The 20-minute limit concentrates the mind wonderfully, particularly in terms of where you put your effort, and hence what is the main focus of the session and what is the "incidental" learning. Louise raised this in terms of acquiring vocabulary, which always comes up when teaching languages to motivated students. How does one deal with this without interrupting the flow?
- One answer is to set time aside at the end of the session, explicitly for such issues--and get used to noting them on the white board as a reminder to yourself to revisit them and as an assurance to the class that they won't be forgotten.
- This also raised the issue of when "incidental" issues take over the main focus of the session--which they do all the time in our class! There are cultural/institutional issues here. Current practice in FE is to put classes on rails, with no deviation. As we discussed in one of our very first sessions, some departments have lesson plans deposited centrally, usually electronically, so that if a staff member is away, anyone else can pick up the lesson for the slot and teach it. I wouldn't last a week in that environment--but if you are going to be flexible, it is important to have room to manoeuvre and ensure that loose ends are caught up by the end of the sequence (either within a lesson, or the term).
- which led on to some techniques to support teaching. We discussed (a little) the use of the space on a white-board; as you go on you get a better idea of what you might end up using it for--a section over here for key-words to note, a place in the top-right for that diagram you know you will draw at some stage (generating a simple diagram spontaneously arising from conversation has quite a different impact from projecting a pre-prepared one).
- and the uses of flip charts, in particular keeping sheets from one session to another to remind the class of points already made (perhaps by them through reporting-back from exercises)...
- see http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/ohp_use.htm and http://www.learningandteaching.info/teaching/writing.htm dated though they are!
Jumping ahead to 7 December, look at this post on PowerPoint and follow up some of the leads (the one to Armed Forces Journal doesn't work now). If you only read one, try this http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/powerlesspoint/23518.
And in the course of that discussion we mentioned what you are now being subject to: the relentless barrage of links, and the question about whether they affect the way we read (and even more, study) on the net. (Emma has vowed to use real books for her submissions!)
- That's discussed in this post, which also includes a mention of the Nicholas Carr book, "The Shallows" which I referred to.
- And here is the site for the Khan Academy.
- Some of the ideas we discussed also came up in Unit 2 with last year's group, so go here to see the write-up on their blog.
Moving up to the top right of the board, we got into another theme, prompted initially by Laura's dismay that you are not spontaneous "movers"! The discussion developed into stuff we don't usually get into until the second year, and on reflection perhaps I should not have lumbered you with it too much, but the relevant pages are here, on the learning curve, and here, on the process of tutoring, and more broadly on how this applies at the course level. (Apologies for the way the side-bar obscured the graphic--there's a downloadable .pdf file available from the page which is better.)
Enough! I'll put the referencing stuff on a separate post, so you can consult it separately.
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