FLP Prezi

Here it is... I look forward to expanding on it somewhat on Monday.

Take off to anaesthesia!

Enjoy!

Activity 11 - Indigenous learners

Inclusivity for Maori...

• First thing that springs to mind and is relatively "easy" to implement is some te reo... though being a perfectionist, I'd have to get a speaker to check the details for me.
• Second thing, is the information about the 4 aspects of Te Whare Tapa Wha. By ensuring these are securely in place, can only enhance likelihood of success in our "western" system of learning.
• It is interesting, is it not, that the cognitive part of these processes is that last part that falls into place - so there's a need to sort out all the other ducks into their lines before trying to foist learning on our indigenous learners.
• the four apects of which I speak:
• spiritual
• physical
• social and lastly 
• emotional (or cognitive)

If delivered by distance, adhering to tikaka is a little more difficult - but what we do do already is welcome our students to class (or first block course) and then break for shared kai. Last year a student responded to our welcome!

Challenges faced and how this affected learning...

We had a wonderful student in class last year - all 6foot 4 inches of her. Beautiful and lovely to boot. She struggled with literacy - we got her assessed, used SSS to help out, got a dictaphone, and when she went AWOL after failing a closed book assessment, the team at VN and SSS did heaps to bring her back. Which we did - and didn't she do well?

She got AWESOME feedback from her placement, and turned up at Graduation telling me she wanted to be an anaesthetic technician (it was the anaesthesia CBA she struggled with.) Fab.

What did we do differently for her than other learners?? Probably nothing... isn't this largely what we'd do for any student?

It wasn't her being Maori, that made learning difficult... it was just her. Or was it?? Maybe her Te Whare Tapa Wha's weren't in order??

Approaches Used

My theory around 18-21 year olds that are a minority group, is that lots just want to be part of the crowd... so my approach is to approach with caution. 

Just because they have brown skin and a whakapapa does not mean they "want" to identify as Maori. See the bit in the media files about how an ID will be adopted and the new world vs old world positions.

This is not to  say that I encourage this - but that this may be the reality for some of our learners. So don't blow their cover, but be there to support in anyway that can be helpful.

Other bits - we discourage eating and learning, I don't' sit on tables, do a welcome and Kai to start the year, and moreover - I am open to any needs that may arise during the year, from any group of learners...

Activity 10: Sustainable Flexible Learning

1. How can you become a more sustainable practitioner?
Balance: this is the word that springs to mind when thinking about how to become a more sustainable practitioner. 
A balance of lots of things:

• individual sustainability
• for me
• knowing how much flexibility and availability for all and sundry is sustainable for me, and what is not. Covered this before.
• working out and implementing ways of being more sustainable requires input for course development
• using existing ideas and OPEN EDUCATION RESOURCES to manage these new requirements
• for students
• thoughts from the article around over-lenght course materials and disengagement of learners
• being careful that if material is added to a course that it is accessible, readable, engaging, relevant, achievable and therefore sustainable for learners. 
• this excerpt from Lockwood rang true - and I think this is a reality of too many options and resources. Just overwhelming, rather than helpful. A down side of offering too many choices for how to learn???

"Furthermore, studies elsewhere have demonstrated that students employ a cost benefit analysis model (Lockwood, 1992) as they balance the benefits offered by the various course components against the costs they are likely to incur. The consumption of study time is regarded as a major cost. The skipping of set readings, and failure to respond to associated activities, to contribute to discussion boards, and to ignore whole parts of the course in an attempt to save time, not only detracts from both the scope of their learning and its quality but also contributes to feelings of inadequacy. It results in a poor learning experience."            Lockwood, 2005

• local sustainability
• reducing consumables in teaching(eg using recyclable scrub brushes, recycling practise bandaging materials)
• providing alternative resources like media files rather than the real deal, to limit repeated use of resources (eg post-mortem video cf dead animal)

• global sustainability
• balancing how much we can do, with the realities of living in 2012 - does knowing the big picture just make it too hard and cause disengagement? (eg carbon and tipping point issues; peak oil and energy constraints)

2. What sort of learning and teaching strategies meet your philosophy of sustainability?
In my view sustainable learning is largely based around the idea, that rather than providing all the answers and ticking all the boxes of every concept and detail (whether this be around traditional sustainability or educational susstanability), that we produce graduates that can problem solve: they know where to get the information, or how to look for information AND then can critique what they find. Life-long learners. 

Happily, it seems that my institution is of a similar thinking...

"Education for Sustainability at Otago PolytechnicThe skills and values of Otago Polytechnic graduates contribute to every sector of society.  Our curriculum, teaching and learning therefore is pervasive and influential with global impact.  The Otago Polytechnic sustainability vision is that our graduates, our practitioners and our academics understand the concepts of social, environmental and economic sustainability in order for them to evaluate, question and discuss their role in the world and to enable them to make changes where and when appropriate.  Our goal is that every graduate may think and act as a “sustainable practitioner”."   

So that the learner bit, and the me bit (as I don't have to spend loads of time to do this. It's about enabling learners for the long term).The global bit - personally, I believe we are completely done for, and it won't matter what we do from now... too much carbon released and we've passed the tipping point. The world will implode, and look VERY different to how we know it currently. But that's another whole story. A bleak one at that...Try reading Michael Lynos', "6 Degrees" - very depressing stuff.

3. My reflections about sustainability having viewed the presentations and completed the readings...

I thought that Sir Ken's pressie was awesome and every word of it true. Loved the idea that we only educate the waist up and that gets progressively higher up with age... that the body is just a means to move the head around... that education has mined our minds for academic learning only... Love it, every word. Funny guy.