A little bit of Theory for my practice!!!!

Last one and then I'm going to talk about ideas. I love theory primarily because it can provide a universal languange for people to talk about their ideas, beliefs and values with out going into all the details but I think it might be useful to just give a brief outline of my theoretical framework and the key ideas that make me tick. I got this started on the last blog.

Frame Work for Practice

"Teaching is a practical and observable act. Pedagogy encompasses that act together with the purposes, values, ideas, assumptions, theories and beliefs which inform, shape and seek to justify it" (Alexander,2002, 2 cited in Singh & Richards, 2006).

With the quote above in mind, there are three broad theoretical perspectives that umbrella my framework for social work and my teaching philosophy. These include structuralism, post-modernism and critical theory. For me these lead to Empowerment theory which provides the value base for my work. There after anything goes as long as it fits the situation and my sense of integrity stays in tact.

Structuralism incorporates feminist, marxist, anti-discriminatory, anti-oppressive and radical empowerment theories. This part of my framework informs a strong commitment to social justice and human rights. A social justice perspective recognises oppressive power structures such as those existing in traditional teacher – student relationships and involves levelling the playing field so that education is accessible to anyone who wants it. Accessibility can include financial subsidising, and physical access but less tangible it also includes the right of individuals to access education which is non-discriminatory, non-oppressive, socially and culturally safe, respectful, appropriate and inclusive in terms of meeting the characteristics and needs of all students.

A social justice perspective sits comfortably with a student centred approach where such an approach de-emphasises the teacher as an expert instead of recognising the expertise that students bring. Teaching and learning from this perspective is based on co-construction and mutual empowerment in contrast to teacher directed learning.The structuralist school of thought focuses on the group or shared experience of oppression and marginalisation.

Postmodernism which is the second key theoretical perspective underpinning my philosophy draws attention to multiple realities, diversity and the unique experience of individuals. This understanding is crucial in terms of my teaching philosophy on multiple levels. It reminds me to keep my kete open and maintain an eclectic approach to teaching and learning. It keeps me reflective and flexible because I know that what worked for one student or one group of students will not necessarily work for the next. It explicitly informs my commitment to exploring students learning styles, culture, characteristics and needs.

Critical theory is a little more abstract but at it’s most simple it enables me to marry structuralist and post structuralist ideas around shared or collective realities and experience with the post modern emphasis on unique experience and individual realities. In short this means that both can be true – people do share experiences that result in the same or similar feelings. Feelings of oppression, stigma, internalised stigma, loss and so on. Simultaneously each experience a person has in the world does not define who they are, rather a person is a combination of all their experiences and the experiences of their ancestors and their children and the political, economic, social and spiritual climate in which they all exist, existed and will exist. The point being that though a person may share any number of experiences with others they are ultimately unique.

In terms of learning theories, one of the things that intrigues me about academia is the tendency towards negative critiquing. I am experimenting with positive critique – rather than looking for the negative, looking for the positive! I think hmm, what do I want to take from this idea for my kete. I guess it’s informed by the post modern and eclectic ideas in my framework.

That said, once upon a time and not very long ago I would have said I’m a constructivist girl all the way and Vygotsky’s my man when it comes to learning theories and this would have been in conflict with my own claim to post modernism. However the more aware I become of my own learning style the more aware I become that when all is said and done I’m really the ultimate in Piaget’s lone scientist – Just leave me a lone and let me consolidate! So as I mature as an academic and as an educator I find that more and more I’m thinking it’s all good – Each theory starts as one person’s idea which makes them all valid. Consequently I have in my kitty some behavioural tools and some cognitive tools and some cognitive behavioural tools, some cognitive humanist tools, some humanist feminist tools, some feminist psychoanalytical tools and quite a lot of constructivist tools too.

I'd like to talk in more detail about the recovery, aspirations and strengths models that I teach as they are absolutely relevant for flexible learning but I really must get on with my flexible learning ideas and presentation now.

