#PGCEmix end of line

The #PGCEmix experiment has concluded.

Thank you for your participation :)

Join Stellenbosch University in the Dropbox Campus Cup

Join the rest of University of Stellenbosch in the Dropbox Campus Cup. By inviting your classmates to join Dropbox, and using Dropbox to share, collaborate, and get work done, you could earn up to 25 GB of free Dropbox space for two years! 

All students are eligible - even if you already have a Dropbox account! Questions? Learn more about the Dropbox Campus Cup.  *This post does not indicate or constitute any official endorsement by Stellenbosch University, it's constituent bodies, or its employees.

Reblog: To learn or not to learn (Afrikaans language post via princessjanie.blogspot.co.za)

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO PRINCESS JANIE: PRINCESSJANIE.BLOGSPOT.CO.ZA
BY JANIE DU PLESSIS on September 7, 2015

To learn or not to learn

WEEK 7

Hierdie proeftydperk kan vir baie mense ‘n breeze wees. 9 weke waar jy as proefstudent dag na dag in die personeelkamer kom sit en Facebook. Om ‘n onderwyser te wees verg baie selfmotivering en positiewe denke en verantwoordelikheid. Om ‘n top klas onderwyser te wees is regtig jou eie besluit. Niemand gaan vir jou sê hoeveel moeite om in te sit nie. Dit is alleenlik jou eie keuse waar jy jou eie ervaring konstrueer. Aan die ander kant kan die proeftydperk ook ‘n tyd wees waar jy jouself in jou werk in gooi, en baie baie leer!

Aanvanklik het ek gedink onderwysers doen maar almal dieselfde, maar ek is defnitief verkeerd. Selfs in die skool waar ek geplaas is, is dit baie duidelik. Sommige onderwyser sit geen moeite in nie, nie in hul klaskamer of les aanbiedings nie. Onderwys is nie vir hulle meer lekker nie - nie ‘n passie nie. Ander onderwysers weer aan die ander kant, maak nie saak hoe oud, raak SO opgewonde oor onderwys. Hulle doen moeite met die klasse, doen moeite met die kinders, en dis so tipe onderwyser wat ek strewe om te wees.

Ek kan my indink dat dit moeilik is, en dat mens later nie meer lus is nie. Maar as jy ‘n passie het, sal jy jouself weer optel en dit doen omdat onderwyser jou eerste liefde is. Om eerlik te wees, kan die tipe onderwyser reeds nou in die proeftydperk gesien word.. Om te proef is kunsmatig, en dit is nie vir almal lekker nie. Dit weerspieël defnitief nie wat jou ervaring as onderwyser gaan wees nie. Maar dit is tog nodig, en dit gee perspektief. Dit is ‘n tydperk waar jy kan oefen en alles kan prober om te sien wat vir jou werk.

Hierdie week was daar baie take by die skool waarby die proefstudente betrokke kon raak, maar slegs ‘n handjie vol student het opgedaag om deel te neem. Dit is hier waar ek kan sien dat alle onderwysers nie gemaak is vir onderwys nie. Ek hoop hulle kom gou genoeg agter dat dit nie hul passie is nie, wat onderwys is nie net iets wat jy ligtelik moet opneem, of iets wat jy moet doen omdat jy nie weet wat anders om te doen nie. Dit is die belangrikste beroek daar buite. En ons moet sorg dat ons dit goed doen!

‘n Onderwyser moet baie dinge kan wees, en bereidwillig wees om AL die nodige posisies vol te staan. Een en ding waarvan ek vereseker is – ‘n onderwyser kan NIE lui wees nie. Dit is die een beroep waar die ekstra myl sowaar lewensveranderend (vir jou en jou leerders) sal wees.

Rita Pierson: Every kid needs a champion

Published on 3 May 2013

Rita Pierson, a teacher for 40 years, once heard a colleague say, "They don't pay me to like the kids." Her response: "Kids don't learn from people they don't like.'" A rousing call to educators to believe in their students and actually connect with them on a real, human, personal level.

