foolfillment: the blog

The final year project is looming!!

On top of a huge (for the BTechEd course) workload we hare getting a series of lectures of guidance and pointers about next year’s project. It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I want to write out my thoughts here.
What do I want to achieve, what is my aim for the project - it is purely to get a good grade? No, definitely not, I want to get skills, knowledge, excitement out of it that I can take out to schools and make me the best teacher I can be. My interests… the web, particularly so-called web2.0, read/write web. Without a specific project in mind, I want to enable kids to engage in a topic on their own. I want them to be going away from school (or doing work outside of school times, at least) and carrying on learning - do I care what they learn? - learning doesn’t just happen in schools. I’m interested in the idea of scaffolding, or mediated learning. Those are the two thoughts I can’t get out of my head - I am interested in collaborative web facilities, I am interested in people helping each other to understand things. These things link! There is huge potential in new web technoloogy, how do I form a study around it. What do I want to find out?

A proposal: a group of kids in school (perhaps my next placement) are each given a weblog, with comment facilities, ideally it would be really easy to use and they would have no problem linking to what ever they wanted and including pictures (any ideas what software I need?). I would meet them each day or so, and they would be given the time to write a simple reflective piece about their day, they would not be forced to be involved but rather shown the fun that they could have reading each other’s blogs and encouraged to write about whatever topic they wanted, alongside the suggestion of school topics that have interested them. With the idea being that by simply writing about what they are learning they will be taking the time to revisit it and allowing it more time to sink in, the added bonus being they read other people who are doing similar things and can enter discussion (opportunity for scaffolding). Following some time they could be tested in someway against a group of pupils who haven’t been encouraged to reflect on their work.

That had been one of my initial ideas, how do you measure their progress against others? Would it be possible to get them all taking part, or would you end up with the type of pupil who would be doing well anyway? My main concern is that it might not take full advantage of it being web based, it could become nothingmore than a normal diary.

Another proposal: One group of kids in a 1st or 2nd year class, given access to a blog, they each research a topic - their topics are disctinct yet similar, for instance one person looks at arch bridges, another at suspension, another at cantilever - and then post their findings as they go along using links, images, and jotting down their summary of a webpage. They are encouraged to share their findings by looking at and commenting on each other’s blogs, also, their learning can be guided by the teacher. Finally they put together a document, either a DTP thing or a webpage of some sort, or a poster using good old PVA and glitter, which is submitted. And because it wouldn’t show much otherwise, a control group has to produce a document on the same topics, but they haven’t been given the same online resources or encouragement to collaborate.

I shall expand on this, now though I’m tired.

Previous posts about similar thoughts:
31st of October and 1st of November

Why is there no d in refrigerator?

I can’t wait until March 26th

Last night was an enjoyable visit to the southside pub the Clockwork Beer co and then back to stu’s flat to watch The Descent. That’s exactly what caving’s like. If you haven’t seen it you should go an watch it if you;re a little unsure about coming along on a GUPA meet. Today was rubbish. Finished off an essay that’s been hanging over me, then spent far too long trying to find a schematic of a digital radio, and prices of different lathe tools.

A fairly productive day, a short chat in Technology and Society about health and drugs companies, and obligations to help people. Essay due next Thursday.

Graphics was an overview of different graphics packages in schools, then a little time to work on ProDesktop.

And then a lecture on design. We’ve got a lot to do for next Friday.

In just under a year I have to make some choices. Richard Ledingham had to make them recently and won’t find out the outcome until May or so.

Yes! I’m talking about the lottery that is being placed for your probation year following a teacher training course in Scotland. Now that newly qualified teachers get their first school chosen for them a situation has arisen where some local authorities (LAs) don’t get enough new teachers and other LAs get too many, to try and resolve this there is now what I like to call a bounty payment to entice people to go where nobody else would touch with a barge pole. It’s a nice idea, it means that I get rewarded for going to a place that I’d have chosen otherwise. The places that fail to attract people generally are the most beautiful parts of the country - the highlands, islands, and generally more remote parts - and as such they are the parts that I would choose to go to normally, this way though I get and extra ?6000 for doing so. The downside of it is, it could literally be anywhere in Scotland, it could be one of the places that people don’t touch with a barge pole because they are horrible places - I won’t say where, you can decide for yourself - and that is what makes it a hard decision. On top of that I could end up somewhere that is miles from anywhere Morven wants to be.

Still, I have about a year to decide, and ?6000 is a lot of money.

[tags]GTCS, probation, teaching[/tags]

I feel pretty well kitted out at the moment. I seem to have been on something of a shopping spree, but it’s all been pretty cheap.

It all started off so innocently with a microphone/earphone/headset thingy for a whole penny. Then I found a (very) cheap hard drive, I’ve wanted a way of backing up my files for ages and this seemed perfect. Unfortunately as soon as I had clicked to buy it I realised that it was an internal drive! What a schoolboy error! Anyhow, I also got a little USB gadget that acts as a wireless network card, that way I could also backup my desktop machine and transfer across all the files I want onto the laptop.

Then, having wondered what to do about my useless internal drive - which I also found out to be SATA and not IDE as advertised - I stumbled across the idea of an enclosure. You install your internal drive in a metal box which has an adapter so you can plug it into the USB port of any machine. Perfect!

I got it all set up tonight, using the refreshingly simple and effective Maxblast from Maxtor to create partitions and format the drive before setting up a regular backup using the bogstandard backup tool on windows. The first backup should finish in a few minutes.

Just for an extra bit of showmanship I’ve had the webcam out as well while I wrote this post. You can see my lovely new enclosure on flickr.

Good night, I’m off to write an essay.

[tags]gadgets, drives, maxtor[/tags]

The first day back at uni of the calendar year and with it the first post to my pdf category.

The timetable for third year is a funny thing, we had quite a few lectures and labs in the first semester but now we have very few, but with lots of assignments due. I don’t handle early finishes well, I need the ominous shadow of a looming deadline before I can work.

Today started off with a talk from Eddie about our upcoming placement (only three weeks away!) and the reflective journal we have to write during, so I took the chance to hat to Eddie afterwards about my thoughts for next year and the final year project. Sounds like a good chance I’ll be able to go ahead with it providing I can put together a reasonable topic. I’m not sure where to start with that because as yet we don’t know much about what’s required. Still, I’ll start by checking out google scholar and various blogs to see what research is out there already. Links will be added to delicious once I can decide on a suitable tag.

I went home to have my lunch and write up some more of an essay that’s due next Thursday, but instead I was so keen to get a head start on next years work I’ve not even opened it yet, I’ve been particularly distracted by Ollie’s idea of a lesson on time zones.

I should go now so that I can get some work done before I have to to to Understanding Energy, oh the unbridled joy that course brings.

Back now! I try not to be negative, so once more I shall say nothing here about Understanding Energy. Now I’m off to write more of that essay.

Can you get off at Buchanan Street and get back on the same train when it gets to St Enoch? That’s the Glasgow Subway Challenge! via Submit Response

glasgow subway, student stunt

No matter how much green tea and fresh veg and other healthy stuff I consume today I think I’ll still feel rotten all day.
bah.

Everytime I come back to Glasgow after time away I get ill. Don’t like it.
[tags]ill, green tea, bunged up head[/tags]