Sustainability - Freire - And Coming Full Circle

Some Mandala examples



I have an exceptional 16 year old daughter called Elizabeth who is Cultural Coordinator for the Environment at her school, Youth rep on Sustainable Dunedin Committee, An active member of the Dunedin Secondary Students Climate Forum, a member of the Otago Regeneration crew and environmental rep on the DCC Youth Action Committee. She rock climbs, sails, attends kick boxing, plays basket ball and netball, leads a fairly active social life and does pretty well at school, particularly in geography. I worry about her sustainability but she once told me "don't oppress me mum" and I needed no further telling.

Having a daughter who is so passionate and actively involved in climate change, environmental and sustainability issues eventually rubs off. I asked her what it is that I can do to include sustainability education in my course. Our conversation went as follows;

Me	What's my role in including sustainability in my course?
Elizabeth	There are two things - Let people make their own choices – Give them information so that they can make choices about their views on sustainability.
Me	What information? - I don't understand the climate and Peak oil issues like you.
Elizabeth	Make them aware of the most recent scientific reports
Me	How do I incorporate that in a mental health course that is already full on?
Elizabeth	Use the video's I show you - Show them the video's.
Me	Okay so what's the other thing?
Elizabeth	Encourage people to think about regeneration
Me	What's regeneration?
Elizabeth	You know like the idea of building a better community
Me	What does a better community look like?
Elizabeth	Get people to visualise there ideal and plan steps to get there.
Me	That's my stuff, that's what I do. Social work, community building, the recovery model, aspiration based strengths planning!
Elizabeth	Yea - but regeneration encompasses envisioning a new way of life.
Me	Like hippy communes - Empowerment, solidarity and organic vegetarian food!
Elizabeth	LOL - Yea mum like that and tell them to ride share or ride bikes.

Thanks to this little conversation with my daughter I am beginning to get an understanding of sustainability that I can grab hold of. Sustainability in the context we are using it is the new Empowerment Theory or a branch of it.

This got me me thinking about my dear old Freire and I popped on to wikipedia for a wee look. Wouldn't you know it - Freire initiated work on ecopedagogy before he died which obviously links directly to sustainability and the earth charter. Wow I love learning and linking it all up.

So now I know that I do sustainability in my course, I have always done sustainability, I kind of suspected I might and actually I probably do it more than most with my passion for social justice, recovery, strengths and my emphasis on holistic and multi-cultural concepts of health and well-being which encompass mind, body, spirit, community, political and environmental elements.

I half formulated an idea one lunch time about sustainability in our school and it seems to have popped up as our sustainability strategy. It links sustainability to social justice which is all good and well but this feels like only half the story. It has to come full circle. I was thinking that social justice has to link back to the environment and then I read this in wikipedia

"The Earth Charter's ethical vision proposes that environmental protection, human rights, equitable human development, and peace are interdependent and indivisible"

and that makes sense to me. It get's me thinking about Maori models of health and well-being and I'm also thinking about Carl Jung's work with mandala's and the idea of universal connection. I suppose that brings me to the more contemporary concept of connectivism and wonder of wonders here I am back at online learning and the possibilities this provides in terms of access to knowledge and collaboration.

Check out Carl Jung's death experience and A great wee summary of Carl Young's key ideas

So back to sustainability in my class - apart from the problem of shoving to much information at my students in too short a time there seems no reason why I can't include some of Elizabeth's video's in my class. Here's a wee few from Elizabeth to get me started....

ACT NOW: cute vid with a young girl narrator, talking about climate change and how the "men in black suits" aren't listening despite all the warnings. 4 mins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kRP5x2MsAw

PLASTIC BAG TVC: funny little turtle guy talking about plastic bags and why we should not use them... 30 seconds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaWi_q7Z080

CANVAS BAGS BY TIM MINCHIN: very VERY funny song about canvas bags.... this guy won awards for this song!! :P 3.15 mins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVh15aUt8-c

PEAK OIL: HOW WILL YOU RIDE THE SLIDE?: kynda quirky vid about peak oil and explaing (simply) what peak oil means... or is going to mean for us. 2 mins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulxe1ie-vEY

HOW IT ALL ENDS: really cool vid, making the science of climate change/global warming really simple and easy to understand! 10mins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg

THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH: doco about how disgusting the great pacific garbage patch is, and how much damage its causing! something like 6 pieces of platic particla for every one plankton!! just under 10 mins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DVKztb-uTw

THE DANGERS OF PLASTIC BAGS: really beautiful video with images and scary facts about plastic bags and how much they harm our environment. Really good!! 9 mins.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhxX1g9A2OM&feature=related

Plus a couple of power ful photographs to finish on.

