Photo by Ben Hershey on Unsplash
I am trying to write about formality in learning. This is an ongoing theme for me inevitability, given my interest in spaces for learning in which the learner is the prime mover and agent at the centre of their learning.
One of the themes …
Photo by Andrés Canchón on Unsplash
What is the subject of teaching? In this post, I mull over this question, its several meanings and its implications for negotiated active learning.
In my role as an educational developer with responsibilities for both staff and curriculum development, the subject can be understood …
cc-AT Joan
The Great British Menu is back on UK television at the moment. I am not a fan of cooking programmes – though others are in my household – so, it’s on and inevitably I get caught up in it. Assessment is the central device in these reality programmes, …
Decisions decisions…
I spent the day in the studio a few days ago with some of my band. This set of sessions has been going on for a while and we came armed with a list of parts that needed to be recorded and edited which would keep us busy …
Photo by Amauri Salas on Unsplash
Listening to 6 Music this morning, Marie-Ann Hobbs noted how both Viv Albertine and Johnny Marr could not equate happiness with creativity. Instead, creativity seems to be something quite separate. – a drive to be productive.
I do a lot of creative things and, …
I am reading Susan Sontag’s seminal book On Photography from 1977. It’s interesting reading the book in an age where the act of photographing the world has exploded beyond what Sontag could have imagined – even though her critique of everyday photography takes the mass proliferation of the acquired image …
Walk cards with proposition statements and visual trigger
More walking, talking and Twalking (just about)I co-led a Twalk today on the subject of visual literacies as part of Sheffield Hallam University’s Learning & Teaching Conference with my colleague Helen Rodger. It was billed simply as a learning walk and …
The #connectedlearning space, in its many and various meanings, is central to my thinking about the future classroom. This is obviously epitomised in the concept of the #twalk. It was lovely to hear that Alex Spiers was leading a Twalk at the Liverpool University today – again looking at learning …
I have been working with course teams across the University recently on a number of themes where there is a common articulation of a fundamental problem – how to engage students. Without marks. Many books have been written and many words spoken about this, but I am going to do …
Tree canopy and blue sky in Ecclesall Woods
Myself and a colleague have some difficult thinking to do this week. Exciting thinking, but difficult nevertheless. So, we could book out a teaching room lined with whiteboards for the day and see what happens, but that feels too ‘inward’ for what …
I have been thinking about the future academic and the implications for academic development recently. The Open University’s ‘Innovating Pedagogy’ is an insightful annual report (http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/innovating/), though I would love to see one for 2018. I have seen Mike Shales present on these …
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I ran a series of workshops with an academic department last week. One of the key themes was the need to focus more on those learning outcomes that address learning and graduate capability. Our context was the challenge of engaging learners in formative assessment.…
I believe there is some confusion about the term technology-enhanced learning (TEL) and in general the idea of enhanced learning. In a recent post on Twitter @alejandro (12/06/18) says,
“We should be critical of ‘technology-enhanced’ learning. Default setting: technology enhances things. Does it always? Should we therefore talk about …
FAB academics
Introducing FAB – Flipped Active & Blended LearningFAB is a playful idea I am using in my MELSIG work. Graham McElearney and myself will be leading the development of a toolkit for academics focused on curriculum innovation through the incorporation of digital video at the forthcoming #MELSIG …
In our research-informed development activities looking at learner non-engagement with formative assessment, with group work or with engaging in feedback, it is becoming clear that the lack of space given to developing learner ‘buy-in’ or developing ‘want’ is highly significant in academic design and practice.
I saw a group of …
As someone with a strong producer self-identity, I think crafting titles can be a useful way of capturing the essence of what you are trying to do and give you focus. This applies to books, articles, essays, student work, videos, songs, blog posts, photographs, paintings, performances… anything that involves a …
Learning through co-production makes sense to me. It suggests a form of purposeful, active learning with peers. This is the approach we are taking at the next Media-Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group (MELSIG) event in Sheffield on 21st June. It’s not new for MELSIG – we’ve run workshops, co-produced research …
There are many reasons why I have committed to exploring the idea of learning walks in terms of learning space and many of those reasons have been discussed here previously. For the last four months, I have been undertaking a daily …
Global #Twalkday
Wednesday 3rd October 2018
Theme: Doing, being, becoming, belonging and connecting
Time: 3pm GMT (but options for other time zones to be decided)
What is Twalkday?The Twalk will be co-ordinated globally and is planned to coincide with the start of a new academic year. It provides teachers …
It’s easy to store, but making sense of it all is an art. photo by Kevin Utting Creative Commons attribution licence
Storify.com is shutting up shop and this has been troubling me since the news was announced several months ago. The main problem, as I see it, is that …
The transcript of ‘Learning Networks, Not Teaching Machines’, a keynote delivered at EDEN 2015 in Barcelona by Audrey Watters in 2015, is a good read for anyone interested in networked learning, media-enhanced learning, and the use of social media for learning. I’d not read it before, but it exists …
There has been an interesting little discussion on Twitter today following a post from @viviennestern.
This, on a wall @sheffhallamuni made me stop and stare. For all the vitriol about universities, they exist to help us think better, understand more. What a brilliant architectural expression of this. Thank you …
Mini-twalking – an ideal pre-Xmas learning activity!
Since our first successful use of the #twalk model in May 2017, a number of #twalks have used the model in different situations. Our experience and understanding of the #twalk is growing. A number of us involved in trialing this in …
Photo by Ishan @seefromthesky on Unsplash
Polycontextual bridging (Elstad, 2016) is a useful term that allows us to explore literacies around engaging with hybridity, blended learning spaces and learning literacies. Simply, it refers to the experience of being in two or more places at once. Before associating this immediately …
I attended ‘B plus or A minus? Assessment in the creative disciplines’, part of a programme of events being run by the University of the Arts London last week. The venue, Central St Martin’s (CSM) new Granary Wharfe, is a remarkable conversion and I recommend a visit if you get …
Two new toolkits have been developed on the Media-Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group site for which I am responsible. They signal a good shift for the nebulous group of innovators that comes the way of MELSIG according to it current themes and foci. Known for its events, which I hope …
“In Aristotle …we have a very powerful philosophy of place as the starting point for all other forms of existence.” (Cresswell, 2009, p. 2)
This year will see the publication of my book Reimagining Spaces for Learning in Higher Education. Central to its thesis is the proposition that place and …
The third annual Social Media for Learning in Higher Education Conference took place this week at Sheffield Hallam University. I have been involved with it throughout and may claim some responsibility for proposing we run it in the first place on the back of interest in #BYOD4L, several Media Enhanced …
This 10 minute screencast introduces the key ideas of the twalk concept – learning walks with integrated tweetchats – and the pedagogic rationale underpinning walking, talking, tweeting and thinking.
The video is part of the Twalk Toolkit being developed on the Media-Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group site in time for …
