I’m putting a prezi together to try to edge out the competition for a job in teaching and learning.  I figure the prezi should be different to your standard CV, and include all the things that get left out of a traditional job app.  One thing that I never seem to include in the usually 10+ page applications is my philosophy of teaching/learning.  So now I’m trying to write one and every time I sit down, all the wonderful words I had in my head as I paced around the room disappear.  It’s a tragedemy!

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See, I got nothin’.

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One of the key findings from my doctoral studies is that student engagement often depends upon how well we frame a learning activity, be it online, face-to-face or as an on-your-own reflective activity. A classic error made by many is that we must mandate (and grade) participation.  But, students often do not engage with ‘busy work’, seeing it as not contributing much to their learning.  And while it may seem to overcome the problem of attendance, it does not really encourage engagement.

For us to capture the hearts and minds of our students we must be clear about the value of the activity to their learning.  We must be sure of the purpose and the outcome of exercise.  To do this, we must connect with them on multiple levels.

It helps that I am a multi- and inter-disciplinary scholar with a love of learning.  My philosophy of teaching speaks to this love. I teach from a systems perspective. I use multiple connections between ideas to engage students.  I engage them with the purpose of the activity and try to be clear of the outcome for them.  This provides a solid basis for their engagement.

I believe that learning stems from the heart and the mind, not just the body, although it, too, plays a significant role in learning. We judge students by their actions, by the way they engage in the classroom, but this is only the body.  Their hearts and minds may well be elsewhere, but with joy and encouragement, we can bring them all together.

I believe that education is an interaction, between what is past and what is to come, what is known and unknown – meeting roundly in the middle.  This is a challenge for some, wanting only to know what is, to give back what they get, to pass the assessment.

It was Socrates (apparently) who first stated: Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.  This is the purpose of learning, of connecting, of dreaming.

Too much?

I’ve just realised something.

A few months ago, I bought a bar table from Ikea to act as a standing desk because sitting all day created a certain pain in a certain part of my anatomy.  It’s been great, for most things, but I moved back to the desk and sitting because, it occurs to me, I’ve done significantly less writing while standing than sitting (and I really need to finish this job app).

I tend towards starting things and not quite finishing them, but lately, I have barely even started anything.

Perhaps sitting reduces the blood flow from my brain.  Make of that what you will!

I’m putting a job app together and one of the criteria is ‘significant experience in higher education’.  I know I’ve missed something from this list, but I’m thinking this is getting close to ‘significant’, although it is over a short period of time. Read more of Significant experience in higher education

Once upon a time, there was a discipline.  Oh it was a little discipline, but it was everywhere.  Every time it looked around, it saw evidence of itself in almost everything people did.  The little discipline was Information Systems.  It knew what it was, but many other people thought they knew what it was.  The problem was one of perception.  You see, IS (its nickname) saw the systems and the information that underlay everything we do.  It watched the communication, the processes and the design of the information, the ways in which people used the information and the embeddedness of information within their current lives.

The problem was that many people only saw the computers.  They couldn’t see what went on inside.  It was like magic, because any computer they sat down at gave them information.  Sometimes the information wasn’t exactly what they wanted, so they cursed the computer.

The little discipline tried to help.  It was all “I’m in ur computrs computin’ ur informations“, but people only heard the word computer.

The little discipline tried so hard to be whatever people wanted (and what they needed, regardless of what they thought they wanted).  It made proposals for ‘Information Management‘ (and just look where that got us).  It hung around TED, and really enjoyed the concept of the sliced bread, but that kinda belonged to another discipline.  It knew it wasn’t a purple cow, because NO-ONE wanted to see it. It was more like the annoying little pipsqueak with the annoying little voice and it looked way too much like a box with buttons.

There were so many things that some really clever people did with it (see Prezi, Youtube, FaceBook, to name just a few).  Some people were concerned that IS was a bit scrugged, because there were bad things being done in its name (see DRM) and even its name was being faffed with.  Although, it really liked that some people had shortened its name to Informatics, it worried when people added things, like Accounting Information Systems.  That just seemed to cut it off from all the interesting bits, like its hands and feet so it felt it couldn’t go anywhere.  Don’t get me wrong, IS knew that accounting was important, but it wasn’t everything.  Accounting Information Systems is not a purple cow, it’s not the stuff of which innovation is made.

At this point in the story, IS doesn’t know what to do.  It wants to show the power of the purple cow, it wants people to enjoy and share the information.  But no-one wants it. It’s just a box with buttons.