learning spaces – JAMES MICHIE

Desk!

Here is my desk. As you can see it is positioned facing towards the wall, away from the class.

The desk is faced this way as I have no need of it during my lessons other than to be a home for my laptop. While my lesson is taking place, more often than not, you will find me, in amongst my students, working with them, talking to them, guiding them.

A desk and a comfy chair can be very tempting, particularly towards the end of a long day. It can be easy to slip behind it and teach from there, but that is not good teaching and will certainly not encourage good learning. Don’t let your desk become a barrier between you and your students. For me, this was the first mistake David Starkey made in ‘Jamie’s Dream School’, he went in with an ‘us and them’ attitude, setting a desk in front of himself as a barrier; orating from the front. Instant fail!

If I didn’t need to attach my laptop the board I would seriously consider removing the desk all together. Could you live without yours? Why not try it and see?

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Oh, and yes the Glee calendar is mine, let the abuse begin!

Please Feel Free To Use My Stuff!

Several people have blogged recently on Creative Commons licenses and what to do when people steal your work, presenting it as their own.

I’m jumping on the bandwagon a little and offering my perspective on the re-use of material from my blog. I use a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 U.K. license which allows you to copy, distribute, display, perform and make derivative works from my blog content. I picked this license because I wish to share. I am in the habit of “giving gifts”! (Godin, 2009) This is a philosophy that I deeply believe in. On my blog itself I have tried to stay true to that same ethos when using found material. If I have used others work, I have given them credit, added links and contacted them to let them know that I’m using their stuff. I simply ask that anyone who uses material that I have made and published here do the same. So here is a statement that I plan to feature permanently on my blog.

If you wish to use any of the material published on this blog, then please:

Give me credit. Acknowledge the work is not your own.
Provide people with a link. This could be my blog address included at the end of a PowerPoint presentation or a hyperlink on your blog. Whatever it is, it will allow any interested parties to visit the source of the original content and perhaps find other material that they might find interesting.
Contact me. Let me know what you have used, why, and what the results were. Perhaps I can help? I may have ideas to share or more information which may be of use. I may even offer to feature a post about you/your work on my blog.

Considering this issue has made me reflect on why I blog.

My blog is my “cave” (Thornburg, 2007) where I internalise, reflect and evaluate. It is why I moved beyond writing a class blog to writing this, a personal blog that is unashamedly for me, about me. This is not ego tripping but a feature of my journey as a life-long learner. My “cave”, however, is made of glass so that anyone can look in on my learning journey. And I have provided a convenient in-tray where people can leave comments, questions, ideas. My blog therefore, is also the “watering hole” (Thornburg, 2007) or at least a conduit to it, much of the discussion generated on the blog being transferred to Twitter where it continues and evolves. This is why I blog, for me, and for you. This blog is my “gift”!

If the “cave” and “watering hole” metaphors have left you either intrigued or confused, then please read: Campfires in Cyberspace by David D. Thornburg Ph.D.

You may also like to read more about “giving gifts”, if so try: Linchpin by Seth Godin

CC Logo courtesy of Drew Baldwin on Flickr.

TeachMeet Moodle

Today I gave a presentation to fellow Moodlers at the first ever TeachMeet Moodle which was organised by Dan Humpherson (@MoodleDan) and was hosted at Heythrop College in Kensington, London. The Meet kicked off at 11:00 with speed “dating” networking followed by a series of excellent and varied presentations.

The Twitter hash tag for the event is: #TMMoodle.and you can see a complete archive of the tweets here. All the details about the Meet can be found here, including a list of attendees, presentation titles and discussion topics.

Below is the recording of my presentation: Blended Learning: How Moodle changes the learning inside and outside of my classroom. Thanks to Leon Cych (@eyebeams) for recording all of the presentations.

[Update]: The video of the presentation is no longer available.

