Design and Technology

This week's practical session we started working on the first three of the C.A.D. worksheets we're using to learn VectorWorks.

In the lecture, Robyn talked about the format we'll need to use for the essay we're to do later on in the semester (Harvard referencing, etc.). After a recap of last week's material (technology as systems and processes rather than just hardware; the drivers of technological development; the dichotomy between science and technology; the situation of technology within a social context) we watched the first part of 2001: A Space Odyssey (the bit with the apes). I'm still not entirely sure what we're supposed to have gained from that other than an appreciation of just how cultish some cult films are and that tools provide an advantage.

Next Robyn talked a bit about ways to communicate with others. Specifically, she discussed a list of "don'ts"; things like judge, criticise people, diagnose, threaten, divert, question, rationalise, etc. Some of these are fairly self explanatory and other took a little more explanation than the single word she started with. Say that we ought not criticise, question, advise or use logic in a discussion didn't make a great deal of sense until she narrowed them to ad hominem criticism, excessive and provocative questioning, giving unwanted or inappropriate advise and rationalising problems and concerns.

After a discussion about these issues to do with communication, we watched part of another video; this time on Philosophy for Children.

Yet Another Blog

I've just started yet another blog: The Education of an Educator. As the title might suggest, this new blog will focus on the classes, discussions, readings and experiences I have during my training as a teacher. All of the relevant posts I've made here are already posted there, as is some new material, so go and have a look.

Update: the new blog has now been deleted and the content (what there was) migrated back here. Wordpress may be nice, but it failed to save drafts and make posts one too many times, especially when compared with Blogger which has not yet failed me once. The only thing that Blogger lacks over Wordpress is categories, and I could emulate those with Technorati or Del.icio.us if I could be bothered.

Development in an Educational Context

This afternoon (though I'm posting this the day after) we had Dr. Marion Myhill give a lecture on development in an educational context, the first lecture in the developmental strand of professional studies.

Dr. Myhill described the reasons that we, as educators, are interested in development (it allows us to understand students as members of a cohort, gives us a way to understand them according to the ranges of capabilities typical of specific age groups, etc.). Developmentalists look beyond individuals to the generalities, to systematic changes and continuities seen across the cohort. This is particularly interesting to teachers as they deal with students as a group more often than with a specific individual.

We can view the development of children as a series of orderly changes. Individual children will have individual capabilities and characteristics (physiological, psychological, emotional and cognitive), but there will be a range within which most of the cohort are situated. We can also examine the rate at which development progresses. The development of an infant is very much faster than that of a late adolescent.

Where once there was a perception that development took us from undeveloped infants to developed adults, we now recognise that it is a life-long process -- deficiencies in early development can be remediated (as opposed to the view that short-comings in early development become insurmountable obstacles). While we now recognise that development is life-long, our potential for change does reduce over time (e.g: it is easier to learn a second language as a child than as an adult).

M talked about the four aspects of development (physical, social, emotional and cognitive) and that these aspects are interrelated. Developments which affect one aspect will often affect the others in some way.

As said above, while development does occur in stages and their are commonalities across cohorts, the each child's development and capabilities are still individual and it is our goal in education to narrow the gap between the best and brightest and the less able in each area. "While not everyone has the potential to be a Cathy Freeman, almost everyone can run a marathon with training."

Professional Studies Tutorial 1

In our first professional studies tutorial, we formed our Professional Learning Teams. The purpose of these teams is to give us a small group (a total of five people) with whom to discuss what happens during our school placements.

My team consists of:

• T (me) -- secondary IT and Technology and Design;
• P -- English and SOSE;
• K₁ -- Primary education;
• C -- Design and Technology (I didn't get C's other specialisation down); and
• K₂ -- SOSE and LOTE.

Next week, we have a two hour tutorial to get acquainted with SUPP and the next five or six weeks we'll be spending every Monday in a school.

