Week 6: Today I Learn, Today I Question

PLE: Personalised Learning Environment


is a new term I came across because of PXGT6110, in Mdm Ng's class.
I have my equal share of both hate and love in my first encounter with it. 





Hate it, because I found it to be very confusing in the academic text. (Maybe I'm reading too much/too shallow into it?)


I'll still like to quote what Barnard (2005) said about PLE:

"It is said that a precise definition of personalised learning is not needed in order to make it work"

(KJ says: What the ....... !??!!), 

was my first response towards Barnard's quote.

It wasn't making much sense until Mdm Ng prompted us and pointed that some of us might have unconsciously applied PLE in our T&L. After a simple discussion, we do reliased that, to a certain extend, we have applied certain element of PLE in our T&L. What we didn't know was we did not purposely and fully capitalised on it.

(read prologue: before the love)
Love it, because the concept/idea proposed is something I intuitively felt what and how learning should be.The concept is also something I toyed with years ago. So it was kinda, hey, the idea is REAL! It's out there!


PLE concept of learners learn at their own pace (& style too!) pointed out the subtle difference with other learning concept such as individualised learning. As a teacher, I knew that different students have different learning style and differ in their learning pace too. And as a teacher, I am supposed to tailor make my lessons to suit my students. In which I felt so burdened as I only had a vague idea of their learning preferences. Having said that, having a vague idea does not equate to able to cater to their learning styles and needs. But PLE crafted out a difference in terms of learning responsibility. It took out a great chunk of responsibility from the teacher to tailor make suitable learning style for individual students and tweaked the idea of why not allow each learner to create their own learning ground? The instructor's role would be to identify suitable learning ground, set the general parameters and allow the learner to 'build' their own learning ground. What I loved so much about this is it will create a greater sense of familiarity, ownership, belonging, comfort and ease to the learner. It just felt so right!


====================================================
Prologue: Before the love

I was so frustrated with the concept of PLE from the articles until Dee enlightened me!

In Dee's response to  "What is PLE to you" posted by Mdm Ng, 

Dee's understanding of PLE: 

"it is the learner's autonomy to create his/her own learning ground." 

Saved the (my) day! Couldn't thank her enough. ^_^

====================================================

My Doubts and My Question

As pointed out by Reigeluth, our current education system is designed for sorting, not really for learning. I'm of the opinion that our current education system, particularly the assessment system, needs major restructuring if PLE were to play a bigger role.
Or is it that I'm not seeing the wonders of PLE? That it does not get restrained by the shackles of educational system and structure?

Week 5: Today I Learn, Today I Question

Basically, last week was a week full of inspiration! Why? I must thank Mdm Ng for sharing the TPACK video with us. Loved it so much!
Would like to share those very words that inspires me from the TPACK video:


Thinking Creatively: Teachers as designers Content, Technology and Pedagogy
Matthew J. Koehler & Punya Mishra


1. Technology, Pedagogy & Content are all complex and messy stuff!!!
What a mess I got myself into!!? O_O


2. Quality teaching is the act of learning to think in a disciplined manner
I'm a self-confess fan of metacognition. If the recommended book "Learning to think" by Janet Gail Donald is really that good, would definitely love to get my hands on one. 


3. In solving teaching problem, the best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas. ~Linus Pauling~
That's a pretty good idea that I've never thought of! You know what, I've always tried to get the best idea by just focusing on one! This simple idea just opened up a whole lot of thinking dimension!


4. Creativity
   - Novel (unique, radical, revolutionary, influential, pioneering)
   - Effective
   - Whole (complete)
This redefined creativity really gave a wholesome feel to the very meaning of creativity itself!


5. Creativity is the variation of a theme, is about tweaking the right knobs.
Koehler & Mishra did mention that play could lead to creativity which I agree. Suddenly makes me feel creativity is a fun stuff. Must admit that the word creative has become a burden to me whenever I think of it. Why? Coz as a teacher, we are supposed to be creative in our pedagogy. 


6. The walls between arts and engineering exist only in our minds. ~Theo Jansen~

Our limits are in our mind. But very few are masters of their mind. If we could better understand how our mind works, how it's behaving, what it is doing every now and then, then we stand a far better chance of improving ourselves to greater heights.


An idea is ... highly contagious. The smallest seed of an idea can grow. ~Inception, 2010~


By the way, found a uncut version of the video from google video:
Thinking Creatively: Teachers as designers Content, Technology and Pedagogy
(too bad google video could not be embedded here...) 