And here are the slides I used in the presentation. I did overrun a little but I don’t think anyone was too upset by that! 🙂

During my presentation I briefly discussed my belief that Moodle brings the ‘learning spaces’ of the campfire, watering hole and cave into one place, blending them together. My understanding of these concepts represent my response to reading David D. Thornburg Ph.D.‘s ‘Campfires in Cyberspace’. You can read it here and see an extensive mind map that I created exploring the ideas put forward by Thornburg here.

Presentations of note:

After dealing with a few technical issues, Gideon Williams (@gideonwilliams) used Prezi to show a wide variety of plugins that help improve the functionality and interactivity of Moodle. This really hit home as I am always looking to improve the way that I use Moodle. (See the video here.)

The other presentation that struck a chord was delivered by Dai Barnes (@daibarnes) who showed off some fab moodling at St Benedict’s School. Their VLE looks great and is used really well by a member of their Music department. Great results from a teacher being encouraged to experiment with Moodle. (See the video here.)

Honourable mentions also go to Miles Berry (@mberry) for his presentation about using Moodle to teach teachers about e-learning (and for being a really nice guy); Daniel Needlestone (@nstone) who kept it light-hearted with his ‘Mallards and Moodle’ presentation; and Helen Morgan (@nellmog) who made a strong case for form being as important as functionallity within a Moodle course. You can see their presentations (and the rest) here.

I would like to say thanks to everyone involved. It was my first TeachMeet and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Anticipating and looking forward to the next one.

#mootuk10 (Holes In Walls & Cyberspace)

I just found out that I have been quoted in an article on Moodle Monthly written by Kristian Still (@Kristianstill) and Craig Sumner (@hamblecollege). The article offers a recap of the first day of this years Moodle Moot UK. You can read the article here.

I am quoted, responding to the back channel discussion (via Twitter) that was flowing, in response to Professor Sugata Mitra’s keynote on “Hole In The Wall”. A stunning and humbling project which began in 1999 when he was working in Delhi. Working next to a slum he knocked through a wall and stuck a computer in with an Internet connection. After just a month many kids had taught themselves to use the computer improving their literacy and numeracy skills. This turned into a huge project that has seen massive success.

His talk, while I am yet to see it, was clearly very inspirational as it prompted masses of praise on Twitter and sparked a very interesting discussion about the nature of learning, literacy and the benefits/drawbacks of different learning environments.

Learning environments is a topic within eduction that I have been researching and discussing quite a lot recently after reading “Campfires in Cyberspace” by David D. Thornburg, Ph.D. I was therefore naturally intrigued by the discussion arising on Twitter and got involved.

I am currently working on a visualisation of the ideas presented in “Campfires in Cyberspace” and will be blogging about this in the near future. To help myself in this process I used MindNode to create a mind map (click to view/download the mind map) of the concepts presented in the paper, collecting my thoughts and ideas as I read.

Both Prof. Mitra and Prof. Thornburg, Ph. D. through their research raise some very interesting ideas about the way learning takes place and the environments in which that learning happens. My own thoughts at the moment are centered (as the quote in the article suggests) around the idea that the traditional notion of the classroom as “learning environment” is outdated and that “learning” is not constrained to any one environment but is facilitated by multiple / interchangeable environments – many of which are free of walls; be it outside (like the “Hole In The Wall” project) or virtually (in “Cyberspace”).

Here is the quote as featured in the Moodle Monthly article:

I will stop there as I am using up content that will be included in a future post.

Moodle Moot UK (#mootuk10) seemed enthralling and I really wish I could have been there today. I was happy to follow the conversation online however and as usual the wonderful people on Twitter provided me with much food for thought today. You can catch up with and follow the tweets from Moodle Moot UK via Twitter Search here or view the archive on Twapper Keeper here. Why not go one step further and join in with the discussion – the hash tag for the event is #mootuk10.

Find out more about Professor Mitra and the “Hole In The Wall” project at the following links:

Find out more about Moodle and Moodle Moot UK here:

Find out more about Professor Thornburg, Ph. D. here:

Thanks to Kristian and Craig for including me in their article.

If you would like to know more about anything mentioned in this post please e-mail me or contact me on twitter @jamesmichie. Comments are always welcome.