Educating Erin

Its amazing how exciting it is to have someone comment on your work. Not because they have to (eg. teacher marking assignments) but because they actually want to. My excitement shows the potential engagement for students if you were to use blogs with them…

I’d like to thank Cam for supporting me with this wonderful piece of technology, and Miriam for contributing some great ideas to the list. You can see her comment here, and I have updated the list.

I am referring to several things with this title!

I have spent a long time today searching blogs for ideas about VELS, however I find myself constantly following other links and ideas on various blogs. Why is this? One reason I think is that a lot of education blogs are focussed on using technology, and VELS is the ‘boring’ curriculum writing stuff you have to do but don’t really feel like sharing with others. I think I will get a lot more useful ideas and information from actually talking in person to teachers, either on rounds or in other forums. Because of this, I have to say that this part of my plan was not very successful. I was successful however in finding lots of great posts and blogs on using technology in education, so my time was not wasted!!

Something else I found today leads to my other point. Its easy to think that a blog is pointless if no-one is reading it or commenting. But as Langwitches writes, WHO do YOU write for? I’m not boring just because no-one comments. I completely agree with her ideas, which I would sum up as – I write for myself, to record my reflection and learning, but I do it in a public way so that I can share with other educators and we all benefit. As a new blogger I think this is one mantra I will be sticking to!! I am glad that a uni assignment gave me the momentum to get started.

I’ve had a very productive day! After an impatient wait, I got the log-on details for the MAV website. It’s got so much there I’m really glad I signed up last year. This meant that I could do lots of work on my product/resource/thing that I am developing for EXE assignment 1 (I’m not very good at choosing names for things so any suggestions are welcome!). It’s now uploaded to the site and I will be publicizing my blog to education students and other people to get some feedback.

I also have to catch up on reflections – I’ve done a lot of work today! One thing I do need to do is get some help with the tech stuff – there are some things with edublogs that I need to learn how to do. I’m sure if I ask very nicely Cam should be able to help

Aside from achieving the main aim of this project, that is to investigate the VELS in Unit Planning, I have discovered a lot of very useful resources, mainly in the Maths and Indonesian areas. There are links to these on my Ideas/resources document, and my references page. Not wanting to rave too much, but the MAV website is FABULOUS. I especially like the Curriculum Planning section (at http://mav.vic.edu.au/curriculum-planning/), as evidenced by the number of times I refer to it! Ian Lowe has put together such a comprehensive resource for teachers I can see myself using a lot in the future. I also love the way Ian’s focus is on moving away from textbooks to more realistic uses of maths, which corresponds to the Interdisciplinary approach of VELS. Aside from being the official emphasis of the Education Department, I believe that this approach would be far superior in both educational outcomes and engagement levels, which would lead to less classroom management issues.

An update on the resource that I am developing about using VELS in unit planning – It’s turning into a really useful activity for me to do. There is so much that I want to write, even just the things from the VELS website, so distilling it into the most succinct yet useful state is my challenge at the moment. I think I might go crazy typing, and then start to summarise it. I might even change the tense or focus on talking directly to the reader (eg. you might like to try using a rubric to…), but I’m not sure. I suppose I’ll see what happens! I am convinced that I’m heading in the right direction though.

On another note, I’ve just started using RSS which is proving very useful. I’ve found some great blogs on technology in education, which are certainly keeping my brain ticking over!

Don’t click there yet (it’s not finished!) but you can now see a link on the top right-hand side of this page. This is where I will be putting the resource I intend to develop from my research. My plan for the EXE assignment was to do a fair bit of reading and reflection, however it occurred to me that I needed to create something useful. So a ‘cheat sheet’ on unit planning and assessment using VELS is what I have come up with. As Jan, my mentor suggested, the official VELS website (at http://vels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/) is chockers with info, ideas and examples, and a compendium of those ideas in an easily accessible format seems the best way to do it. Please feel free to share your ideas – comment on this post (I’m not sure that comments are available on the pages). Together this can become a really useful resource for all teachers!

well I had to keep the theme going!!

I must admit that I haven’t done much work on the audit and EXE401 in general, but I have written an essay on corporeal poetics for dance and a presentation on the role of radio in the Indonesian nationalist struggle for Indonesian. That’s how varied my units are this semester! Certainly keeps me entertained.

But I digress. From the audit, and a very productive and helpful meeting with my mentor for this unit, Jan, I have identified the two areas I will focus on for the assignments. Not quite sure on the third one for next semester yet, but I’m sure it will become apparent! Matters are further complicated by having already done my teaching rounds before semester started in a country placement, so my topics need to be things I can do without using actual students! I think I will use the students I taught as a base though. I’m rambling again!! (For some entertaining rambling and interesting ideas, have a look at Cam’s blog!)

Topic 1: VELS – focusing on whole unit planning and assessment. I haven’t had much chance to be involved in the larger planning work – usually I’m focussed on individual lessons.

Topic 2: Individual Learning Plans – I need to move away from teaching one activity/task to the whole class and think about separate ‘groups’ of need or individual needs

So thats what I’ll be working on this semester. I’ll keep you posted!!