Archive for category learning community

Why #edutube?

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, english, learning community, online tools, research, school, social media, technology, university, youtube on October 2, 2019

Blog reader, welcome to the Next Thing that is pulling me back inexorably into a research space concerned with online learning.

In my last post I talked about/to the most excellent Sayraphim Lothian, who is on the verge of beginning a research degree at my uni (hopefully with me as the supervisor). Sayraphim is slaying the write up of the research ‘prologue’ over on the blog sayraphimlothian.com. We have both caught the #edutube fever, wanting to explore education/educational YouTube videos/creators etc. …you know, #edutube?

And I mean, that’s the problem-slash-wonderful thing about exploring YouTube that is being created and viewed in educational ways. To even pin down what I mean by that involves myriad semantic considerations. The ‘on YouTube’ bit is concisely defined and establishes one clear boundary. Excellent. But as for the rest…

When I say ‘edutube’ a typical question cascade sounds like this:

  • Are you meaning professional teachers who make videos, or anyone who is aiming to teach others through a video?
  • Does the education have to be intentional – what about when something is learned from a video on YouTube but the creator didn’t intend it, and maybe could not have anticipated it?
  • What is the difference between education and learning anyway?
  • Isn’t everything a potential learning experience? So are attempts to define what is ‘educational’ just exercises in gate-keeping?
  • By the way, schools are such gatekeepers, they are really bureaucratic and restrict learning in a lot of ways, don’t you think? Down with schools! YouTube has tutorials for everything!
  • jk. Platform capitalism might be a concern – do you think platforms like YouTube might be trying to create a global education market?
  • In what ways might professional teachers’ work be intersecting with new education markets?
  • Have you heard of flipped learning?
  • In what ways might we be productively redefining teaching and learning? Perhaps as personal and community practices, not only professional and institutional ones?
  • Can anyone be a teacher? What defines a teacher?
  • Is a teacher the same as an educator?
  • How is ‘education’ different to ‘educational’? Does that distinction provide a helpful boundary?
  • Will anyone be asking the students about any of this? #studentvoice

There is a striation that commonly interrupts this kind of question cascade: who owns teachers’ IP; what are the conflict of interest issues; who stands to profit from a hidden global curriculum that is defined by a corporation; have you heard the saying ‘if it’s free then you’re the product’? Technical and practical questions about legislation, policy and money. Interesting questions, ones that also interest me. But they aren’t as helpful for defining ‘edutube’.

So why edutube for me, why now?

Biographically, the answer is that it is a very natural progression for me in terms of my ongoing interest in social media and digital cultures. I was a teacher in the thick of the Digital Education Revolution and we lived and breathed this challenge: what can you do with these screens? We found out quickly the limits of that world, and how contingent those limitations were on things including: the state you taught in, the sector, the goals of the Regional Director, the attitudes of the school community (especially the Boss)… not to mention the damn battery life and lack of internet connection.

As far as I can tell, from my position in Brisbane, Australia at least, is that the answer to the challenge ‘what can you do with these screens?’ in education – both schools and higher education – is ‘take it slowly’. The hyper-connected PLN/PLE learning culture that we thought could be around the corner remains stymied by over-crowded curriculum and a culture that is fixated on standardised (you say ‘high standards‘, I say ‘one size fits all‘) pedagogy and assessment.

But I can’t help it – I’m still interested in screens.

One of the most popular screen media in my house is YouTube, I am already a participant in the culture. I’ve been making video for my own teaching for a long time, uploading my first (unlisted) teaching video to YouTube in 2012 – it was an assignment Q&A – and now maintaining a public-facing channel with a few uploads a year. I am a ‘creator’!

A creator. Look, here is another different word for teacher. Or would a better word for that be author? Wait I think I remember something about the medium being the message? Now we’re talking! My screen-based, education and English teacher worlds collide!