Back to sat's class. Got a new classmate --> Shakirah!!! Dang dang dang dang!!! Welcome welcome! (btw, those who din get to know her yet, she's very vocal! =) )


Thanks to both gurus: Yin & Sailor, which were well prepared with tons of revision for us. It was a session of learning theories revisited and TPACK revisited. Served as a great reminder to me to take these learning theories & TPACK into consideration when I devise my lesson plan. 


Yea, question of the day: Is there a reason why TPCK was renamed into TPACK?
I remember asking this question in class, got the answer, but forgotten what was the answer liao... getting old... =p Could someone out there kindly remind this old man?

Week 4: Today I learn, Today I Question

Reading the short article "Engaging the online faculty: Effective Modeling Strategies for Success" by Donaldson and Conrad (2010) before the class gave me a 'shallow' feel. I did not get the gist of the article, not until Mdm Ng elaborate on it, thus making me realized there more depth in Donaldson & Conrad's Model than I initially thought! Which there's a sudden spark of light. This is what I've been searching for! Getting students to engage in an online learning seemed a daunting task to me as I have no idea (the proper & systematic way) how to manage it. It was through Mdm Ng that I 'saw' that the model actually blend all the learning theories in different phases. Which also planted in the me the idea that we need to blend all learning theories (Behavourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism) into our T&L approach. That we should not have the idea that there are learning theories that are obsolete. (Somehow, through the different courses, with so much emphasis on constructivism, I kinda had the idea/impression that Behavourism is a dinosaur theory). But coming back to the implementation of this model, I would say I'm still quite blur about the implementation from A-Z (the light was just a sudden spark... T_T). I always find that the application of educational instruction is very abstract! If you think sciences are abstract, think again! Educational instruction is equally abstract! If not more!


However, looking back at all the learning approach and theories we had heard, talked and learned, applying anyone of them seemed a distance away. Every T&L related model/ approach sounds great, but implementing them is never easy as knowing about it. It took Yee Hui months to learn about using wikispace & finally implementing them after much planning. I think Te has been using webnode for some time. And all these does not happen just over night. Reflecting upon myself, guilty to say, I have not tried as many ICT tools as I ideally thought I would since I signed up for this course. I think the biggest obstacle to this is we need time to explore and understand the tool, thoroughly consider whether this tool could fit into our pedagogy or how should we customise to serve our T&L purpose.


EDUCATION IS VERY LONG AND SLOW PROCESS!!!!!


十年树木，百年树人。。。
(Rough translation: It takes ten years to plant a tree, but it takes hundred years to educate a person)

Did I get myself into one of the most challenging career?

Week 3: Today I learn, Today I question

I used to get this from the speaker himself:
After he finishes his presentation, he'll ask the audience:
"Any questions?".
A typical Malaysian audience usually remains silent.
After prompting for a while, the speaker will go on and say:
"If you have no question, it could only indicate two possibilities: Either you fully understood, or you totally don't understand."


I told my students the same thing. After a few attempts, I kinda figure out it wasn't working to get students engaged. And I came to my own conclusion that there's a 3rd and 4th possibility to a silent audience (in fact, there should be more than 4). Anyway, just to share my own 3rd and 4th version.


3rd: The audience are not thinking!


The current era is moving at much faster pace than before. There are tons of information knocking at our door virtually every moment. It's overloading our working memory as our could take in a limited cognitive load each moment. Guessed this is exactly what happened during our online discussion using spectrum during class. It would be a great simulation of what the current net gen are going through --> multitasking. Somehow, we humans coined the idea of creating a computer capable of multitasking to get more things done in shorter time. Computer multitasking, yes; but human multitasking, is our brain made for it? Guessed there's many research the effect of human multitasking. It would be interesting to find out what are the effects of multitasking on thinking abilities and thinking skills. Does multitasking inhibits thinking skills?




4th: Lack of questioning skills


This conclusion is through my observation on my students. Basically we could not pose question if we don't know what we know and what we don't yet know. My students know that I encourage questioning. But they often have the bad habit of lazy to think, and they'll just tell me that:
"Teacher, I don't understand." 
In which I'll often reply:
"What is it that you don't understand?"
They'll reply:
"Everything." (This is where they annoyed me)
"What is the everything that you don't understand?"


Some will get stuck from here as they don't even know what they don't understand.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe because I'm a science teacher, I expect my students to ask specific question.






Something worth mentioning before I end this blog:
Mdm Ng is supremely resourceful!
Just couldn't catch up going through the resources she gave... +_+