Inspired by my classmate Liz’s post where she started to get out her ideas for the first ETL504 Assessment, I think I will start some brainstorming of my own.
Using what you have learned in Module 2 and 3 – design the ideal 21st Century Learning change-oriented school leadership structure, including the TL/Library within that structure.
Pick 15 – 20 key concepts to portray that leadership structure visually in a concept map.
Write an argument that critically analyses your leadership structure – referring to your concept map and the literature.
Subject Outlines have been released for 201960 – Session 2 of my second year in the course. Even though I am feeling fairly tired, I am raring to go as I am (perhaps recklessly) aiming to do 2 1/2 subjects this session along with working 3 days per week. I am motivated to try to get the Dean’s List award for my second year as well as my first, which requires finishing the course by the end of Session 3. Additionally, I am more interested in the elective available this session (INF520 Preservation of Information Resources) than the one available in Session 3 (INF506 Social Networking for Information Professionals).
So, I am charging out of the gate to see what I can get accomplished in the lead up to the actual start of session in a fortnight. Here are my goals after a brief look at the Subject Outlines.
ETL507:
Do the pre-study visit modules and quiz, when it gets loaded
Follow up with Uni of Sydney about placement application
Try to get placement sorted during the first week of school holidays
ETL504:
Read through assessment requirements carefully for both assessments, especially Assessment 1
Look at the supplementary materials on concept mapping in the Assessment 1 description
Do any other preliminary requirements, like logging Thinkspace blog, Intro on Student Cafe, etc
INF520:
Read through assessment requirements carefully
Do any preliminaries
Start in on Module 1 from the PDF versions in resources (making sure to compare once live versions are available)
For the final project for my subject on Literature In Digital Environments, we need to create a digital storytelling project that is applicable for use in our professional context. Our proposed project is meant to have collaborative input from colleagues and classmates. To that end, I would love feedback regarding the feasibility, appropriateness and interest factor of some of my project ideas.
My context in brief (or as brief as possible for me):
Primary Teacher
Currently working as a casual only when Uni is not in session
I have a school I do most of my work at – I’ll call it “XPS” – but I have not done much this year because of Uni and they are currently having a major shuffle in the exec as the Principal and a DP moved on in the past 6 months, so the entire Exec Admin level is shaken up.
I will be exploring the possible creation of NESA-Accredited PD courses with a colleague who has attended their training session – in the English KLA, likely centering around English Textual Concepts.
Ideas:
“Quarantine Station Stories” – Looking at stories from the Quarantine Station in Manly – basing on a piece I wrote for Historicool magazine with several pieces of short historical fiction based on actual stories related to quarantine at the station. – Look at creating interactivity, perhaps content creation facility… connection to source documents.
Links to curriculum – geography – places, spaces, features that suit the site for quarantine, different uses over time; History – local history (reasonably local (45 min drive) to most places I teach); English – authority (primary sources, secondary sources), genre – historical fiction
Context – could be used at multiple schools, could be used in PD context
Drawbacks – technical skill, might need to coordinate/get permissions from State Library NSW or Q Station for materials
I had really hoped to have my first review done for the second assessment task in INF533 by this past Friday. The thing that is holding me up is the question of what to choose.
I would really like to have my three examples cover not only three different digital literature categories, as specified in the assignment, but also to cover the breadth of my K-6 teaching context. If possible, they would represent different genres and/or text purposes as well. Therefore, I am hesitating to commit myself to a review until I am sure which items will be part of my suite of reviews.
One issue I am struggling with is what to count as “literature” as some examples I find stray more towards music, visual art or performance art (Andrews, 2000-2018) and other fine examples of works with digital affordances that enhance quality text are informational (Field of Mars Environmental Education Centre, n.d.) or journalistic(News Corp Australia, n.d.) in nature.
Another area of struggle is that many of the really interesting web-based works or born-digital works using app or online platforms that I have found seem most appropriate to only the highest level of primary school or, truly, to high school or beyond.
The Boat Interactive Webcomic – Matt Huynh. (Huynh, n.d.). A bit too intense for Year 6?
Device 6 – one of the most enjoyable text-based experiences I have had in months! (simogo, 2013)
I think that I am narrowing down my list, though, so hopefully a review post will be hitting the aether soon!
So, this is it. Tomorrow the second session officially starts. I have planned my week in my usual way from last session:
As you may be able to tell, I have a lot of Teaching Guide writing to do this week, so it is a good thing that I have already gotten started on some of the Week 1 material from my subjects. Hopefully I have allocated enough time, because I am apparently going with my husband to pick our daughter up from the airport tomorrow rather than outsourcing it completely… goodbye sweet couple of hours!
I am wondering if my relatively unstructured planning is sufficient for this session. I tend to make a list of things that need to be done (or that I hope to achieve) in the week and then allocate blocks of time to Uni (the dusty pink unlabelled blocks on the schedule). I wonder if I need to specify some time slots this time around. Perhaps at least allocate a blogging time. Perhaps I’ll allocate Friday afternoon for weekly blogging reflections in both subjects, with bonus slots during the week for particular assigned blog posts or module-review posts.
If anyone is actually reading this and has any tips for how you plan your week to balance Uni with other facets of life – and make sure you get all or most or at least the most vital things done – please share them in the comments!
