Preparing for supervision

02/11/2008 by lizit.

Trying to get my thoughts in order over what I’ve been doing during the last couple of weeks and what I need/want to talk about on Tuesday morning.

On the practical front, there is a need to start getting clients for ILE09 - it isn’t far away and there is quite a lot of work to do - finding clients, briefing them, agreeing contribution, etc, etc.  We also need to think about where in SL we can do the contruction elements - is there any budget this year?  If not, what can be begged or borrowed -and where from?  Given the nature of the SL education network, I am much less concerned about resources than clients.  We also need to think a bit more coherently about how SL is presented to students and what input they need in how to use it.  It makes sense, in my mind, to again ask them to register and familiarise themselves with the environment over the Christmas recess, but being realistic this is unlikely to happen.  This means, the first session of the course could again involve registering avatars and getting students into SL.  Perhaps need to think a bit about wiki resources that may be useful in explaining more about SL as a learning and teaching resource.

Moving from the practical, what have I been doing? It feels a long time ago, but the National Workshop on learning in immersive worlds occupied a lot of my thinking and time. I found it a very positive experience.  It was good to meet a number of people I have known for a long time online and to share ideas in a real world setting.  Interesting too to find that experiences of working with students in SL were not dissimilar - there isn’t a need for lengthy orientation for most it would seem. I am looking forward to continuing conversations at ReLIVE in a fortnight.

I’ve spent some time thinking about what it is that interests me about SL.  Some of that is recorded in other postings in this blog. I tried to draw a system map a couple of weeks ago First System Map to understand context I am working in and I’ve also jotted down some questions Brainstorming some of the issues that interest me in SL that might be useful to explore further.

In between times, I’ve done quite a lot of reading.  Not really recording much and need to develop a system for doing that.  Really want to find a way of keeping bibliographic data and notes together, but also need to do some connecting up ideas - maybe spray diagrams would help.  Need to get it into my head that although it feels as though ILE 09 is bearing down at a rate of knots, I actually do have the time to think rather than just doing.Some things I am reading are sparking ideas though -light bulb moments when I realised the link between owning one’s own knowledge, KOLB and constructivism - Duh!

Other helpful thing over the past  week was the writing workshop at MK. Good to see colleagues I know well (helpful when still - and probably inevitably - feeling a bit at sea at Sussex).  It was really useful to have a day focussing on getting stuff on paper and really quite amazing how much I know without having to refer back to various papers. Very different approach from my usual style of polishing and editing as I go - to be told to write for 20 minutes without reading what I had written! It was also useful brainstorming blocks to writing and finding everybody felt the same.

Less sure about the exercise for the Research Methods course - that got me throwing my rattle out of my pram a bit.  I think the problem was trying to write a research proposal at the wrong time - I don’t know what I’m interested in and I do know what I’m interested in and I don’t know enough and I know too much for the exercise.  In the end I have done something by being focused and by recognising this is only an exercise which may have little or no bearing on what I am meant to be doing.

So, what do I want out of Tuesday:

• a project plan for sorting out the practicalities about ILE 09 - who doing what, when, etc.
• an opportunity to share the buzz I felt from the Coventry workshop
• Practical thoughts on how to record ideas and thinking on an ongoing basis
• To clarify expectations of supervision - probably really about laying ghosts and recognising difference between supervision in a managerial context and in an academic context and in a counselling context

What don’t I want out of Tuesday:

•  Going over stuff which I’ve noted here

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