30 July 2010 Week 1

This week I started the development work I have been working on.  I have been very encouraged about the way it has worked out, the response from the students, and feedback from the students has been really positive which has made all the work that I have put in developing worth while.

The week in review.

Wednesday 
I presented the letter box workbook to the students, before we started I informed them that Furniture and Joinery is going to run completely different from Carpentry. We thoroughly covered the book and I explained to them what it was that I expected from them and the level that was required. I got permission from the students to film them during class, and to use the video footage as a E-learning resource.

Students went through the 1st progress test which involved them working in a group, The progress test requires students to select their letterbox they wish to construct and use the measurements on the plans to create a cutting list, with that cutting list they work in groups of three to draw all their pieces into a picture of plywood so they can use this picture once it is done to apply to a real sheet of plywood in the practical workshop.

I started filming snippets of them working in their groups. Once the group work finished the students were required to write reflections on the progress test.

During the Carpentry component of multiskills, I encouraged students to participate and write meaningful reflection on the work they had completed. This was done because in the Furniture and Joinery component, reflections make up a large part of the course, and the students will be heavily assessed on their reflections.

This worked a treat when it came to student reflections on their first progress test, the reflections on their experience was very insightful and detailed some reflections offered advice on how the progress test could be improved which was surprising and very beneficial to me.

For example in the the progress test students were asked to work in a group, the students self selected their groups, in particular one group had 2 really reserved personalities and 1 natural leader, obviously the natural leader would take the initiative and lead the group through the exercise, while the other two sort of sat back. Upon completion, the reflection that came back from the the group leader reflected on how he could lessen the input he put into the exercise and evenly spreading the workload by breaking the exercise into roles where participants are responsible for a certain task. Now this is not by any means a new theory when it comes to group work, but I was taken back that a student had the initiative from his own experience to make mention of this. This is just one reflection that was valuable to me, it enables me to draw on the suggestions to improve the course.

in their groups the students than went into the practical workshop and proceeded to put what they had done in the progress test into action on their sheet of plywood.

Thursday
Today was spent in the practical workshop cutting their sheets of plywood into the correct size pieces for each individual and marking out the front of their letterboxes and using different machine and power tools to cut and sand their pieces.

Throughout the day students and I took video footage of key processes of constructing the letterbox.

I came home after work and was thinking what vehicle am I going to use to present the video footage to the class on Friday moodle? I didn't want to introduce the students to a new E learning resource so I decided to go with Facebook as the vehicle to running the video footage. I figure that these social networking sights are already widely used why not take our classroom experience to the students, in a setting they are already familiar with.  So I set up a facebook profile Rox Multiskills, also I set up a facebook viewing account View Unitec this is for those that don't have a facebook account, but are still able to access the video footage.


Friday 

I went to class a little bit nervous on how the students would react to me using facebook as a learning resource. I asked them who has a facebook account? 80% shot their hand up. At his stage i hadn't uploaded any videos on the facebook profile Rox Multiskills. I explained to them that I had set a facebook account with the sole purpose of showing their video footage on, and that they had to become friends in order to view the footage. I asked them if any had objections? the response was very encouraging they immediately gave me their account names so we could connect. I now have 80% of the class connected on face book the other 20% have access to the View Unitec profile to access the account.

I proceeded to show them the video footage that had been taken over the last couple of days. Now in the work book there are two blank pages that ask the question to explain the process used to get to a certain stage of the letter box. Using the videos we recorded these processes. Showing these videos helps the students to record the processes they experienced, this is backed up with discussions, and question and answers to help complete their process recordings.



Another another student added that they now found the progress test easy................this hit a spot with me, I have always found that tests were hard and you had to study for hours on end to retain all the knowledge you were to be tested on. Assignments should be hard and you had to go to the library and read copious amounts of books on theories and processes and rewrite them in your own words to answer the learning outcomes etc etc etc. Now to hear that they found this was EASY was not a word that i associated with assessment.

I asked the students why was this easy? They explained to me that because they are being tested on the process they had already done the practically and with the use of the video, discussion and question and answer, writing the process down to back up the learning process, that questions that were being asked were now well ingrained into their minds. They mentioned that with the use of the video footage as a learning resource was something they enjoyed immensely, as a students said "because its f#@#@n better than sitting and reading something from a book".

These students are actually having FUN learning. Is that a bad thing???????? Students are finding learning EASY. Is that a bad thing????????