Linda's Meta-learning Journal

The only way I can now post to this blog is via Internet Exploder and I'm really fed up about it. Camino can't cope with the new wiziwig editor and the html version greys out the entry area. Safari doesn't work either. What on earth am I to do? IE for the mac isn't supported either but at least I can get into the entry area. I pay for this blog but if they don't get this sorted out I won't be doing so anymore!
Also I've just discovered my header for the blog is off centre if viewed in IE - grrrr, not happy!
Ok here's Firefox working with the wiziwig - if this works I may have to start using FFrather than Camino.  Wonder if this will work?
OK - it works. So finally something will force me to use Firefox. I got into using Camino originally because the copy and past into Firefox didn't work in the blog - wonder if that's fixed?
http://lindiop.blogspot.com/  Yep that works ok now. Hmm perhaps I'll finally learn to love Firefox...

McNiff says that the researcher needs to set criteria by which they will know there has been improvement. She suggests that this criteria should link to the researchers values. This was a powerful insight for me. I had begun to examine my values as I stated my assumptions for the research proposal but until I read this part of McNiffs work I had not fully made the connection between this and the means of judging the efficacy of the improvements I may make and indeed the deeper levels of my reasons for my choice of topic.

I thought the best thing to to with my lack of evidence for my pilot exhibition might be to try a reflection. I used the idea of a reflective splurge a lot in year 1 and 2 of the degree and I thought it might give me some insight. It didn't help much, no Aha moments. So not the right thing to do perhaps. I'm still convinced that some sort of creative expression might help but at the moment I'm too tired to be creative and the deadline for the module is only 10 days away. As things stand at the moment I'm seriously considering a photo of my empty pigeon hole and a reflective hiaku. Hal once said he'd always wondered if someone might submit 4 photos (it would need to be 6 this time of course).
Someone says it happened because I am in the real world and it's all part of the experience. I have no idea how to respond to that. Yes, I am in the real world - there is another sort perhaps???? The unreal fantasy one the writers of our modules inhabit, for example?
Richard's comment is kind and tries to reassure me but I haven't time to watch and wait for a slow burn, I have a deadline looming. I'm afraid the whole pilot thing has been totally forgotten in the madness that is a primary school in December. It's a flurry of costumes, cards, callendars, rehearsals, DT projects to be finished, and in the middle of all this packing stuff up to move into temp classrooms after Christmas.
Viv - what can I say? It's scary and I'm afraid I can't say anything reassuring except not everyone has had this problem. Maybe you'll be fine.

Well, I did my pilot exhibtion and they came and they ate my cake and they looked like they were listening and they clapped at the end. And I asked some questions, and they asked some questions. And only now do I realise, a week later, that I never got any answers.
So I have no feed back - none, as in, not any. I can cross structured focus groups off my list of data collection methods, and evaluation sheets too. Oh, and individual interviews of both a structured and unstructured nature, and informal conversations as no-one likes to be quoted when they are just chatting, so what's left?
Nothing much.
Conclusions?
Two main ones so far
1. I am rubbish at this - this seems to be Stephen's favoured position. He thinks I must have sounded like an expert and they were intimidated into silence by me.
Does he realise these people are mostly teachers and I am a TA? They are not intimidated by me..... I think. I mean, but maybe he's right. How the hell should I know how I sounded? They won't tell me and I'm way too embarrassed to ever let anyone hear the audio recording.
It didn't feel natural standing up in front of them telling them stuff. It doesn't fit my prefered pedagogy. I'd rather have got people doing something real but that wasn't possible.
Pesonally I incline more to the belief that I bored them into a sort of trance.
2. I was talking to the wrong people. Somewhere - out there there are people who might be interested in what I'm doing. But not in my workplace - which is a kicker when this is a workplace based degree.
I left work having been close to tears all day. I knew this. I knew they weren't interested, so why does it hurt so much?

I have done 42 Things (according to 43Things). I have 42 pages of photos on Flickr. The school has 42 satin skirts for Hosanna Rock. Am I detecting a theme today? In which case does this mean I should reduce my number of indicative references down to 42 from the current unwieldy 50 odd ?

