Saturday, July 25, 2009

Weeks 21/22/23

I take one week off from study in the last 2 years and its a disaster!! Took me ages to get back into the swing of studying again, not helped by having the kids at home all day. Weeks 21 and 22 were combined over a 2 week period but that was no help to me. So after reading and looking at all 3 weeks I don't feel very far forward.
Weller and Sclater don't seem to see eye to eye...its as if Weller is the son that wants all the new top of the range toys to play with and Sclater is his dad who reckons they're far to expensive and by the time Weller gets round to playing with them a whole batch of new ones will be in the shops. Also Sclater feels that some of the toys Weller wants will alienate his friends as they won't know how to play with them as they're too advanced. I agree with Sclater...not because I'm a mum but because I can see that if a Uni implements lots of new technologies then apart from the expense there is the likelihood of alienating some learners and tutors due to their lack of confidence in technologies.
Activity 1 in Week 23 required collaboration in the wiki. Problem was when I work within a wiki I need a purpose...I couldn't fathom out what we were trying to achieve. There was no chair person, no time limit, no stated outcome.
The rest of week 23 looked at metaphors......research papers discussed birdwatching and fungus what??? Still have no idea what it was all about. Tried posting to the forum but there's no one about not even the tutor.....perhaps they're all on holiday?! I know from Twitter that many couldn't fathom out Week 23 and so moved on to start on TMA 04. My concern is if they are all using preferred technologies such as Twitter or blogs to communicate by how will I find the time to track them all down and if I can't then the tutor probably can't either. Whilst ownership of learning is a great thing surely there also needs to be some facilitating of that learning? For me personally I need peers and a tutor to succeed.

2 comments:

  1. Hi Tracey

    Yes I do agree with you about having too many communication channels to follow. I have just seen in the forums that our tutor has a blog ?!? Didn't know that. I have loved developing the blogging but can't manage to keep up with everything all the time, and do agree that the communication can become fragmented. Also agree that we need tutor leadership, esp in difficult moments, to succeed.

    Lesley

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  2. Oh Lesely his blog link has been on the wiki page for ages!I'm a tad disappointed that my last couple of weeks of the MAODE have been so confusing....wanted to go out on a high!!

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