My Cultural Identity and Cultural Sensitivity and bit of a waffle about potential changes to delivery

I think this song must have been one of my mothers favourites for a time. I associate it very strongly
with my childhood and it always makes me smile.

Cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity are fundamental attributes in human service work so developing and enhancing these attributes in students is an integral aspect of my course. Quite literally my students do unit standards that encourage them to develop self awareness, including awareness of their own cultural identity and values and unit standards that deal with cultural awareness and working with diversity. Being that these are topics I teach and that they are fundamental tools in human service work, my own path of study has involved much exploration into my own cultural identity.

In relative brief, my cultural identity combines my ethnic ancestry past and present, the social, economic and political climate in which my ancestors grew, in which I have grown and in which I currently exist, and my particular characteristics and needs which may be genetic or learnt.

My ancestry is most recently Australian and /New Zealand and historically Scottish, Irish, French and English. The English part tells me very little on it's own as the English are such a hotch potch of assimilated ethnicities. One day I will do some more research into my true ethnic heritage. The Scottish aspect is certainly most dominant in terms of custom and practices which have been passed on and in terms of my own sense of physical and sprititual belonging. I have spent time in Scotland, England and France and when I cross the boarder into Scotland from England I experience a very strong sense of having come home.

Significant historical events that have impacted hugely on my culture include WWII, the great depression and the Anti Discriminatory movement of the 1960s/1970s. WWII had some very explicit impacts on my family culture, while the great depression has installed a certain thriftiness which keeps being passed on down through generations. The 1960s and 1970s have impacted hugely on my current belief and value system but also enabled my parents a degree of freedom in their lifestyle and parenting that I would not have been exposed to a decade earlier. My mother's family were open brethan and to this day run the open brethan church in Dunedin. My early years included a significant church culture which continues to influence me today in terms of certain moral standards and ideals I hold and many that I don't which result in a loss of contact with half my family.
In contrast to the strict church regime on Sundays, my parents were hippies with all that this entails. I grew up going to music festivals and beach parties and went to sleep at night to Leonard Cohen, David Bowie and sometimes to my mother playing beethoven's 9th symphony on her piano. Eventually the era enabled my parents to freely divorce and this had huge implications for my cultural identity.

My upbringing was primarily working class in terms of cultural capital, political outlook, income and geographical location but middle class in some of the ideals, patterns of behaviour and cultural symbols I was exposed to - books, ballet, theatre and music. My mother came from a middle class family that had risen from working class while my father came from a working class family which I suspect had fallen over several generations. The result was really a lot of confusion and a lack of any real sense of belonging anywhere which has huge implications for my current sense of cultural identity. After my parents divorced we were poor and they each diverted energy to their own seperate lives which created a significant sense of loss. My passion for acting sustained me through a wayward youth and in a round about way set me on my current path.

I met and married my husband in Australia, he was 19, English and on his gap year and I was 22. We struggled through years of poverty, putting ourselves through University with children in tow, running barter or green dollar systems with our neighbours. We traded childcare, homework support, reading, maths and science tuition for food, fresh fish, firewood etc. But even here there was a twist. My husbands family are wealthy and every two years they would come out from England and take us on a fantastic holiday. We have now been married 19 years, have three high achieving children, live in a nice house (a year ago I lived in a house with holes in the walls, roof, floor). On the surface anyone looking at me now would describe me as middleclass and somewhat privileged. A person might think that they could assign me a cultural identity but my current appearance betrays the layers of history and experience that define my cultural make-up and I have barely skimmed the surface here. My cultural identity in turn informs the characteristics and needs which I bring as a student into the classroom.

So my characteristics and needs? I need a lot of affirmation, I need to talk out loud or write things down in order to organise my thoughts, I need autonomy and to be trusted, I need to feel a sense of belonging and team. I am eternally optimistic and hopeful, I have total faith in the capacity of people to be and do anything they choose. I am hugely enthusiastic sometimes to the point of being over welming and over bearing. I am loyal and giving and kind and courageous and opinionated and curious and analytical. I am committed, hard working, organised and so on.

