Apologies for taking a few days to blog post our Skype last Sunday, I have been snowed under with work which has unfortunately diverted my attention away from my MAPP!
How poignant Helen's post has been for us all? Each of us appears (reading through the blogs) that we suffer this terrible sense of uncertainty and nervous anxiety when it comes to vocalising our thoughts through our blogs. I can definitely relate to this and feel like it during every Skype session as well. I get nervous to my stomach whenever we have a Skype session and internally panic in case I say something that's wrong and makes me sound a bit dumb and I definitely hate going first! So last Sunday was fab for the nerves.............I went first!!!! However, after reading Helen's blog, the nerves weren't so bad, I just went for it and although I felt as though I babbled my way through my description of what my artefact is likely to be, I felt better for getting it out there and comforted by the responses that were fed back to me. The irony of it all, is that I say to my students ALL the time, words like "just do it, take a risk, have confidence in yourself, no-one's judging you, you won't know unless you try" etc etc, and yet I am the hypocrite who becomes that student when asked to do the same. So with that in mind, using the experience of being a hypocrite I will use just that to explain my take on what the artefact for module 3 should be...................
I was teaching my students yesterday and they were asking me questions about what their Autumn term assessment project needed to include, how do they present it and what do they have to say and do. This rang immediate bells with me as their anxiety and uncertainties pushed my mind to think ahead about my own oral presentation and artefact. Swiftly and in seconds my brain shifted away from personal 'me' and back to teacher me, and my response to the students was this; "think about your presentation as being something of a lesson to the audience, remember that not everyone in the audience will know what you've been studying or working on for the whole term and they won't understand unless you tell them the ins and outs of it all". I gave them the idea that an assessment is the celebration and performance of all that they've been working hard on in each lesson throughout the Autumn term, so it was important to be proud of what they had researched, learnt and achieved and for that reason it was important that they share this with their audience. I posed a question; How fantastic would they feel after their presentation if the audience left feeling as though they had learnt something and felt more informed of what students were learning in other areas of the college? They could potentially be responsible for teaching something new to other members of staff and students as a result of their presentation. The students understood this explanation and seemed to walk away from the class feeling more assured and confident about what they had to prepare and had a better idea of how to do it.
As I drove home and reflected on the days lesson, my thoughts informed me that what I had spoken to the students about was exactly what I needed to speak to myself about. That is what I need to do on 19th January........... that is how I understand our oral presentation and artefact should be. Another analogy I gave the students was that of a tube map, that it was important to stop at each station so that the audience understood the route and would be able to make their own way back should they need to - in other words, they understood how they got to their destination and would be able to recall the route back to the start of the journey.
I'm probably babbling now, but I've always been a great believer that we learn from our students and this is no exception, by me having to explain to my students what was expected of them in terms of their assessment, I explained my own assessment to myself......I hope! A classic example of 'do as I say and not as I do'. Only, I think I need to do more 'do as I say and make it, facilitate it to become the do as I do as well'.
I think, I feel happier now about my artefact and will try to maintain in my own head what I have said to my students. Any other thoughts on the artefact, oral presentation, data analysis (my Achilles heel and current state of struggle) please share.
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