Okay, so I've only been here since just before 9am this morning, but I'm still excited and think I thought be blogging just a little bit. Twitter is all awesome and stupendous but sometimes 140 characters just doesn't cut it.
I'm in a session on the SOLO taxonomy and we're rattling around a bit in this huge room. I think people are still digesting the keynote. Now, I'm pretty excited about this spotlight because I'm all about the learning outcomes. I try to have really clear signposts for learning in a lesson-by-lesson fashion and also on a longer scale. But many of my longer term goals are a little... well, punk, in the sense that I value a bit of a rough and ready, diy, homegrown kind of learning. Sometimes, I don't talk about them too much. It makes people nervous.
But I am enjoying the slow unfolding of the SOLO taxonomy. What I'm seeing so far is an interesting, deeper take on the rather dirty version of learning I use: "I know nothing", "I know something", "I know many things", "I can do things with the things I know" and "I can create and explain new things with the things I know".
You know, I'm thinking more about self-assessment matrices and how our department uses them. I think we need to work more on developing what those last two criteria look like for students. In particular - and I know this will go down like a lead balloon at my school - we need to focus on what application and creativity looks like for girls in subjects that are traditionally considered to be boys' subjects. I know I am influenced by being a physics teacher, but it is definitely a concern for me.
Right. More thinking. More listening. More link making and integrating.
(More dirty outcomes? You bet)
Showing posts with label edupunk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label edupunk. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Starting thoughts about edupunk
I don't blog much about my personal life. I probably should do more. Anyone who stumbles across this blog needs to know about my adventures in sewing, right? After all, draughting my own patterns is pretty exciting.
But what I have been thinking about lately is edupunk and my personal philosophy. I remember at teacher's college having to write soooo many essays (thoughtfully packaged by my lecturers as "reflective personal narratives or somesuch) on my personal philosophy of teaching, my thoughts on my subject specialities, and how I planned to integrate these into my teaching practice. Even though everyone loathed these, I found them really useful. What follows, obviously, is not something I shared with my lecturers.
I spent large chunks of my late teens and early to mid twenties in punk, grunge, fringe and freak subcultures, from the swamp-garage, industrial noise, punk-metal and punk bands I saw (and the one I played in) in Palmerston North and Hamilton while at university, to the niche, almost desperate, punk underbelly of Wuhan, China. A huge part of this was the idea that everyone can create, one way or another. We can reappropriate, recycle, subvert, satirise and reclaim ideas and knowledge. These things aren’t the exclusive domain of faceless systems. We can do it ourselves – make noise, make art, make community.
I also spent years involved in politics, from student politics and processes to the National Executive of the Green Party. I learned about democracy in all its guises, learned about structural inequality, privilege and cultural capital.
I thought long and hard before getting into teaching, worrying about how I would reconcile my roots-punk sensibilities with the rigid goalposts of Aotearoa-NZ’s examination structure. When I took the plunge, it was with the firm intent to take what I had learned and keep the ethos of doing it yourself, keeping it local (while thinking global) and integrating a rogue random-organic mindset into my teaching and continued learning. Oh, and lets not forget the activism.
If I look at the key points of punk, the things that stick out for me in an educational setting are subverting corporate models of education (including the nasty fringes of human capital), avoiding bite-sized ideas learned as the educational version of chicken nuggets (just as processed and devoid of nutrition) and embracing praxis, that loop of action and reflection.
But what I have been thinking about lately is edupunk and my personal philosophy. I remember at teacher's college having to write soooo many essays (thoughtfully packaged by my lecturers as "reflective personal narratives or somesuch) on my personal philosophy of teaching, my thoughts on my subject specialities, and how I planned to integrate these into my teaching practice. Even though everyone loathed these, I found them really useful. What follows, obviously, is not something I shared with my lecturers.
I spent large chunks of my late teens and early to mid twenties in punk, grunge, fringe and freak subcultures, from the swamp-garage, industrial noise, punk-metal and punk bands I saw (and the one I played in) in Palmerston North and Hamilton while at university, to the niche, almost desperate, punk underbelly of Wuhan, China. A huge part of this was the idea that everyone can create, one way or another. We can reappropriate, recycle, subvert, satirise and reclaim ideas and knowledge. These things aren’t the exclusive domain of faceless systems. We can do it ourselves – make noise, make art, make community.
I also spent years involved in politics, from student politics and processes to the National Executive of the Green Party. I learned about democracy in all its guises, learned about structural inequality, privilege and cultural capital.
I thought long and hard before getting into teaching, worrying about how I would reconcile my roots-punk sensibilities with the rigid goalposts of Aotearoa-NZ’s examination structure. When I took the plunge, it was with the firm intent to take what I had learned and keep the ethos of doing it yourself, keeping it local (while thinking global) and integrating a rogue random-organic mindset into my teaching and continued learning. Oh, and lets not forget the activism.
If I look at the key points of punk, the things that stick out for me in an educational setting are subverting corporate models of education (including the nasty fringes of human capital), avoiding bite-sized ideas learned as the educational version of chicken nuggets (just as processed and devoid of nutrition) and embracing praxis, that loop of action and reflection.
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