Teacher Identity

This morning's professional studies lecture was about teacher identity. Dr. Cole covered a number of topics beginning with the question: "What is a teacher?" He contrasted the rather anachronistic view of the teacher as authority and disciplinarian whose primary relationship with students is one of power (he drew parallels to similar relationships between Britain and the rest of the Empire) with a stereotype of the "progressive" teacher who is full of enthusiasm, a drive to change the world and is soon run down by the relentless grind. He then described a more realistic view of the teacher as a (small) part of the educational institution: a system whose structure, goals and values are fixed and within which we must work.

Dr. Cole talked about assessment and its role as part of the learning process rather than a separate and distinct thing (undertaken alone in a sterile environment).

He finished by talking about professional development and how we can become more professional:

• Action research -- reflecting on our own practice and the practice of others, and using this to guide our own development (i.e: acting upon research we do).


• Expert status -- most educational systems offer some form of "expert status" certification.


• Student relationships -- we can teach more effectively when we have closer relationships (e.g: empathy) with the students. This can be difficult when we are limited to two periods a week, etc.


• Team teaching -- we are not alone. Working together with our peers and colleague teachers can help us improve.


• Work within the school -- we must locate our own values, goals, etc. within those of the institution.

When we do our professional experience, we will be assessed by teachers from our placement school according to certain criteria (he showed the New Beginning Teacher Criteria from 1996, but I think that we'll be assessed according to different criteria), but we may not have opportunity to demonstrate all of them in our first placement.

Books

On this page I shall provide a partial list of the books required and recommended for my units. Where appropriate I will provide links to the author's, publisher's and book's web site as well as to Amazon.

ESA160 -- Professional Studies 1A

Required:

• How to Make a Classroom Management Plan by Robert Cope. ^(buy)
• Educational Psychology for Learning and Teaching by Kerri-Lee Krause, Sandra Bochner and Sue Duchesne. ^(buy)
• Case Studies in Teaching and Learning: Australian Perspectives by Nola Purdie and David Smith. ^(buy)

Recommended:

• Teaching for Understanding by Tina Blythe. ^(buy)
• Effective Teaching Strategies: Lessons from research and practice by R. Killen. ^(buy)
• Disability in Australia: Exposing a social apartheid by Gerard Goggin and Christopher Newell. ^(buy)

ESA166 -- Information Technology 1A

Required:

• Guidebook for Developing an Effective Instructional Technology Plan by L. Anderson. PDF 232Kb
• Tasmanian Certificate of Education Information Technology Documents. Online
• Introduction to Information and Communication Technology in Education by D. G. Moursund. PDF 952Kb

Recommended:

• Technology for Teaching by Priscilla Norton and Debra Sprague. ^(buy)
• Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching (2nd) by M.D. Roblyer and Jack Edwards. ^(buy)
• Learning to Teach ICT in the Secondary School: a companion to school experience by S. Kennewell, J. Parkinson and H. Tanner (eds). ^(buy)
• Managing School ICT by S. Hackett and B. Kennedy.

Additional reading:

• The Java Tutorial. Online
• Australian Educational Computing

ESA184 -- Design and Technology

Recommended reading:

• People skills: how to assert yourself, listen to others, and resolve Conflict by Robert Bolton.
• Technology Education for Teachers edited by John Williams and Anthony Williams.
• Technology -- a curriculum profile for Australian schools by Curriculum Corporation.
• The Idea of Design edited by Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin.
• The Journal of Technology Education.

Week One Roundup

With the first week of classes over, it looks as though I'm going to enjoy this degree: Professional Studies looks like it'll be interesting (especially the school experience aspect); Multi-Literacies won't be too bad; Technology will be an opportunity to do things I haven't really though about before (design in wood, etc.); and it's going to be interesting looking at ways to apply information technology to other curriculum areas in IT as well as the details of teaching IT in its own right.

Technology Education

ESA184 - Technology Education (Single)

In the next few days (i.e: before Thursday), I need to decide on a technology module to do this semester. The co-ordinator told us this morning that there are six choices:

• principals of design;
• design in wood; and
• food technology

run concurrently in the morning, and

• textiles;
• hard materials design; and
• computer aided design;

run concurrently in the afternoon class.

I'll probably do C.A.D. (what with my other specialisation being ICT and all).

