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Because You’re an Extremely Experienced Student: Thoughts On Completing MOOCs
[The following image is a collage of one of my course-inspired Makes. The collage has 8 images of ways I had denoted the concept of teapot. I used charcoal drawing, gel pens, oil pastels, ink, cutouts and other art movement styles to create the images. This reflection began some time in written form in July 2016.] I get it. The word “MOOC” conjures up notions of hype and hoopla generated some 3 to 4 years ago, when Coursera, Udacity and some brand-name institutions launched free short open-access courses and invited the world in. [If…
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Visible Thinking: Land Mines for Explosive Learning
Those who teach know that on some days we question if what we do is making any dent in our students’ armors (shields some put up, unintentionally, maybe). This week had one of those days, and several others that were not so. Those good learning-teaching days? They are not of the kind Tim Slater wrote about. The kind where students sit passively to just watch me, watch videos, take notes (or not) and listen (or not). No, a good teaching/learning facilitation day is when the students speak, a lot, with focus…
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Virtually Connecting Goes to HERDSA 2016
Note: I had fun writing this post with Wendy Taleo, who hosted the Virtually Connecting session. Plaits. (14 Dec 2012). “Fremantle Horizon.” Online image, Flickr. Retrieved 12 July 2016. A ping from Wendy Taleo drew me out of my teaching-grading cave to the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) conference this Wednesday, July 6, also a Hari Raya Puasa public holiday in Singapore. Though Fremantle, Perth (Western Australia) might be closer to me than say, an American conference, work commitments still hold me and many others…
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For Papa
Two years ago today, you left us suddenly. We miss you, papa. I often hear you hum and sing this old Chinese pop song vividly in my mind. So, in your honor, I played it on the guzheng (Chinese zither). I’m not good at it; I’m just an amateur, who hasn’t played for the last 20 years. It’s not the best version, but it’s MY best effort, thus far. I hope you enjoy it, with mama. The night is dark and obscure , it covers the expanse At the horizon, the…
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A Reflection on Teaching: Connecting with Learners
After performing a thrilling paso doble that went silent for several bars – allowing the audience to understand what DiMarco experiences when he’s dancing – he says he realized the Mirrorball was within reach. “That really hit me hard, and I felt like, ‘I have the potential of winning this,’ because I could feel the audience really connecting to me, and I thought that was the whole point of me being on Dancing with the Stars. It wasn’t about the dancing itself, it was about me connecting to the audience.”…
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Grids and Gestures: 6 Learning Takeaways from Exploring Comics-Making
[Note: It’s about a week since I finished the last doodle. Here are some key takeaways from this collective exercise. Learning is a complex phenomenon and occurs in varied learning conditions. Learning takeaways abstracted from this collective exercise may not be applicable to ALL learning contexts.] 1. Make learning doable. When Nick Sousanis, cartoonist, scholar, teacher, art critic, author of Unflattening, put out a Twitter call for participation in a collective comics-making exercise, I knew I could probably do it. Unlike other projects which typically took longer time, and which…
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The Insanely Great Steve Jobs and His Overexcitabilities
Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, is a pretty intense read of about 600 pages, like the subject himself. What motivated me to press on was the graphic novel by Jessie Hartland. The quirky short novel provided an entertaining summary of Jobs’ life and left me wanting to know more about Jobs’ design approach and thinking processes. I was determined to finish those 600 pages! Much ink, figuratively, has been spilled over Isaacson’s book. Jobs’ inner circle disdained it. Aaron Sorkins’ movie which was based largely on the book was panned but snared a Golden Globe – Jobs’ wife called…
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3 Recent Questions about Assessment
I don’t have to walk far from home to see “education centres” flourishing at almost every turn and corner in my neighborhood. The tuition industry in Singapore is a billion-dollar industry. I’ve been told that a certain tutor has become a millionaire without having to step out from his home, his tuition center. Why don’t I reap some of this rich harvest too, friends and family ask? No, not a snob, I’m just still thinking about how to reconcile this with my professional goals and educational philosophy. Are Singaporeans obsessed with standardized…
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A Critical Conversation about Instructional Design
Dear Maha, Thanks for the interesting conversation around the use of the terms Instructional (versus Learning) Design. I will do my best to respond to your question about resources and add some quick thoughts along the way. “Instructional” Theories Several scholars in the field have written about the history of ID. It’s been a while since I completed doctoral studies in ID and I don’t have all my books with me. Robert Reiser and Michael Molenda have written about the history and philosophical origins of ID. As to ID theories,…
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Rippling Out: bell hooks on Humor, Community, Critical Thinking and More
[Hat-tip to Rob Pusch for sharing the link to bell hooks’ article which inspired this post.] bell hooks’ [lowercase letters as used by author] interview by George Yancy contains several thought-provoking nuggets. It was to be a conversation focused on hooks’ ideas about race. In the process, many powerful notions about writing, community and service emerged. I’m highlighting a few for reflection and keepsake. I enjoy reading my old blogposts and evoking memories of emotions and moments that have slipped me by. Text descriptions of all 5 images can be retrieved on this…
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Self-Organized Learning Environment & Child-Driven Education
Minimally supervised learning and computers in the slum areas of India; an idea that arguably inspired Slumdog Millionaire, the hit movie. The original concept of Sugata Mitra was Minimally Invasive Education, which has evolved into its current iteration of Self-Organized Learning Environment. Critics have labeled projects of such nature ones that “[d]ump hardware in schools, [and] hope for magic to happen.” Others are more scathing. I feel we don’t have to assume that only one scenario is possibly realizable. That children are either destructivists (is there such a word?) or constructivists. Are children capable of teaching…
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Guerra Scale of Interactivity
Guerra Scale of Interactivity. Have you come across this typology? I stumbled upon it on a job ad for a learning designer. A search reveals that the creators were Guerra and Heffernan, then learning technology practitioners at Paychex. The article (see Reference below) is now not viewable under The Association for Talent Development (ATD, formerly ASTD). However, a few folks have discussed this in some form. Ivan Teh sums it up in his blog with key online references by MindEdge Learning Workshop; Anbar, Bolbol, Everett & Ozguven (their article); K. C., Lim in Digital…