The teacher who truly understands the complexity of cultural identity should never take a student at face value or assume that they know what that student is or what that student needs. Rather they should allow a student time to identify and formulate a sense of their own characteristics and needs and attempt to accomodate those as best they can.

As stated earlier, awareness of self and others or cultural sensitivity is explicitly integrated throughout my course. The integration of this learning starts in term 1 where students explore their own cultural identity, I introduce them to a brief 10, 000 year history of England and bring in guest speakers to introduce Maori and Ngai Tahu tikaka and te reo and the customs of various pacific and asian peoples in line with group membership. Students are intoduced to tools such as geneology, familiy trees, whakapapa, systems and ecological maps, name history searches and cultural symbols, heroes and rituals, VARK and a variety of other surveys exploring characteristics and needs. Students are encouraged to both use these tools and critique them. Students explore their ancestry and experieces in relation to their culture, values and attitudes in a journal format that starts in term 1 and continues through out the year and in a group work project culiminating in a poster and presentation capturing the ethnic make up of New Zealand, the relationship between Maori and the Crown and sub-cultures including one subculture that symbolises each group member. Students are also introduced to the Te Tiriti o Waitangi in Term 1 but I have decided to put this in term two where it fits much better and focus in term 1 on exploring culture.

The integration continues in term two where students learn about legislation, policy and the national strategic plans that underpin requirements in relation to cultural sensitivity. This course covers Application of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, international and national human rights legislation, worker responsibilities and consumer rights. In the third term students explore theories and models of practice which includes a 10, 000 year overview of different cultural perspectives on mental health and a closer look at specific recovery based models including Maori, Pacific, Europeon and other ethnic models relevant to the cultural make-up of the group. In term four students pull it all together in a framework for practice which demonstrates self awareness in terms of strengths, risks, knowledge, skills and values and plans for ongoing professional development.

I think that I will continue to work with cultural sensitivity in the same way that I have been doing apart from the change already mentioned involving moving The Treaty component to term two where it is a much better fit. While parts of the first term course could go on line, I think the face to face interaction and group work aspect of the term one focus are an integral part of the learning. Students are in a situation of having to explore their own characteristics and needs in relation to the characteristics and needs of others. It is immediate and present. I have them share there characteristics and needs in groups, write a combined group set of characteristics and needs then share these again with the whole class. We then use this as a base for our class contract. It works so well in terms of setting the class culture for the year that I would be very disappointed to lose this.

Having said that, my students do a full time course in one day contact per week. I have initiated over the past couple of years an initial 3 day orientation which brings the contact days up to 10. It is possible that if the students did some introductory and follow up material on line, the face to face stuff could be done in combination with an orientation face to face week and they could probably even manage the group poster stuff in this time frame. In fact, it would probably work better than it does now.

Term two could go pretty much entirely on line - with maybe a two day hui at the end of the term. Term 3 has some significant skills stuff and would need at least a week long face to face work shop and Term 4 could go on line with a two day presentation and celebration to finish.

Hmmm - I have been thinking about a fairly significant shift to online delivery but this is the fist time I have actually mentally worked through the feasibility of this.

Currently my course has 36 contact days (34 plus 2 orientation days). This would reduce it to 14 contact days but I wonder how much time it would then take (beyond initial set up time) to cater to students on line. Could it take more than the 20 days I would save?

I wouldnt be making these changes to make the programme more cost effective as it is already pretty cost effective but rather to attract more students which of course may ultimately make it more cost effective too. It would be interesting to talk to people using blended delivery about how much face to face to include. In a recent discussion with my current students they were quite adamant that they needed weekly contact but could see 2 hours being sufficient rather than the current 6. I wonder if you could provide an optional face to face for local students preferring this option and a weekly elluminate session for others? Would this reduce equitable access or increase flexibility in terms of meeting student needs? What do people think?

Access and Equity - Universal Design

Universal design as a concept originated in Social Disability theory and in anti discriminatory ideas. In social disability theory there is no such thing as disability, only a disabling environment. This theory led to making changes in the environment so that services, products, buildings etc were more accessible thus enhancing social inclusion and reducing social exclusion and stigma.

