Learn how to learn

I have been reading a blog called 'The Clever Sheep', and Rodd Lucier has a recent post about learning called 'Learning to Change: Changing to Learn'.  Wow - this is a powerful message  that resonates for me when I am thinking about my role as a Leader or Educator for the future. 

The brief video has a collection of international speakers who give us their view of the challenges for students and teachers.  One theme is that students today are so engaged in a rich social network of email, text messaging and instant messaging, yet these activities are all banned at school.  Students find a richer, more  stimulating environment outside the classroom, rather than at school.  Students learn in so many different ways now and we need to teach them  about creativity, working in the context of the situation, working in teams and environments that are multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary and multi-lingual.

I believe that this applies for students, learners  and educators of all ages. Whether they are young people at school, university students, or people learning in the workplace we need to have less of a focus on memorising facts, and more focus on learning how to learn - how to find out information, how to validate it, communicate it, find solutions to problems.  If we do this - we can engage learners in learning how to learn.  What do you think?  How do you approach learning and teaching in your context?

Conferences - where shall I go next??

It's that time of the year to start planning my activities for the year ahead.  I have been thinking about which conferences I would like to attend, and where I can afford to go.  I also think about the places I would like to visit and see if there is a conference on at a convenient time - unfortunately that hasn't worked out for me yet!

I have been accepted to present a paper at the Loddon Mallee Allied Health Network, which is a small regional conference that will be held in Echuca, Victoria in March 2010.  The theme of the conference is  'Emerging Realities of Allied Health Practice' and I am planning to talk about online tools that can support reflective practice. It sounds like a fun conference.

I have applied to a couple of other conferences.  I am really hoping to go to the International Federation of Social Work conference in Hong Kong in June 2010, but not sure if we will be accepted, and not sure if I can afford it.   Time will tell, and I have a few applications for funding in the pipeline at the moment.

Do you like to go to conferences ? or present at conferences?  Do you have any suggestions for funding?  How do you find out about conferences that are on?  I have found this great website called Conference Alerts and once you subscribe and  choose the topics you are interested in, it sends me a monthly list of conferences all around the world. Do you know of any others?   Now let me see... any conferences  in Hawaii??

Are you feeling lucky?

                  I've found that luck is quite predictable. If you want
            more luck, take more  chances.  Be more active.
            Show up more often.  Brian Tracy.


I had to read through this one a few times.  Can luck be predictable?  Are there people out there that are luckier than others?  Do people make their own good luck or bad luck?  Maybe it depends on your beliefs and your understanding of the world.

 I really like this quote  and it resonated for me.  If you want more luck - then take more chances...  but can it  really be that simple.  If you are more active and show up more often, you are going to be more involved, more engaged and more likely to be in the right place at the right time.  Which is luck  - right?

What do you think?  Is Brian right and is luck predictable?

PhD progress

I have been plodding along with my PhD and I feel like I am starting to build some momentum.  I have had a few weeks off work and been able to work on it full time and I can see the shape beginning to emerge.  I'm not sure if this is how it will look in the end, but it does feel helpful to start to build some structure around my reading and writing.

I had a bit of a panic this week when I realised how much more there is to do.  I have written around 10,000 words, and my final thesis will be around 100,000 words, so there is a long way to go.  Of course, I haven't started data collection yet, and this will form the main part of my thesis. The bit that I am up to is finalise my research proposal and make decisions about all of the details.  Things like which methodology I will use, how do I design the right method, how do I write a literature review that incorporates all of the literature that I have accumulated.  Then I will present to a University panel for Confirmation that I can proceed with the research, and the I need to apply for Ethics approval.   

The literature review is the bit where I felt really stuck - I was surrounded by papers and it was all starting to feel like it's all too hard.   But then I thought, I have been doing this for two years already, and I am not going to throw all of that away.  I need to break it down into smaller chunks, and work on each bit, one at a time.  And later, I will make sure that all the pieces go together properly.

Has anyone else been in this situation before?  Do you have any suggestions that might help me?

E-portfolio and citations

I have been starting to think about how to develop a portfolio of my academic activities, publications and presentations and I am wondering about the best format to use.   I looked  at developing a CV, which is a bit like a detailed resume and is a written collection of my academic achievements, publications, presentations etc.