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• Category

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Aaaaaand... they're off!

#PGCEmix be like:

... and School Practice be like:

Meanwhile, back at the faculty:

Hot Topic: Digital Storytelling

By now you might have heard of Digital Storytelling and it's popularity in corporate communication, and also education. While there is a lot of information out there, I found the following example (from TELIC Stories) rather interesting:

Ian Guest, who completed his MSc in 2011, leads the ICT support team in a school in Sheffield. In this story he talks about how even the smallest of interactions while studying for TELIC can still have significant unanticipated outcomes. Ian explains how his use of social media developed during the course and how it has had an impact on his own professional practice.

A transcript of Ian's video is also available.

Have you come across any interesting examples? Better yet, have you tried it out? Drop us a comment, or share your story on your blog.

UPDATE: The ESRRC '15 committee has accepted the proposal to add a Digital Storytelling workshop to this year's conference proceedings! I'm expecting some really cool and useful work - be sure to be there!

*Educational Students' Regional Research Conference

Talk'n about faculty

The great thing about Twitter is that it can facilitate real-time engagement,
which could be useful in so many ways...

eg.

----- o -----

----- o -----

Reblog: Why Teachers and Students Should Blog (via edudemic.com)

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO EDUDEMIC: EDUDEMIC.COM
BY HANNA SHEKHTER on May 30, 2015

Blogs have the potential to expand student creativity, not to mention their writing skills. Language Arts and Reading specialists will love that, right? But how do I convince them that their students are thirsty for the knowledge they want to share but not the same way that they themselves obtained it? These kids are 21st century students and are adapting to a digital world that they are eager to learn from.

Fortunately for teachers, blogs are surprisingly easy to use. They require minimum technical knowledge and are quickly and easily created and maintained. Students will be able to pick up how to use blogging platforms with minimal technical assistance and teachers will enjoy the ease in the initial setup. Unlike many traditional Web sites, blogs are flexible in design and can be changed relatively easily. Best of all, students and teachers will find them convenient and accessible via any computer or mobile device.

Why Blogging is Great for Students

1. Blogs Allow for Multi-Faceted Learning

Educators need to teach important materials in several ways because each one of our students learns differently. What’s more, we also need to provide students with multiple ways to engage with assignments, based on their individual talents. Blogging is one technique for doing so, as it can allow a quieter student, for example, to feel heard online. Those shy and quiet students feel less pressure when they need to “speak” in their blog or when giving peer feedback, as they are discussing the text on their own terms. Additionally, this journaling format works great with read-and-write learners as well as visual learners.

2. Blogs Promote Literacy and Sharpen Writing Skills

Blogging gives students an opportunity to become published authors and showcase their writing skills. In addition, blogs give students the ability to improve communication and collaboration through the commenting feature. Peer review and feedback become an invaluable part of the writing process. Students from other parts of the world can also comment and provide a new cultural perspective to our own students’ thoughts and opinions. Students’ writing skills are vastly improved through the blogging process, since they have to work harder to hold the readers’ attention. To do that, every word, phrase, sentence, and even punctuation mark must add something to the posting.

3. Blogs Are Accessible and Engaging

With the availability of blog apps, blogging has become very simple and accessible to our students. They can blog from anywhere about anything whenever they are in the mood to reflect. They are not tied down to a desk and feel more free using this writing media. Also, in the age where every person has a camera in their pocket, we have become a society that journals through photography and video. Along with other multimedia artifacts, blogs become more engaging and almost interactive for the readers.

4. Blogs Can Serve as a Classroom Management Tool

When used as an in-class assignment, blogs can keep your students on task and focused. The more blogs students post, the more opportunities they have for others to comment on their blog. It’s an exciting feeling for students to see proof of someone reading their published work, taking time to reflect on it, and posting their opinion or question. Creating a classroom blog instead of individual blogs fosters an online community for your students to extend the classroom beyond the 4 walls. The learning continues wherever they go and their thoughts and conversations keep going.Blogging is a great tool to create student portfolios, as it can be used both as a “learning portfolio” and a “showcase portfolio”.