Universal design is defined as " an approach to the design of all products and environments to be as usable as possible by as many people as possible regardless of age, ability or situation". (Universal Design Education on Line, 2004). There are seven principles associated with Universal design including;

1) Equitable Use
2) Flexibility in Use
3) Simple and Intuitive Use
4) Perceptible Information
5) Tolerance for Error
6) Low Physical Effort
7) Size and Space for Approach and Use

NC State University 1997

The Center for Universal Design

Universal Design Education on Line

The Centre for Universal Design makes the point that not every principle is applicable to every design and that in practice designers must also consider factors such as economic, engineering, cultural, gender, and environmental concerns in their design processes.

How could these principles be applied in my course;

1) Equitable Use - I think this principle is already applied in my course. The course is open entry and my students consist equally of individuals working within the mental health industry and consumers who access these services. My students range in age from 17 to 60 are generally about 50/50 male and female, include different ethnic groups and come with severe literacy issues and degrees. I work hard to establish a warm and trusting environment where everyone is valued equally for the expertise they bring and where skills and abilities are shared.

2) Flexibility in Use - Again I think this is something that I'm doing well but there is always room for improvement. I work really hard to cater to different learning styles both in the way I present material and in my approach to assessment. By learning styles I am referring specifically to VARK and less specifically to all aspects of a person's character, culture and experiences that make them who they are. I think that as I develop more material online, I will be increasingly able to cater better to different learning styles, needs and learning preferences. I have loved getting material on line for students this year as it means that students can go at their own pace. I definitely think that it is possible to provide students with different means to the same end - choice from a range of activities, readings etc that will take them to the same learning outcomes and I would like to work towards a course site that includes this choice. I am keen to get optional audio's done for all my power point presentations, and I would love eventually to have audio's attached to all the readings and words linked to a thesaurus or glossary of terms. I want more interactive material such as quizzes and games and I am experimenting with online ways of providing creative assessment opportunities.

3) Simple and Intuitive Use - I am making progress with this. I both coordinate my particular course and do most of the lecturing on it so I continue to work at integrating and simplifying course material and assessments and standardising presentation and language which I think considerably enhances the extent to which material becomes simple and intuitive. This has been difficult because my course is unit standard based and external moderators want evidence that every PC has been addressed. I have to accommodate moderators needs which in my experience are bizarrely removed from students needs - I have increasingly prioritised student needs which has meant less positive feedback from external moderators but more accessible material for students and a more healthy sense of integrity for me. One change I have made in preparing assessments is thinking what do the students want to know - I now put the assessment due date first. This is ongoing and up for continual review in the face of ongoing student groups with different needs.

4) Perceptible Information - As with an earlier response, I think that as I develop more online material I am better able to cater to peoples sensory needs. I have made ongoing changes to my presentation material over the four years I have been teaching. In my first year my overheads were far too many and the writing was far too small. In my second year I re did all of these with much less and much bigger writing. In my third year I added lots of pictures and in my fourth year - this year I have moved to power point and could not go back. I am so mad at myself for not just using power points in the beginning. What was I frightened of? I am strongly encouraging colleagues who are still using overheads to make the change. I love using power points but it is still a challenge to get these right in terms of not making them over stimulating or distracting, making sure writing is readable against backgrounds, ensuring that they have enough material to act as lecture notes and not too much. One thing I have learnt is never to use green pen on the whiteboard or green font in power points as it is much harder to read than other colours. I note that this flexible learning course does not really have any lecture notes just a brief introduction to each topic area and then a bit of a guided tour - I think that is entirely appropriate for a level 7 course but I am sure that a level 4 unit standard based course that is underpinned by industry competencies is different (I'm preempting perceived criticism here and I do wonder if more online material in terms of a guided tour will enable a move away from lecture notes - I suspect it might but part of me is convinced that equitable access requires a set of simple lecture notes for some students - I'm certainly open to other views and to being convinced otherwise on this one!

