption of one or other model of learning styles within the school.

As part of the lesson, we undertook the Felder Silverman questionnaire. I became increasingly frustrated that I was made to choose between pairs of options. In some cases, I was equally likely to do both things on offer. In others, I was unlikely to do either. Nevertheless, I could leave no blanks and I could only choose one option in each case. The implication being that the two options were mutually exclusive and that, between them, they covered all possibilities.

When the results were revealed, they were true to a certain extent of my behaviours – particularly in those instances where my score was decidedly one end or the other of the continuum in question. However, reading descriptions of the opposite approach, I related to many of the characteristics which were supposedly diametrically opposed to my own. As one classmate and I discussed after the lesson – it depends what I’m learning. I came out strongly global in style on one continuum, which is a fair description of the way I approach many tasks. However, I am an avid fan of cryptic crossword puzzles and sudokus and a dab hand at complicated knitting and the assembly of flatpacked furniture. All these occupations require a strongly sequential approach with which I am thoroughly content. To me, the explanation that I must have acquired coping mechanisms to be able to carry out these tasks is purely a cop out to explain away anomalies that would otherwise cast a question mark over the validity and reliability of the model.

Scottish teachers seem to have taken the social media bull by the horns and left their English counterparts behind. Here is an impressive collection of teacher blogs north of the border…

Hat tip to Doug Belshaw for this. The 2006-2016 Knowledgeworks Foundation and the Institute for the Future have published this map of future forces affecting education. It definitely needs to be explored online – I tried printing it out so that I could work through it offline, but it will take better eyes than mine to achieve that!

It looks at family & community; markets; institutions; educators & learning and tools & practices. Each of these is looked at from the perspective of grassroots economics; smart networking; strong opinions, strongly held; sick hero (increasing signs of distress and health problems); urban wilderness and the end of cyberspace (from physical v digital to physical-and-digital).

A lot of what is covered has been discussed on the blogosphere already and, of course, my own area of interest falls largely within the category addressing the move towards a seamless integration of physical and digital learning environments and tools. However, all factors impact one another, so there is a risk involved in focusing purely on my own area of interest, and taking issue with the predictions, without giving the other influences a fair hearing.

This is when I am frustrated by my big-picture limitations in respect of the big picture view. Oh, to have the kind of brain that is able to make all these connections and grasp the potential impact of one field on another!

As I mentioned last time, we recently had a guest lecturer in to give us some guidance on tackling our ER assignment, with a view to preparing for our dissertations.

These were his suggestions:

1. Stick to a field you’re interested in – you’re going to be steeped in it for some time
2. Keep a record of references from the outset, keeping extracts from interesting articles, and possibly photocopying front covers (copyright??)
3. Have a tutor/critical friend/proofreader
4. Set aside a time and a place
5. Indentify key authors in your field of research
6. Start and finish each chapter with a review
7. Create a thread through the project
8. Edit and proofread
9. Make sure all the chapters relate to one another and to the theme
10. DO something  – get started!!

He gave us some ideas about a process of tightening up the question:

1. Record initial thoughts: what, why and how
2. Find an article/publication to serve as your core and build around it
3. Define the terms of the question and create a rationale to form the basis of the question for the dissertation (perhaps use a mindmap to link ideas)
4. The ER assignment is a narrowing process which feeds into the dissertation, which in turn feeds into the wider subject as a whole.
5. Pilot the research methodology to make sure it’s going to work before going live with it
6. Find the faults in your own work and be transparent about them

Last night, we had our second ER session. To start with, we recapped postivist v interpretative research. We looked at the rationales of about 7 research projects and tried to place them on a continuum. My group’s notions of where the respective projects fell was at such wide variance with those of others in the class, that I seriously doubt my ability to tell positivist from interpretative. Back to the drawing board.

We then had a guest lecturer in the form of Gareth Alcott M.A. Having recently completed his MA, he came to discuss his approach to his ER assignment and, by extension, his dissertation. It became abundantly clear that it is essential to get the ER assignment absolutely right, since it is pivotal to the dissertation. If, for example, I finally home in on a question at the end of my ER assignment and then later have an epiphany about what I really want to write about for my dissertation, I will have to redo the work done in the ER phase. Not a prospect I relish.

Gareth gave us some very helpful guidelines, which I will record in more detail in a separate post. Two that stand out however, are:

• Start keeping track now of material that will be used and the references
• Find a core article

I have been doing the former with my Learning and Teaching assignment – an approach I adopted some time ago. It was, therefore, encouraging to find that the approach had worked for someone else.

With regard to the latter – one of my classmates was complaining to me just last week that she had found an article for her L&T assignment that said exactly what she wanted to say. Last night we both realised that she had inadvertently found her core material, and were able to look at her predicament more positively as a consequence.

The main message I took away from the session was that it is essential to find a subject I am passionate about, since I will be spending a great deal of time and effort on the subject. So I asked myself, what am I passionate about?

Since it is unlikely that I will be able to find a way to work chocolate into the material, the alternatives are:

• Adult learning
• Informal learning
• Lifelong learning
• Social media – especially blogs
• Relevance – do schools teach kids what they need to know when they go to work?

Of these, I am most passionate about the final topic, but this is very much on a personal level. Bearing in mind that I am not a school teacher, my passion is entirely related to the future of my own sons. It is difficult to imagine myself being able to adopt a sufficiently professional detatchment.

I foresee a fair amount of time spent in discussion with a tutor!

Last week I attended my first ER session. Until that point, I had been blithely telling everyone I hadn’t yet learnt anything new on my course. Things have changed!

Learning about research and setting out on the journey towards my dissertation is a scary underatking. The fact that I have no direct contact with my learners at the moment is going to be a bit of a hurdle, I suspect. Nevertheless, I suspect I would like to do something about the changing nature of learning materials under the influence of technology. I guess I could research that without access to learners. I do have access to learning providers, which is a start.

I suspect research into learning is a bit vague at best. Until the day we can put a drop of nailpolish onto a packet of information and track it through a person’s brain and beyond to their network, I don’t think we can say with any certainty how learning actually takes place and whether it takes place in the same manner in everyone’s head. It’s all informed (to varying degrees) conjecture. There, I’ve said it.