I’m only just piecing together the parts of my own research design. I won’t write the ethics application until next year after January break, but I think I want to start by looking at Australian teachers who make YouTube with the purpose of educating others. Just a few case studies, maybe alongside a wider survey?

If you want to keep talking about this, or just have an idea, reference or link to throw my way, drop by in the comments. I’d love to hear responses to any element of this post no matter how random.

Or… subscribe?

😉

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Game on (edutube study)

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, research, social media, technology, university on May 15, 2019

OK Sayraphim, you’ve set the scene for the project as an opening move. But two can play at the blog reboot game!

It gets easier every time.

So, #edutube is a go. The word is out. The claim, it’s staked. You will study it, and no matter what role I get to play, I am so here for this.

Here’s a lovely thing too – as a craftivist, I know you aren’t territorial. You are about making things and lifting people up, sharing, generosity and kindness. Well anyway, those are qualities I think you definitely have, and which other craftivist instagram feeds seem to project, so I am generalising a little about #allcraftivists. But I have a hunch that I’m generally right! So, ‘staking your claim’ is really more like you saying ‘folks, I’ve got this angle covered, you go work on other angles, tell me if I’m overlapping with you too much and I’ll get back in my lane; here if you need me though and let’s share all our toys, let’s quilt our ideas together, yay team!’

(Honestly, new friends we are meeting on Twitter now, you have given us such a warm welcome to the established/ing network for studying education + YouTube, I’m very grateful and glad to meet you, and excited to add a patch to the quilt!)

Here are three reasons why I am psyched to be along with you on this journey, as a friend, as a fellow Aussie edutube creator, and as a scholar:

  1. You have track record as both a nerd and a book author – I cannot wait to see you grow through next level, book-length nerding out, on an idea that has serious legs. You seem Ready.
  2. I love how research on this topic will contribute to the edutube community, and how it will be sensitive of Aussie/NZ/’southern’ contexts as well as humanities communicators/creators. As an Australian English teacher, it’s really cool to see you representing.
  3. I’m excited by the idea of problematising this space. Are these videos on these platforms about learning, or teaching? About PLNs/PLEs/connectivism in education? About networks or communities of practice? Affinity spaces? Can we find anything to generalise to all teaching videos streamed online, or is YouTube a distinct enough phenomenon to bind up a study? Is edutube a kind of alternative curriculum (I can’t wait to introduce you to the field of curriculum studies)?

As for what the thing even is…I change my mind all the time about what I think edutube is. It’s one of the reasons I held off posting my post-vidcon video about it in 2018 – yeah, I was short on time, but I also was not certain of the content. But hang it, right? I should just post it. As a welcome gift to you! It is a record of my thinking at a point in time.

[Spoiler alert: I think the reason it is so hard is the ‘edu’ bit. We can define the ‘tube’ two ways, or somewhere in between, that’s easy. Broad, like ‘screen media’ with roots in television/’tube’, or narrow, like the specific platform ‘YouTube’. But ‘edu’ is the hard bit. Defining that involves getting to the heart of what people think education is, what it’s for, and who it’s for. Also who gatekeeps it. You’ll have to develop a scholarly stance on all those fundamental questions – at some point. Not right away! But no joke big questions.]

So yeah, I find it hard to answer, “what is edutube?”. I find myself constantly having to reorient my perspective, from teacher to citizen. I suspect my instinct, as a long time educator in institutions, is to gatekeep – no matter how much I resent gatekeeping, I live and breathe the mechanisms that do it. But I am also critical of them and often resist them. So yes, at some point you will have to define ‘edutube’, and convince me of it, but when you can do that I will listen intently, because I’m eager to hear your fully considered opinion.

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To watch more of this unfold over on YouTube – like, comment or subscribe!

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The concept of praxis

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, reflections, research, university on February 28, 2019

For me, demands to attend to the concept of ‘praxis’ in my work come from two main directions – my English educator community, and my Arts education colleagues.

This post captures my current ways of understanding praxis in relation to my work.

