Friday 13 June 2014

A festival of sharing

A little bit from my experience yesterday at the Jisc Festival of Teaching and Learning!  It was great to see lots of familiar faces again and to have a little catch up of what everyone has been doing.

My first session was alternative approaches to assessing and providing feedback.  This was a really good session about using video, audio and visuals in general for assessment and feedback.  It is something I already know about, but it did get me thinking again about it.  The presenter said that there was no written evidence involved, just video feedback.  I have used screencasts before to give feedback, but did provide a written part too.  So I think I will capture more by video through creating activities and discussions.  As I said to the group, through talking you can get deeper knowledge than just by written.  Suppose it’s become a tradition in writing evidence when really it’s naturally around us.  We just need to capture that.  By the end of the session I said; written evidence has evolved into visual evidence. Assessment practices need to evolve.

My second session was The Green Trail.  Again, I have seen this before with QR codes, but it was good see another way of using them.  Plus I was curious of the environmental bit, as nature and the environment is important to me.  It was a QR code trail that was linked to an induction booklet.  It was a really good example.  I suggested to the presenters on how they could promote this resource to teachers to evaluate their carbon footprint in the classroom, to encourage recycling and better use of a VLE to cut printing etc.

The third session I went to was teaching in adult and community learning.  This was a good session about the presenter’s experience of teaching in this sector and their activities they do.

For my session in the tent, I talked about the Display, Engage and Participation model that I helped create.  I had three people come along to this and we had a nice little chat about it.  I saw this as a little trial as I will be doing a full presentation of it at two other upcoming events.  I’m very proud of this model actually, it really is a good driver and thought provoking piece.  I may talk about it more on here soon.