Thanks to Eve for the image :-)

Found this in the Object Learning Archive Furl
Conversate lets you create instant online discussion spaces. It's simpler, faster, more polite, and less annoying than group emails.
Start Fast
Conversate gives you your own online discussion space for any topic, with anyone you want to invite. It's totally free and ideal for talking about articles or websites and for organizing projects and events.
Has a nice web 2.0 feel to it, RSS for conversations, public, private or limited options, lets you create lists of people for specific topics, and has a bookmarklet so you can just click the tool bar to start a new conversation about a specific web page. I'm very taken with this so far :-)

So here we are, half term. Five weeks or so since Ultraversity term started. What have I learned about my learning this year?
My joy at finding some lectures on line about qualitative research alerted me to something. It was such a relief to sit in front of a screen and be passively taught something. Everything that was said was stuff I'd read about before. There were no surprises except my reaction to it. I was happy - it felt like the pressure was being taken off as this person explained things like the different forms of data analysis and the different kinds of notes you need to take in qualitative research. Not rocket science but funny how much clearer they were when he spoke about them than just from reading. It reminded me how much I used to like going to lectures and making my own notes on what the speaker was saying, what a powerful way of understanding concepts that can be. It's a skill I haven't used at all in this degree. It's not the same as making notes from books or papers, not that kind of study. It's more about understanding principles and concepts. In some ways the speaker doesn't have to be as strong academically as an author. They just have to understand what they are talking about and be able to express it clearly.
It seems to me that whilst a lot of my learning as an adult has been experiential and much of it has been social constructivist, there is still room for hearing someone do a 'talk and chalk' lecture sometimes. Hmm

So long time since I blogged here. I'm not sure the experiment of moving all my non-uni related stuff off to Everything Else was such a great one. It's somehow discouraged me from posting here.
The AE moves along slowly and lumbers in the direction of actually starting. I feel a huge jumble of emotions about it. I regularly panic and decide that it is all too nebulous, and then loose the thread of what I'm doing. Well - that's what panic does, isn't it? Freezes the higher order thinking skills.
That fuzziness is what happens with emergent research though especially at the start. I need to be relaxed with the ambiguities. Have trust that I'm following a sound AE methodology and begin to flow with it. There are the aspects that need to be kept rigid, the methodolgy, the timescales (to an extent), and there are the things that need to be allowed to emerge. Ok that feels better. Now to write a brief questionnaire.......

We went to the museum to see someone dressed up as a Roman. Usually these things are dire but this guy was pretty good, the kids enjoyed it and actually I sort of did too.

I walked back with two of the kids who have major behavioural issues and discovered they both have amazing imaginations. on the way up the big hill out of town they got into this fantasy that we were Celts treking back from the Roman fort and where all around us was a dark forest rather than the grim housing estate. We were hiding from wolves, diving behind trees and holding our breaths, it was great! I was entranced by them and I think they were amazed that this grown up was happy to join in their play and suspend her disbelief. They wrote some amazing stuff about the Roman army this afternoon, these boys who are 'reluctant writers', and drew some powerful pictures. Actually the whole class did. A magical thing, education, when it happens. 

OK first off a warning about the perils of RSS. I wrote a blog entry which was intended to be kept as a draft and not published, hit the wrong button and woosh! So I did the obvious thing and deleted the entry. Fine - no harm done? Wrong! The RSS feed had already been picked up by the Blog of Blogs so now everyone who reads that has been treated to my end of tether moan about feeling like quitting the degree.
The only thing I can say is that 'feeling like quitting' and actually doing it are a million miles apart! I feel like quitting quite a lot of the time and have done for about a year now. However there is absolutely no way that I would actually give in to that feeling. I know from bitter experience what it feels like to walk away in year 3 of a degree and there is no way that I would do that again under any circumstances. So when I say I 'feel like' doing it I am just expressing my feelings of despair, giving vent to them, trying to face them, feel them and not let them have any power over me.
And yes, some of the time I am quite unhappy in my job. My school is not a comfortable place to be these days. There have been some changes in my role that have mean I spend less time supporting children, which is the bit I actually liked, and far too much time supporting teachers, which I don't. It's not an uncommon complaint amongst support staff.