5 Tips That Will Make Blogging a Breeze

1. Use a simple blog application

Look for popular classroom blogging apps that have been tested in classrooms and made simple even for early elementary students. Blogger is a Google app and is completely free. It is easy and simple to use if you have a Google account you can set up your blog in minutes from a computer or mobile device. Edublogs lets you easily create and manage student and teacher blogs, customize designs and include videos, photos and podcasts. Kidblog provides teachers with the tools to help students publish writing safely online. Students exercise digital citizenship within a secure classroom blogging space and teachers can monitor all student activity. Other great options include WordPress, Weebly, and Tumblr (for photoblogs).

2. Start with a specific writing prompt

If you’re beginning with a class rather than an individual blog, you’ll be responsible for those initial posts, while the students will respond in comments. As students demonstrate both keenness and responsibility, give them more freedom where they earn the right to write posts on the class blog and/or get their own student blog. You can start with Sentence Starters like “Today was the best day ever…” Image-based prompts that can also be incorporated into daily and/or creative writing activities whether they are pictures you took or random ones from a web site or app. You can also invite students to create prompts for the class and use these prompts whenever possible.

3. Create a rubric

Providing detailed explanations of an assignment using a rubric can help students in both completing tasks and thinking about their performance. Be sure to include expectations for the first post as well as for commenting on another student’s post.

4. Know your audience

The audience makes the work matter to students as they have an opportunity to showcase their writing and respond to real feedback. Initially, the teacher and classroom peers are the major audience that provide the feedback. However, you may want to consider sharing the blog details with parents through the school website and newsletters to grow the audience to family members and other parents. This can have unexpected practical use. For instance, if a student is writing a piece on the topic of technology and one of the parents in the classroom is an engineer, that student may be eager to produce quality work to get real feedback — and they may find themselves a great interview source, too.

5. Make content concise

Tight, concise, easy-to-read pieces are ideal for most online readers. Long, complex, convoluted ones are just confusing. Very often, the longer a piece is, the less the writer holds a reader’s interest — all the more so on small screens. As such, your students would do well to get right to the point — a skill they’ll find valuable as they continue up the academic ladder.

Takeaways

Educators know that students write better when they have a real audience. But with blogging any student can write for the world to see. Students have an authentic audience for their writing and that has an impact on the quality of their posts and comments. Encouraging students to blog about all sorts of topics helps them see connections among subjects and different aspects of their life and realize that writing is a worthwhile skill in any field.

Want to learn more? Visit Hanna's blog here.

Edudemic editor’s note: This is an update to Hanna Shekter’s original post on this subject, which first ran on January 5th, 2013. A lot has changed since then, so we invited Hanna back to update her wonderful tips.

What are you putting out there?

How important do you think your digital footprint is?

Weeklikse Vraag 6: Fin du semestre

Engage and respond to your peers' blogs and tweets regarding your PGCE program so far.
Tree in gesprek met, en reageer op die blogs en twiets van u eweknieë rakende u NOS-program tot dusver.

HowTo:

1. Ontwikkel u idees op u Persoonlike Blog. / Develop your ideas on your Personal Blog
2. Post title = Your own heading. / U eie opskrif.
3. Post body = U antwoord. / Your answer.
4. Labels = task6
5. Toon interaksie met u kollegas. / Show interaction with your colleagues.

Weekly Question 5: Easter edition

Tree in gesprek met die blogs en twiets van u eweknieë, en ontwikkel 'n voorstel vir onderwyseropleiding.

Engage in dialogue with your peers' blogs and tweets, and develop a proposal for teacher training.

HowTo:

1. Ontwikkel u idees op u Persoonlike Blog. / Develop your ideas on your Personal Blog
2. Post title = Your own heading. / U eie opskrif.
3. Post body = U antwoord met media. / Your answer with media.
4. Labels = task5
5. Toon interaksie met u kollegas. / Show interaction with your colleagues.

