Tag Archives: Teaching

Grad Diploma Education

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 I met with Sharon Tindall-Ford from Faculty of Education today regarding  The Grad Diploma Ed. It’s an intensive 10 month program with about 350 students in each intake ie per year. It is taught across 4 different campus: Wollongong, BB, SH and Bega.

The students spend 55 days in the classroom – about 20% of the total learning time.

Their program consists of core subjects from Wgong in the main plus eduStream for large classes and some video conferencing (vcf). Sharon said they are moving away from co-ordinators in each location, hence they have an ESDF project to harness appropriate technologies for Multi-location teaching, and ongoing professional development for interactive teaching ie 2-way approach even in the large classes. Richard Caladine working on this aspect with Tess Snowball. They are looking to move from eduStream to interactive vcf even for the large classes.

New requirement: Sharon wants to offer scheduled syncronous staff/student consultations to facilitate feedback and reflection on the classroom prac experience. Could be one-on-one, could be scheduled for tutor to whole tutorial, could be opt-in sessions on key topics eg Maths lesson plans, Classroom management. Also good for interventions for students struggling and under strees, to keep them in the program.

Who else wants this kind of facility?

Brainstorming eLearning tech innovations with John

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I ducked over to the Innovation Campus for lunch with John Glynn, head of the Business School. We talked blogs and collaboration spaces for communities of students, mobile applications and competitive advantage, case and role-based learning and e-simulations, alumni blogs and videos, and busted a few subtly racist myths of international student habits.

I feel the spirit of innovation growing on campus, and it’s a great place to be.

Ning Social networks in teaching

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Currently there are 3 undergrad classes that I’m aware of that use Ning as an entire learning environment, after a trial use by one class last session.

Ning lets anybody create their own social network and you can have sub-networks or special interest groups inside each network, which usually has a theme. I explored one called “Classroom 2.0”

After navigating thorugh to this network from an “education” themed newtwork i clicked on a network called “Classroom 2.0” and then i clicked on a “visit” link to go there. Once inside (ie on the Classroom 2.0 homepage) it looked remarkably like a WordPress blog. I wondered if it was based on WordPress with some additional code to create a visual clustering and linking between the different sites.

Can anybody comment on what exactly the students like about this particular site/network? How do they use it to stay in touch? Is it particularly easy to link through to find friends’ contributions?

The Classroom 2.0 social network (Ning) homepage      Another part of the homepage, with the special interest group links.

It certainly was easy to set up a new network, see images below you just name and pick a url, theme and colour scheme, and drag and drop the items/features to set the layout.

Setting up a Ning network

And here is what it looked like after i’d set it up. Empty. But ready to roll.

45 seconds later, a new Ning network site.

Smart boards are coming soon to a lecture room near you

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I like the fact that the board is so big you can use your whole arm to operate the huge scroll-bars and pulldown menus from the projected computer image. It gets you out from behind the lecturn more. You can stay out front and more in touch with your audience until you need to go back to keyboard on lecturn to type any text into a dialogue box or form.

Commerce eSimulation takes shape

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Just came back from a meeting with Belinda and Ellie re the Forio.com terms of service. Also got some great feedback for a few additions to the Guidelines for working with Externally hosted websites that I’m working on.

Best iPhone apps to learn Japanese – a beginner’s perspective

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Japanese on the iPhone

Are you keen to learn Japanese on your iPhone? As a beginner you might look at basic phrases as well as Hiragana and Katakana. More advanced learners might want to further their Kanji and JLPT (Japnaese Language Proficiency Test) skills. Below are a couple of hints for what to look for and avoid when purchasing Japanese learning apps.

Basic Phrase Apps = thumbs down 🙁

Your first stop is probably to want pick up a few phrases and get a feel for the spoken word. Hearing pronunciation of words and phrases is a good general introduction and will help prepare you for a native context. Real-life situations like TV shows and overseas students are perfect for tuning your ear to Japanese and a much richer source compared with the limited selection of iPhone Japanese phrase learning apps. Most combine a poorly recorded audible short phrase with an english letter pronunciation, called ‘Romaji’. While it may seem easy at first, Romaji is a pretty clumsy system to represent the language and ultimately useless in communication with native speakers, i.e. “What time is it?” is read “Ima nanji desuka”, opposed to the native character set of Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana, which brings us to the next set of apps…

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Example App: “J Phrases”

Hiragana and Katagana Apps = Thumbs UP! 🙂

Hiragana and Katagana apps are where the iPhone really shines. Beginners of Japanese are usually quite daunted (or excited!) by the huge variety of new characters to learn. Hiragana and Katakana are two sets ‘alphabets’, and the first step is to memorize the shape and pronunciation of each ‘letter’. Quick and punchy quiz games like ‘Study Japanese’ (below) are both enjoyable and effective. Conversely, I’d recommend staying away from conventional simple ‘flash card’ games that limit interactivity and quickly lose appeal.

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Example Kana game “Study Japanese”

A Good Dictionary App

The “Japanese” dictionary app (below) is a touch pricey at over $10AU, but well worth the investment for a one-stop resource for all levels of Japanese learners.

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“Japanese” Dictionary App

Conclusion (just the beginning, really)

The most important first step in learning Japanese is to HAVE FUN! Seek apps and games that will keep your interest and teach you at your level, not over it. Come back when you’ve mastered Kana to find out about Kanji and JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) apps. See you then!