  1. Doing praxis means you are basically in a constant state of action research: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxis_(process)#Education
  2. Praxis describes practice that is informed by theory, not generally, but purposefully (and perhaps systematically?)
  3. Praxis is underpinned by the belief that theory is understood through its realisation in practice, that proof of and improvements to theory are found in application
  4. So basically, all your practice gets explicitly framed by theory (and it’s therefore interesting to notice the texts and contexts that this ‘explicit’ framing happens through…is this also self-governance? is action research actually a self-review and reporting cycle to check for theoretical ‘compliance’, to conduct strategic planning in line with ‘vision and mission’??)
  5. …and you can reflect on your theoretical position by observing and analysing it’s application in your teaching (requiring a personal plan or framework for collecting valid evidence)
  6. It’s part of the answer to “so can I just tip a can of paint on a canvas and call it art?” – no. Artistry responds to other art, to discourses. Teaching becomes ‘art’ when there are processes for reflection
  7. In Vis Arts the VAPD is offered as a technology that enables praxis – study art, respond and experiment, create new art, repeat. This process became internalised, the VAPD supported cultivation of a praxis mindset/discipline. What does English offer? What does ITE offer English PSTs?
  8. How do the ruling texts of an institution shape praxis? Good question. Thinking about this.

Questions that linger:

  • How does praxis differ from “reflective practice”? (is it because the later divorces the elements ‘reflection’ and ‘action’, when they should always both be
  • This reminds me of the Action in/on Reflection scholarship from my undergrad/accreditation contexts. How is this different to ‘praxis’? Is Reflection in/on practice just the language teachers need to comprehend and embark on praxis?
  • How do practitioner inquiry and action research methods facilitate ‘praxis’?
  • Does changing the discourse from ‘praxis’ to ‘reflection’ constrain teacher agency? i.e. maybe reflection can be limited to self-reflection e.g. to better meet KPIs, doesn’t necessarily involve system-reflection or critical reflection…or this is an artificial distinction (?)
  • Do I vibe with project based learning because it scaffolds praxis instead of practice?
  • How are the praxis intensives at Bianca’s school more praxis-y than PBL (I think she and I agreed they are not more or less praxis-y, just needed a different name)? Is it problematic to label the week-long intensive projects ‘praxis’ if the received meaning is that other pedagogies (e.g. PBL) do not require praxis?
  • When you practice you are a practitioner, when you praxis (do praxis?) you are a …? Praxitioner? (note to self: praxitioner as #medium)

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Reporting phase: Semester 1 reflection

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, reflections, university on June 4, 2018

Vlogging project

In semester 1 this year (just finished!) I undertook making a few vlogs about my teaching experience as a lecturer at uni.

The results are here:

I’ll be using these vlog ‘reports’ as the source material for an end-of-semester reflection vlog. You are welcome to watch them in the meantime and add questions or ideas as comments to push my thinking.

Edu-tube community

One of the best parts of making these vlogs are the connections I am making with the Australian edu-tube community as I go. We have a decent sized Facebook group, a few of us are active on Twitter, and people are really good about watching and commenting on each others videos.

Some people are ‘teacher-tubers’, teachers who are currently working in schools and making YouTube videos about it (or for it). Others like me are educators from other contexts, from higher education, or community groups, the GLAM sector, public artists and art-based educators. We’re still feeling out the boundaries of this group, as a collective. It’s an energising space. A few of us are meeting up this year again at VidCon Australia.

One of my subscribers asked if I could make a video about how to do a 4-R style reflection, which I mentioned in one of the vlogs. This is definitely something I want to get to before semester 2 starts.

In the meantime, if you want to watch me trying to capture some teaching practice, be my guest:

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Explain it like I’m an English teacher

Posted by kmcg2375 in learning community, personal on March 7, 2018

You may have heard the internet expression ‘explain it like I’m five’ or ELI5.

