Finishing Task 1 (Assessment 1)

I logged on today and found that I had no checked the posts for about 5 days...shit this is not good when time like this has elapsed. I have particularly focussed on staying in contact with all these students. It is hard enough not to be able to speak with these individuals face to face the only way that I can do this is via Blackboard and other mediums (as an example of these other mediums I have attempted to use podcasting and audio tools to allow students to hear my voice, instead of just being an amorphous thing).

There are still a couple of students that have not logged on to any of the groups of assesment 2, is this my fault? have I not been clear enough? I made sure that I put an announcement to give these students an opportunity (last week)to give the students the chance to choose groups for themselves. I know that learning in the online world is much much different from face to face but the low interactivity in general on the site is somewhat concerning. I want the students to see how to develop a portal in such a way as well.

Are they reading this journal? I am not sure...The students have been asked to respond to their thoughts on the engagement with this unit through their reflective journal. Have they had a look at this site that enables/prompts them to think about their teaching? Where are there ideas for feedback, thoughts, emotions for them. What other prompting tool could I use...email them...make a podcast explaining to them to respond...this is a little hard here. I do hope that the students will at some point spend some time reading my thoughts here and are able to translate this to their own professional learning as either a student-teacher or teacher. Clearly there are some issues associated with using such a medium, but the importance of writing in this way is to uncover the pedagogical reasoning/rationale for teaching in the way that I have.

Enough for this evening. My baby girl (Sacha; 2 years is crying) and I need to go and tend to her.

Trent

Change in staff!

Well the election has been called. What does this mean for the on campus class? The staff is a candidate for election. She has called me and told me that she will have to resign and give her unit over to someone else. How is this going to work? Aren't I as unit leader going to be put into a position where the unit scores are going to be viewed negatively because of this. Shit! Why am I thinking about unit scores? This is a very personal thing to say? Why am I getting caught up in the notion of the academic BS that goes on? You should really be supportive of her development. You are not your CV. This is a quote from an article by Sparkes which discusses the relationship of the audit culture in universities. "You are not your CV" "You are not your CV" . Make sure that you call the new person and give them all the support you can. This is the person that you are.

I know that this person will do a great job, but really it is an unenviable task - she has been thrown in at the deep end and what kind of support can I give someone that is working over 200km away. The phone does some things but really we need to be doing things face to face. Is this problematic in our teaching? We are on 2 different campuses with 200km between us and she will be teaching on a third campus. Sometimes I really hate this gig. I want to do the best for all involved, the teachers, the students and the university but this is really frustrating and in reality is not fair on anyone.

Let's try and support her as best as possible. Help, help, help and support. That is what stduents want to see. Mentoring of staff, but why the hell is the notion of being measured at the forefront of your mind. What has the university done to you?

Week 3

Well the first assessment is in - a philosophical task on the importance of PE to education. I am really looking forward to these to see how many of the students have read and demonstrated their understanding, especially beyond the scientific. But this will also tell me about my pedagogy in this class and how I have set up the online environment. You have all seen my other posts on how I have worked on this for long periods of time, but this is where we may see some pay-off or not!

The discussion boards as the interactive mechanism with the group is starting to pay off. We have had some really great discussions with individual students about who they are and how they became physical education student-teachers. I am responding at the moment to these individually one-by-one trying to highlight a couple of points and even drawing some research into them. Is this an appropriate strategy? What do the students think about the approach presented to them? They are not really replying to one anothers posts yet. Perhaps I might need to put a reminder announcement on the importance of responding to others posts, how a discussion and clarity may come of it during the process.

The next couple of weeks will be focussed on planning. I hope this goes OK, but with only one post on their experiences in week 1 I am not sure what is going on. I have heard that some don't have the text - I wonder if this is impacting on what they are trying to achieve. Will pay attention here.

It is finally starting to work!

I logged in today and finally saw that some students had started to engage with the discussion boards but also with the Assessment tab here. What a relief! I was beginning to think that there were no students in the unit. I have had about 6 of the 14 actually engage which I am happy about. At one point I was going to start to allocate the students to groups themselves for assessment two aas not much was happening. I might still need to do this soon if students don't seem to engage...we will play a waiting game! I tried to individually respond to all the discussion board messages that were posted. My rationale for this was not only did it personalise the experience is but this form of discussion board can generate 'data' that gives themes based on experience and then students can see how thematic research occurs using qualitative studies.

