Sliced Bread

 

I have sensed the frustration of a powerered down, disconnected learner these past 3 weeks. This is not a good feeling at all. Maybe this reflects many students views of 21st century school education?

At work, early most mornings, I have been trying to access, download and install four free on line software programs for the past 3 weeks. I did this at home in my holidays in less than 10 minutes.

Not having admin rights to these simple installs, I have many hoops to jump through before I can continue my PD at work, Dumb? You betcha.

Java, Moodle, del.icio.us and the DET NSW Promethean IWB package will all help me learn more about this read/write world of web2.0. 

I am trying to learn at work, engage with what I see as valuable PD and yet my growing sense of frustration in achieving even these basic steps makes you reconsider.

I will persevere because I think this is important but why is DET NSW making it so hard? Surely we can all do better?

 

This simple explanation of the Moodle Philosophy could be something our school considers. Many others are. Changing and developing educational pedagogy is how Moodle has helped teachers. What do you think?

The design and development of Moodle is guided by a particular philosophy of learning, a way of thinking that you may see referred to in shorthand as a “social constructionist pedagogy”.

This page tries to explain in simple terms what that phrase means by unpacking four main concepts behind it. Note that each of these is summarising one view of an immense amount of diverse research so these definitions may seem thin if you have read about these before.

If these concepts are completely new to you then it is likely that these ideas will be hard to understand at first – all I can recommend is that you read it carefully, while thinking about your own experiences of trying to learn something.