Living with someone who knows a lot about science means I get a lot of things explained to me that don’t directly build on the expertise I have in my own field of English curriculum, but honestly, these explanations are much higher level than what you’d give to a five year old.

This morning, I woke up to this household share, and oh boy. It is good.

I had the thought – what really happens in my house isn’t ELI5, its ELI-ET: he explains it like I’m an English teacher.

If you are an Arts creature like me, but still like to have your mind blown by science – you have to watch this video uploaded yesterday by melodysheep.

It will be 10 minutes well spent!

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Back to work 2018

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, personal, random, reflections on January 9, 2018

A re-tweet set from my feed to capture some 2018 ideas and intentions. Welcome back to work muggles!

2018 new year

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Kelli’s channel on YouTube

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, online tools, social media, technology on November 20, 2017

I created a YouTube channel over five years ago, but only used it to upload random learning objects for work. Most of the time the videos were published as unlisted.

In the lead up to VidCon however, I had a go at a couple of purposefully-public vlogs:

Since VidCon I’ve stayed in touch with the eduTubers I met there, and we are all working on videos based on a common theme. To be revealed! 

The channel settings have recently been changed as I attempt to build something like this blog, that is a channel for my voice.

The channel name is: kellischannel

I currently have 38 subscribers (woo hoo!)

If I get to 100 subscribers, I can switch to a custom URL (omg!)

So, if you want to see where I go with this, head over to YouTube to like, comment or subscribe… 

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Dear Bianca: Semester 2 is about to start and…

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, reflections, research on July 21, 2017

…and I had promised you I would write back. This is probably going to be about my speed. Unless we pick up pace. Time will tell.

I honestly don’t know anyone who has gone to those research coursework seminars and felt differently. The stuff is always too general, but you’ve hit the nail on the head – it’s hard to do otherwise. With adult learners, that is.  Though I’m surprised you didn’t get credit for already doing similar courses, that’s a shame. The flipside is though, that you also typically learn something interesting or important at those things, even if you don’t know until way down the track how relevant some tidbit will turn out to be.

Like, that activity you described, where images are used as metaphors to get people talking about their feelings…that’s a cool idea. I plan to steal that. Thank you Sandy Shuck.

So, you seem pretty confident about conceptual frameworks, but can I ask you this – it’s the question I asked at the end of your blog post. Do you know the difference between a theoretical and a conceptual framework, and can you explain it? I had not honestly given enough though to the difference between the two. I looked back on my own thesis and found that I sectioned things out like this:

Chapter: Research Design.

Subheadings: ‘research issue and key questions’, ‘research framework’, ‘theoretical orientation’, ‘methodology’ and ‘methods’.

It got me wondering whether I just used non-standard headings for some things. That sounds like me. But also whether my ‘research framework’ was more or less conceptual or theoretical. One thing I do often wonder is how anyone can have a conceptual framework before having reviewed the relevant research literature. Surely it should go: lit review first, THEN select some research questions based on gaps in the field, THEN choose conceptual/theoretical frameworks and methodologies to best answer those questions, and THEN select methods suitable to collect and analyse data.

I wonder if you would like to share a part of your research proposal. I’m curious how you wrote up the bit about researching in your own school, and glad to hear you were satisfied with the direction you had worked on with Jane. Is it a…practitioner inquiry? case study? …?

Um, tips. You have to write. So write me back. It’s not a kind of writing you can rush. It’s good to have an audience in mind, so write me back.

In the spirit of that, I am also going to tell you in this letter about a thought I’ve had recently, and that I’m presently investigating for a research paper later this year. I’ve been thinking about the specifics of PBL and what the advantages of project-based vs other inquiry approaches (problem-based, challenge-based etc.) might be, in relation to democratic education. I still have no interest in trying to argue that project-based learning is ‘better than’  any other particular type of learning inquiry, but I do suspect it may be more democratic. This is based on the way PBL encourages and provides students with tools to frame their learning in the context of socially and textually authentic, personally relevant driving questions. At a gold standard it also incorporates opportunities for students to exercise choice and voice, and work toward presentation of a public product. Positioning students as knowledge creators, not just knowledge consumers, is vital here.