5) Tolerance for Error - Hmmm - Although this is not directly relevant I'm thinking about this in terms of an assessment task I developed recently with my colleague Kate Timms. The task was individual but we built in a consultation session where students presented their work to peers and got feedback on their plans. Peers had to provide suggestions and students then had to critically reflect on these and modify their plans accordingly. We wanted the students to experience a consultation process but the activity also provided formative feedback resulting in a higher pass rate accross the board. In an earlier blog I discussed the EDC session with Phil Ker, Otago Polytechnic CEO. One of the things that Phil talked about was removing the stress point caused by Assessment and focusing more on formative assessment and less on summative assessment. Earlier this year Heather Day also got me thinking about this stress point when she asked the question in a training seminar - How do students see assessment? I realised that assessment is infinatetly stressful for students so much so that for many it takes the pleasure out of learning - causing students displeasure and stress is totally out of sycnh with what I aim to do so I am trying to figure out ways of doing this more organically. My sister recently graduated from teachers college and she talked about the idea of 'assessment in situe' where teachers spend more time observing students in natural settings. The teachers 'observations' then become the assessment. Unfortunately this requires that students are present which does not fit easily with the move to more online learning but I guess if you set the students up with an online group task for example then you could observe how they participated in that task and give them feedback on that - the student could work towards group outcomes over a year and assess themself against these. I am working towards more self and peer assessed tasks and more formative assessment as I think this does reduce the hazards for students and staff. One excellent recent example is using collaborative google docs for a group assessment. I became a collaborator with the students - offering feedback as they worked towards their end product - because they have had the feedback as they go, they will pass the assesment with a very high standard. It occurs to me though - that they might not know this!

6) Low Physical Effort - I'm not sure this one ie relevant - I could change it to low mental effort but that wouldn't be consistent with the deep level reflective learning I encourage. I may have to think more about this one.

7) Size and Space for Approach and Use - I guess this oes have relevace for equitable access but it's getting late and I can't think what.

Conclusion
The principles for Universal Design are definately applicable in my course!

Inflexible teaching is what I grew up with. It is why I spent most of my secondary experience in the corridor. Sounds of "out the door miss McNeill" reverberate in my ears to this day, I still struggle with a stupidity complex and I bring this experience and undersanding to my student group many of whom have has similiar experiences.

Access and equity are the antithesis of inflexibility they are what flexible teaching is all about. Flexible teaching is about practicing this craft in a post modern world where we are aware of diversity and the uniqueness of individuals, where we appreciate the validity of different world views, different ways of being, different learning styles and dfferent learning needs.

Flexible teaching is about ensuring that as many students as possible can access material. Accessability is not just about physical access but about emotional, mental and spiritual access too but I will talk more abouty this under 'Cultural Sensitivity'.

Cheers
Jenny

Flexble Learning in Educational Settings

Well I have watched the Kaplan university adds 1 and 2 (an expensive looking add campaign), read Otago Poly's Charter (Which I am reasonably familiar with), listened to the ellumiate session with Phil Ker (which was fascinating) and then gone off and read a few colleagues blogs and plans. I found Helen's and Gary's particularly useful in terms of the upcoming task. I'm pleased to say that I am no longer a lurker - It's just because I now know how to leave comments! I have not carried out a formal interview with a colleague but I have talked a lot with my colleague David McQuillian who has been a huge inspiration for me so maybe I can talk about that a bit and add an interview at a later date.

I actually really enjoyed listening to members of EDC and Phil talking about fexible learning but I'm not sure if a distinction was made between 'flexible' and 'online' learning or not. Phil described the Polytechnics motives for flexible learning and these were summarised on the whiteboard as Access, Learner Autonomy and Cost Efficiencies. These motivations seem to be more alighned with online learning than with the much broader concept of flexible learning. Phil went on to describe what we mean by flexible learning which again emphasised ideas associated with online learning and gave the example of CAPL and the online development work of other schools. What I found particularly interesting was that when Phil talked about examples from his own teaching experience, they were not online examples, rather he talked about quality teaching, hours of planning in order to get the delivery just right, motivating and inspiring a passion for knowledge and learning in all his students. He talked about one group who maintained motivation because of weekly classroom sessions.

I think that flexible learning has become synonymous with online learning and that this is potentialy detrimental for quality education particularly in the current poltical economic environment. There is a danger of promoting online learning at the expense of providing quality education and I think that educationalists should take care not to get too caught up in the sensationalist aspects but rather try to maintain some focus in what is best for this group of students/ for this course etc. If flexible learning is at least in part about catering more to the needs of students rather than to the needs of teachers then it stands to reason that providing a quality education for all students could become more time consuming for teachers, more labour intensive and more rather than less expensive. Certainly online and self directed activities will meet some student's needs but there will always be student's whose needs require face to face and significant scaffolding. In a truly flexible environment the teacher would then be needing to run face to face sessions and online sessions which is in keeping with the idea of blended delivery.

