One Year Ago: My First Lockdown Video
I have been teaching for 24 years in higher education and nothing comes close to describing what the last year has entailed. Of course it… Read More »One Year Ago: My First Lockdown Video
I have been teaching for 24 years in higher education and nothing comes close to describing what the last year has entailed. Of course it… Read More »One Year Ago: My First Lockdown Video
Sometimes I do things that maybe not everyone would do, and this is no exception. What have I done? I joined the first year Jazz… Read More »Mind & Body: Dance!
This August I’ll be welcoming lots of string players to the University of Chichester Conservatoire for the European String Teachers Annual Summer School. I am… Read More »ESTA Summer School 2020
Yesterday something extraordinary happened.
I was asked to run a session for colleagues at my university on learning and teaching as their first session of a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching. Planning for this was like swimming in alphabet soup in my mind and gathering words – I knew what I did not want the session to be, but I wasn’t sure how I would or should tailor the session. I knew nothing about the group – who they were, why they were there, what their responsibilities or roles in their jobs were, or what their experience or conception of learning entailed – and all this matters.
In the past I have run sessions where the room is set out as an orchestra and everyone comes in to find that they will be not observing, but playing in that orchestra. Magic. This year though, that felt like hard work. (After yesterday though, I would like the opportunity to do that with this group) What I did instead was to divide them into groups of four and give each group an instrument. Each group had a different remit: one group was explicitly ‘taught’ by me, one group was told to just figure it out however they liked, one group was given roles for everyone – a facilitator, a scribe, someone to make an abstract map (mind map or the like) of the learning and happenings, and one person to be a designated researcher to find resources. Then after an exploratory 15 mins we came back to discuss what happened, and compare the perceptions of the learners and the others in the groups. -and to perform whatever they ‘figured out’. We heard twinkle twinkle from one group, Clair de lune from another (on viola! yes, I gave them a viola!!), and an improvised jazz/percussion piece from another group.
It was impossible in a short 90 min session to convey what they were actually experiencing from a theoretical standpoint.
Experience is a marvellous teacher, but when you are swimming in the water, you cannot also drink it or wash with it. One thing and ‘one think’ (as one of my children used to say) at a time.Read More »Yes I can? YES YOU CAN!
On Friday 18th October I presented a talk and performance entitled ‘Learning Out Loud’ as my inaugural professorial lecture, which launched the 2019-20 Public Lecture series at the University of Chichester. I was grateful that my department allowed me to use a couple of cameras to capture the event – they were set running before it kicked off and it looks like (unfortunately) someone bumped the side-view camera, and the lighting was particularly dim, but you can hear it all and the tech people helped to a great job of splicing the video feeds together for me. Thank you to them!
What you cannot see in the video is the display that was along both sides of the walls, showing the documentation of my practice, with over 44,000 words, 115+ videos, audio files, and plenty of images. (for an example of one of the days see HERE) I have been asked to display these for online viewing and I will, but it will take time. (I plan to make a subdomain with the project on it) People were invited to peruse the 128 days of ups and downs, chipping away at learning, and working through the seasons and other life responsibilities as I prepared for this event.
Below you will find:
References (as shown on the pdf of the programme):
- Stephen Downs & memory: https://bit.ly/31sXhTs
- Game experiment video: https://bit.ly/2BihwbZ
- Judith Butler: Examining Life https://bit.ly/2oR4QWP
- Yapnet: https://www.Yapnet.org
Video Timings:
‘Learning Out Loud’ (beginning-5:37 Laura: 5:38-39:04)
Sonata for Solo Cello, op.8 Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967)
This evening I take you on a journey, demonstrating our awareness of experiences, the things we do, and how they impact us- noticing and questioning some of the societal assumptions and constraints around us, and then considering our role, mine and yours – and how we each learn and shape our experiences – personally, as peers and teachers, and within the frameworks of our social and institutional networks.Read More »Learning Out Loud
What a pleasure to be invited to talk here. It is always with a combination of anticipation and excitement that I go to a new… Read More »Keynote: University of South Wales, Creative Industries Conference
I love this question. It was suggested as part of David Hopkins‘ #OpenBlog19 initiative and the idea is to choose a topic from a curated… Read More »What does innovation in teaching look like?
I started reading Stephen Downes’ book Toward Personal Learning quite some time ago, and various projects have interrupted my reading and reflecting on it. This… Read More »Toward Personal Learning: Post 6
Learning, experience, living. These all go hand in hand for me and to be honest, I crave and thrive on them all. Last week I… Read More »Dream a little dream with me
I just blinked. Did I miss it? Actually I experienced that blink. I know I think a lot, and with words, their meaning, understanding, and having… Read More »Experience