Here’s where you might take up the Dewey reading sooner rather than later, because that’s what I’m revising and I could use a buddy. What do you think PBL has to do with democratic education, or freedom? A question for another day maybe! I’d also like to attempt reading some of Garth Boomer’s work about English curriculum specifically, but because about to start semester 2, reading time is limited.

Your friend,

K.

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Tips and info for teachers new to Twitter

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, online tools, social media, technology on January 30, 2017

Came across this video today that I made with colleague Jill Willis, back in 2015. I’d still give all of this advice…though I might add a caution about not engaging in Twitter arguments, as there are too many of those going around these days.

If you are a teacher who is about to try some tweeting, here are some tips:

…and here is an older blog post that also features some practical ideas for new users.

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How many hours in a work week?

Posted by kmcg2375 in education, learning community, school on November 24, 2016

I have been wondering what advice I should give to my pre-service teachers (PSTs) next semester before their first prac., about how many hours a week a new teacher actually works, generally speaking.

Here is my working so far:

  • Each school day (Mon-Fri) you work your teaching timetable from about 8am-3pm. Or 8.30am-3.30pm. Whatever. A roughly 8 hour day, including roll call, teaching, prep periods, playground duty, and yes a recess and lunch break when we are probably meeting with students or colleagues or…ugh, so many things eat up the lunch breaks, don’t even try to suggest that teachers enjoy many lunch breaks.
  • Let’s say you do leave straight after school, maybe you pick up your own kids and/or grab some groceries, make some dinner, eat and wait until the house is settled. Or maybe you crash into an epic nap to recover from the work day. You can probably start working again if you need to around 8pm.
  • Experienced teachers perhaps don’t do as much work at this time of night as others (unless they are also in a leadership role or have taken up extra duties/further studies – thoughts?) but beginning teachers will generally do another 2-4 hours every night to keep on top of the workload. For new English teachers this work includes reading new texts they are planning to teach, marking assessment tasks and draft work, finding and preparing resources for upcoming lessons such as AV materials and student support strategies. Let’s say an average extra 3 hours per night. But perhaps this is conservative – I know I did more, and rarely saw bedtime before 1am.
  • When teachers are new it takes them a long time to mark each piece of student work. This results in long weekend marking sessions. I’d estimate I did around an extra 4 hours each weekend day in my first couple of years of teaching. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Rarely none. Teaching has peak periods and slower patches, but truthfully there’s always something big on – half yearly or yearly exams, half yearly or yearly reports, year 11 and 12 assessment task marking sometimes double marked, year 10 and 12 formal, camp, debating finals, school musical…

That’s a 59 hour work week for new/graduate teachers.

I’d love to hear in comments below if you think I’m on or off the mark on this. 

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NB. The holiday clause:

Yes teachers get about 10 weeks of non-teaching time a year. Only a few weeks over summer break of this are truly ‘on holiday’.

In the three 2-week school ‘holiday’ breaks, new teachers invariably are sick for the first of the two weeks. Ask anyone, it’s true. Also true for many experienced teachers, but new teachers are still literally building up their immune system to cope with the range of nasty illnesses around a school, so are highly susceptible. The the second week is spent doing increasing amounts each day, until a final panicked frenzy of non-stop work in the weekend before school goes back.

Am I right?

So also don’t give teachers any grief about having ‘more holidays’ because although yes having respite from face-to-face teaching for a couple of weeks is essential and so so so welcome, it is rarely a relaxing or nourishing time. You may not rack up 59 hours of work in these weeks, but you probably would rather do that than be in holiday sick bay.

You really have to have some experience under your belt and work hard and be super organised to use your holiday time wisely.

I just think it would be best if PSTs prepared themselves for this. And realised that their prac placements are likely going to be just as intense. You know?

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