Multi-Literacies 1

ESA196 - Multiliteracies 1A

After professional studies we had our first multi-literacies ICT class, in which the lecturer introduced all the ICT skills they'll be making sure we have. Word processing, spread sheets, presentations, multi-media, the Internet (and, more importantly, finding anything useful on it), etc. We'll also be covering the various bits of ICT stuff we'll need to know to be able to do the course (like using Vista).

He also made sure to cover the various rules we need to follow (don't look at porn at school; don't copy CDs at school; computer use is monitored; etc.) and be aware of. The thing that really, REALLY pisses me off is that the contagion that is plagiarism detection software, namely Turn It In, seems to have infected Education. The sole objection I have to using the software is that Turnitin keep a copy of all the work submitted in their database to check future submissions against: they are using my work as part of the service for which they charge lots of money.

We ended with a lot of confusion as to when and where our classes for the next few weeks are (the Bachelor of Teaching timetable is both complex and fluid as it has to work around the student's practicals and other staff commitments).

Professional Studies Lecture 1

ESA160 - Professional Studies 1A.

The course has undergone a lot of change since last year, most of which regards the proportion of lectures and tutorials: this year’s course features more tutorial time and the tutorials have a more central role; they are practising what they preach in that they are going to be teaching us in the same way that want us to teach.

During the first 45 minutes, there was a little bit of touchy, feely stuff (the degree is not just a journey into teaching, it’s also a journey into knowing ourselves, etc., etc.), but on the whole it was a very interesting first hour.

In a few weeks, we will be starting our professional experience with the School University Partnership Programme (or SUPP), during which we each spend every Monday in a classroom observing specific facets of education in a real learning environment. The goal of SUPP is to give us some experience in the practice of education to help ground our understanding of the theory that we’ll be learning during lectures. While we don’t have any choice which school we wind up visiting, I am quite looking forward to it.

The lectures during the rest of the semester will focus on four themes:

• Professional Perspectives: Teacher Identity;
• Development in an Educational Context;
• Schools and Schooling; and
• Curriculum and Pedagogy.

There are three required texts for the course, though one of them can be left until next semester: How to Make a Classroom Management Plan^(buy) by Robert Cope, Educational Psychology for Learning and Teaching^(buy) by Kerri-Lee Krause, Sandra Bochner and Sue Duchesne and Case Studies in Teaching and Learning: Australian Perspectives^(buy) by Nola Purdie and David Smith.

According to the lecturer (whose voice reminded me of the woman from a popular show about current affairs on NPR), these same books will be used for professional studies during all four semester of the degree, so they'll be a good investment (especially compared to some of the $90+ books I bought for by Bachelor of Computing and didn't even open). She described Cope as a very good book (published last year); Krause as comprehensive, up to date and used throughout the degree; and said that we won't really need Purdie until next semester.

The recommended texts are The Teaching for Understanding Guide by Tina Blythe (the theory upon which the Essential Learnings Framework of the Tasmanian Department of Education is based), Effective Teaching Strategies: Lessons from research and practice by R. Killen (good; basic teaching strategy; practice in theoretical context) and Disability in Australia: Exposing a social apartheid by Gerard Goggin and Christopher Newell (about special needs education in an Australian context).

20% of our final grade will come from our attendance and participation in tutorial and the remainder will be based on the documents we produce as a result of our observations during SUPP.

---

After about 45 minutes on administrivia, the lecturer moved on to looking at the topic of question and questioning. She began by presenting some dialogue typical of a teacher and students. The teacher used questions to provoke the students into thinking and to lead them to understanding of the topic by drawing an analogy between an orchestra (which needs a conductor to keep the players co-ordinated) and the hormonal system (which also requires co-ordination).

She presented five purposes for which questions are asked:

1. for review or revision;
2. to make connections;
3. for teacher feedback;
4. to encourage students to ask questions (modelling); and
5. to cause students to use a variety of thinking processes.

She then questioned reason four: how often do students ask non-procedural questions (that is, questions other than "What page are we on?" and the like) of their teacher? She finished by examining the term question in more detail (the online OED's entry for the word "question" is 9 pages long, apparently).

It looks, so far, that this is going to be a really interesting unit.