Kia ora koutou
Ko Ron Bull tohoku ikoa, no Oraka ahau, My name is Ron Bull and my roots lay in the ground at Colac Bay, Southland (among other places).
I currently work as a Senior Lecturer in the Treaty Education Training Unit within the Educational Development Centre. My primary role is to assist staff in understanding what the Treaty of Waitangi is, and the importance of this understanding in building mutually beneficial, sustainable relationships between institutions, as well as individuals, and mana whenua in New Zealand.
The majority of my teaching experience has been at the University where I taught one to two hour lectuers to up to 300 students. I am still getting my head around the idea that there can be other ways!
I am also invovled in various cultural rights and obligations that require me to 'disappear' for periods of time. I feel that I need to learn effective strategies that will change my classroom management teaching/learning style as well as allow me the freedom to participate in the cultural activities without adversley affecting my students success outcomes.
I'm looking forward to meeting those of you I have not seen before and to catching up again with those I know.
Ron Nau mai. It sounds as if some self-paced learning packages could assist you to be more flexible as a teacher so you can engage more easily in your responsibilities. Perhaps a satellite dish you can take wherever you go. :) Though reception might be tricky in some of the places you need to go. With a satellite dish you wouldn't even have to tell the students where you are. But that is being silly. :)
ReplyDeleteI am looking forward to discussing ideas about flexible learning with you. What sort of learning preferences do you believe your students have? What type of strategies do you feel comfortable with when teaching? Your answers to these questions will be a good starting point when thinking about different approaches. Bron
Hi Ron, I know you're not teaching classes of 300 students now, but how do you think you can be flexible in that sort of structure? Sarah
ReplyDeleteKia ora Sarah.
DeleteInteresting question: My initial attempts at flexibility were to tailer my presentation to what I thought most of the class wanted. I would read the queues from either the majority of the class or from at least those I thought were engaged.
In this traditional academic style of knowledge transference I wonder how a flexible teaching model would have been percieved. Perhaps all students knew and expected was the one to many blah blah blah.
I had invited students to e-mail any questions they had to me directly as inclass q&a was difficult. I took the whole two hours to myself! this was not a great teaching and learning experience as we could not engage at a deeper level with most of the questions.
I find what I'm doing now with smaller class size to be more intimate. I have more of an oppertuinty to engage one on one in a more interactive environment.
I may reserve comment on your origanal question at this stage Sarah. I'll give it some deeper thought.
Ron