This Is Genius

What do you intend to teach?
What do you hope to achieve?
Valid questions both...
but I want to know:

Whom are we teaching?

Published on 30 Mar 2015

A spoken word poem by Ryan Lotocki.

Filmed by: Nick Stroczkowski and Kurt Schlewitt

If you would like to get in contact with Nick shoot him an email at nick.stroczkowski@gmail.com or check out his other videos at http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0vDn...

Music composed by: Ricky Valadez

https://www.facebook.com/rickyvaladez...
http://www.rickyvaladez.com

Die towerkuns van die opvoedkunde

In die moderne samelewing waarin ons onsself bevind, is dit so maklik om oorweldig te voel deur die massas inligting tot ons beskikking. Dit is geen uitsondering met die proses van die opleiding van onderwysers, pedagoë en selfs kurrikulumtegnikuste nie.

Volgens die Handwoordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taal (HAT) is 'n onderwyser 'n "persoon wat na ['n] afgelegde eksamen bevoeg verklaar is om les te gee aan 'n hoër of laer skool." Die HAT verklaar ook 'n pedagoog as 'n "persoon wat hom toelê op die studie van die pedagogie". 'n Kurrikulum word verklaar as die "studiekursus" of "leergang" wat 'n kurrikulumtegnikus as't ware dus ontwikkel.

Uit bogenoemde verklarings is dit duidelik dat al drie hierdie professies of rigtings 'n direkte uitwerking of effek op die kinders wie hierdie opvoeding van bogenoemde persone ontvang, sal hê. Dit maak dan net sin dat die onderwyser, pedagoog of kurrikulumtegnikus een doel voor oë moet hê: om hierdie leerders te inspireer om te leer.

'n Mens is so geneig om vas te val in 'n raamwerk van reëls en rigiede strukture met betrekking tot die opvoeding van Suid-Afrikaanse kinders, maar 'n mens se nommer een uitkykspunt in die onderwys moet wees om te inspireer - daarom my finale argument:

Dit is aanvaarbaar dat daar standaarde en beleide moet wees, maar elke onderwyser, pedagoog of kurrikulumtegnikus moet opgelei word om ander en daarom leerders te inspireer deur hul optrede, kennis en vaardighede. Is dit nie hoe ons 'n land gaan "vorentoe neem" as kinders die toekoms van môre is nie?

And the nominees are...

Veels geluk aan ons genomineerde skrywers (in no particular order):

Janetta van Wyk, Anuska Rabe, Leandi Chaldene Robinson & Janie du Plessis.

Now on to the class vote! Nou is dit tyd vir die klas om te stem!



Deadline: 23-03-2015 @ 12:00

Answering Question 3: Nomineer jou gunsteling antwoord

In my previous post (Weekly Question 3), I asked you to publish your answers to your own blogs. Following that, I asked you to go and read the answers that your colleagues posted on their respective blogs. The third part of task3 was to nominate your favourite answers for inclusion on this blog.

Vir Weeklikse Vraag 3 het ek u gevra om u antwoorde op u eie blogs te laai. Vervolgens het ek gevra dat u na die antwoorde op u kollegas se onderskeie blogs te gaan kyk. Die derde deel van task3 was om u gunsteling antwoord te nomineer vir publikasie op ons klasblog.

Hierdie is hoe u daardie bloginskrywing nomineer | This is how you go about nominating a blog-post:



And here's the form | En hier is die form:



Ek sal Woensdagmiddag (18-03-2015) die form sluit en nominasies tel.
I will close nominations on Wednesday afternoon (18-03-2015) for tallying.
@12:00

Happy Reading!

Class Announcement : Assess. 2 extension

NB NB: Deadline extended! The App Review requirements are a) word count of 800-1000, or b) +-5mins long #PGCEmix Deadline: 10 Mar @ noon