I have been exploring the world of e-portfolios and thinking about whether I need  collection of citations.  I sometimes come across a review that a person has written about a presentation that I have done, or their thoughts about an article that I have written and I thought it would be good to gather this information together in one central place.

There are some fantastic examples out there.  Sarah Stewart's e-portfolio is one of the best that I have seen and includes her biography, employment, projects, publications and awards.  

I have also discovered a citation tracker that was developed by Panos Ipeirotis - this is a program that uses Google Scholar to find your publications. I think the term 'citation' in this context relates to what I would call 'journal publication'.    Panos blogged about monitoring citations and after clicking around his blog and profile I discovered that   Panos also has this awesome academic tree where he has tracked his academic genealogy.  It looks like a fun thing to do, and is a powerful representation of  academic history and being able to track this over time.  From Panos' page, I found Gene Golovchinsky and he also writes about the importance of measuring citations.  Gene also suggests that it is a good way to find papers that you might have forgotten about, or new things that need follow up.  Gene and Panos are computer science experts and I am sure they have computer skills that are way out of my league.

I am looking for something simple to use, cheap (preferably free) and easy to update.  Do you have any suggestions or ideas that might help me or lead me in the right direction?  What do you use to keep track of publications, presentations and citations?

My PhD - Wordle Cloud

I am nearing the end of my second year of my PhD studies and I thought it was time to check out where I am up to. I have been studying part time and plodding along, and this year I took 4 months off after my mum died.  I have enjoyed taking a break, but now I am starting to feel impatient to get going again.  I've had a few weeks off work and been able to study full time and this has been really enjoyable.

I thought it was a good time to do another wordle cloud to display and distill my PhD writing.  Wordle is a tool  for generating “word clouds” from text.   I have copied the text from my PhD writing over the past two years - I am up to around 10,000 words.  The  wordle clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.  It is pretty cool and you can make your clouds look different  with funky fonts, layouts, and color schemes. 

It's interesting to see the themes that are emerging from my thinking, reading and writing.  Do you have any feedback or comments about my wordle word cloud?

 

Professor Mick Dodson AM presenting the 209 Sir John Quick Lecture.

A crowd turned out in the early evening of Melbourne Cup Day to hear Mick Dodson's presentation. I didn't really know what he would be talking about, but based on the little that I know of him, I was expecting a passionate lecture about indigenous rights. And we weren't disappointed. As the crowd trickled in, I thought about the demographics of the people here and I wondered why there weren't more young people here.   

Professor Dodson talked about Sir John Quick, who migrated to Australia and worked in a few different jobs, including journalism, law and was knighted for his work in establishing the foundations for the Australian Federation. This was a man who achieved great things, and this is the power of having a dream, persistence and education.

Professor Dodson talked about human rights. He reminded us  'that we can't think that any problem is too hard or that it will go away. It won't. We all agree that every child deserves a good education, yet we don't deliver it. We have failed these children. There has been recent works with rebuilding schools and new classrooms, but are there good teachers for all of the schools, even the remote and far away ones. The education revolution begins and ends with people. We need to see the worth and potential in every person.'

Professor Dodson spoke about a school in the ACT that took Grade 5 kids away on a camp and when they came back to the school, they discovered that the Grade 4 kids had moved into their classroom. The Grade 5 kids told them to leave, but they refused. The Grade 4 kids were supported by their teacher and they liked the new classroom so they decided to stay. The Grade 4 kids kept all of belongings and work of the Grade 5 kids and refused to give it back. The Grade 5 kids were sad and confused and felt like they had been tricked, but the grade 4 kids didn't care. Sound familiar? This kind of critical, experiential learning delivers a powerful message to students and parents about Australia's history.

Professor Dodson issued some challenges to the Government - "if we are aiming for social inclusion  this  is about an inclusive society that we all feel proud of and we all feel part of.  How can we achieve this when the Government suspends the Racial Discrimination Act in the Northern Territory to specifically target policy at Indigenous people? There are many gaps to close and expectations to do well. We need to teach people about their rights and the rights of other people. We can only be fully inclusive when the wisdom and the vote of disadvantaged people can be heard".

It was an inspiring, provocative and challenging lecture and I left feeling that there is more that I can do personally, for both indigenous people and also other people who are experiencing disadvantage. 

What about you - Have you ever been to a passionate lecture like this - where you got inspired to take action or do something  differently?  What did you do and how did it turn out?