Having said this, call me cynical but we are in a political and to some extent economic climate (I think in the current context the econonmic climate is enabling the political one) that requires a shift to online learning whether we like it or not. I think that if we are passionate about education we have a duty to jump on this band wagon, learn some skills and figure out how we can provide the most flexible learning environment possible for our students.

Reflecting a little bit more the climate isn't only one which is being imposed by political agenda and economic need, rather it is about social change. The world, what we think about knowledge and our right to access this is infinately different from what it was twenty years ago. I suspect educators who are refusing to go online will find themselves being left behind. I already see evidence of this in the groups I teach. Many of my students young and old have moved sgnificantly in the last few years, this year I still have students struggling with the idea of online resourses and I happily provide three students in my group with hard copies of the material. I also have 6 out of 16 students in this particular group using laptops in the class room which is very exciting but I am drifting somewhat off track.

The final point here is just to reiterate that I think flexible learning and online learning are two very different things. Online activities can potentially enhance my capacity to be a more flexible teacher but going online will not make me flexible. On the contrary going entirely online could be particularly inflexible.

Colleagues I have talked to in the massage course and midwife school who have successfully enhanced their capacity to offer flexible learning by going online have done so by offering a blended delivery. The massage course combines block face to face practical sessions with online theory. I think there is a lot of scope for this kind of delivery in my course. I found David's shift to online learning absolutely inspirational. I feel if massage can do it, then mental health support certainly can too. I have learnt a lot from David as he figures out the in's and outs of delivering his course online. One thing that he has suggested and which I will definatelty heed is the importance of setting the course up on an information management system like blackboard or Moodle. He set his students up from the outset on Blogs and does not think this was the most student friendly move. I will need to go back and interview him more formally to clarify his thinking here but it has rubbed off on me. I have also learnt about the use of google docs and google groups which are both tools I can see being very useful in my course.

A little bit more about blackboard - this time last year I had only used it as a student in my PD courses. My colleague Kate Timms introduced me to it more thoroughly and I now have most of my courses set up here. I am already finding blackboard a bit limiting but that said , I just feel so ignorant and like I have deprived my students of so much by not using this tool more thoroughly in the past. I can't wait to get my head around Moodle and move to that.

The mid wife course held a significant face to face orientation in which students learnt the necessary computing skills in addition to getting to know each other at an overnight camp. I think this would be an important aspect in scaffolding my students. I am also really excited by the work sarah stuart is doing with Second Life for the Mid Wife Course. I can see this potentially being a fabulous tool in my course. I think the thing for me to remember is to not try and do everything at once.

Chees
Jenny

Student Safety in on line Forums

I've just been off visiting a site from the extra resources section open thinking educator. Knowing Leigh a little, I expect we were linked to that site because there is a significant and ongoing debate on that site about copyright and access to information. Leigh is big on the idea of free education and the theme is followed through in his second extra resources link.

I haven't actually formed an opinion on that topic yet but what interested me about the site was the intensity of the debate. It felt like any minute now they were going to start throwing things or hitting each other. Clearly participants were engaging by choice and could choose not to engage but it all started from one guy stating his vision for open education. In my student cohort there are always some very vulnerable students. I'm picturing one of them making an 'innocent' or perhaps niave value ridden statement and coming under public scrutiny and attack. That could be absolutely soul destroying and worse for some of my students. It is an issue that needs considerable thought in relation to online learning. Ensuring our students safety can be difficult enough in the face to face environment.

Thoughts on time

The work under 'Examples of Flexible Learning' just took me nearly three full days to complete. Given that I tend to work at a slower pace than most people and that our instructors estimated three weeks at 5 hours per week, I'd just like to say damn fine job of estimating the workload guys. I'm impressed. But I had better pick up the pace if I'm planning to catch up and be ready for my presentation next Friday. I do wish I was more able to do things superficially!!!

Cheers
Jenny