SOme very good responses based on personal experiences - they seem to be really switched on so hopefully some of the readings (especially Arnold and some others) give them some questions to ponder in their own practice. I am also really looking forward to seeing their one page philosophical papers on physical education.

Only a week away!

Semester 2 is only a week away and I have just returned to my office after a week's leave. Great to catch up and play with the kids and take them away from home on a couple of day trips.

Unforutnately in the back of my mind were a couple of work related issues including my promotion application, my teaching in this unit (have I got enough content? will the students like the way it has been developed? is there enough research-led teaching? will the students be able to take things practically out of it?). Many many questions that I have. I will have to revisit the unit in the next day or so to see whether what I did before my leave is how I really wanted the unit to end up.

Luckily I have a great colleague that is working in the on campus unit, someone that I can trust, have discussions with and talk through the issues of the unit. Someone that I trust immensely in this labour of love that I call teaching. This support is a must for the development of great teaching and great learning. But I am truly concerned about how off campus students will react.

I was reading John Loughran's new book bit-by-bit over coffee and when I had some down time on leave. The sections that were most interesting were on professional learning of teachers - there was one section that talked of a teacher that undertook a self-study and realised that there were problems in the way he allowed student learning to take place. Implications for physical educators - do we really know what takes place in the learning of our students through movement? How do we then prepare teacher educators? More tensions more concerns!!! [A big siggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!]

But it also gave me a great feeling that what can occur in physical education must occur through teachers changing the way they teach. They must have ownership, they must take some responsibility. Self-study is the way of the future.

How can I teach and encourage off-campus students to pursue such a line of thinking....

Enough for now - talk soon, Trent.

Introduction to the unit and the blog

Welcome to EDF4423 - Physical Education. This unit is taught as part of the undergraduate degree program of Bachelor of Sport & Outdoor Recreation/Bachelor of Education and the Graduate Diploma of Secondary Education. It may be taken as a unit on-campus or via off-campus modes (OCL or Open Universities Austrralia[OUA]).

This blog is all about my thoughts about teaching this unit. It is supposed to provide future teachers with insights into what it means to teach. According to Crowe and Berry (2007) "...one important aspect of...becoming a teacher involves learning to think like a teacher" (p. 32). The thoughts in this blog is a small part of 'researching' my own practice (especially as it pertains to OCL/OUA, distance learning and the space around using intergrated technologies). Furthermore, “…teacher education struggles with the contradiction in practice between imposing (perhaps unintentionally) solutions on student teachers and assisting them to develop their own responses to their own situation themselves…” (Loughran, 2004).

Importantly, also in this is the fact that I have asked you to undertake, via Assessment 4, a reflection or thoughts on your own practice and engagement in this unit, so hopefully you can see the important links about such practices. Please feel free to offer as much feedback as possible via this blog by making a posting on the process and what it has to offer student-teachers.

Please do not hesitate to contact me via email (trent.brown@education.monash.edu.au) should you require clarification about any issue related to this unit, EDF4423 Physical Education.

Enjoy this unit and the semester!

Trent

Thinking about semester 2 and EDF4423 already!

Note - this has been cut and pasted from another site:

Here i am, first posting on the Ning and this occurs at 10pm at night in week 5 of semester 1. I realise how quickly semester 2 is going to come around and this requires a bit of planning on my behalf as unit coordinator to unit materials (unit guide, reading, etc) ready.
What do the students want from their class?
How will this be different from the HOPE class that students take in semester 1?
What are the differences going to be between those studying on campus and those studying off campus?

Some of my ideas are spinning around my head at the moment. I want to try and create an online portal (the gymnasium) where students enter and 'choose' topic areas for their own information and knowledge, which might also be able to be used as part of the assesment.

I was reading a paper today by Judith Rink (2007, Quest) which discusses the importance of or the differences between discipline study and that which occurs as pedagogy. It resonated with me a little bit because all students, irrespective of OCL or on campus, Grad Dip Ed (Sec) or SOR have really come through degrees that 'promote' discipline thinking, gaining the knowledge of anatomy, physiology, exercise physiology, motor development, biomechanics, etc etc. This unit, the 'methods' class offers opportunity in the pedagogical aspects...so how am I going to manage that tension between discipline study and pedagogical outcomes?

More to come later.