Student story!

Gertrude (lets call her Gertie shall we? - it's not her real name anyway) is an occupational therapy student. She is young - straight out of school, and comes from the lush farmlands of the King Country. She chose OT because she wants to work in health but she doesn't want to deal with things like blood and pee and pills. She chose Dunedin over Hamilton because her parents told her that it is better to have real lecturers than to go on-line to study.

Gertie is Ok with this - it is fun being a scarfie, although cold and crowded in her scruffy little flat. She is in her second year and is passing with C's and B's. She socialises heaps and studies when she can. She likes to do her study later at night as she is a bit of a night owl, but this is stymied unless she is very organised as she needs to use Blackboard for a lot of her resources and there is no internet in the flat. She even needs to download and print resources to take to class, but she has a good mate who will do this for her in return for a drink on Friday nights. This works for them both!

Getie did spend time on line the other day and worked through a learning package that the lecturer put up for Frames of Reference. It was cool having all the information laid out like that, with pictures and video clips and quizzes and stuff. It was even easier ploughing through the reading as there were questions to go with it so she was motivated to read more carefully. And what a bonus - the lecture was there too, some power point slides and same voice rabbiting on. But it took ages - over 2 hours and as she got so engrossed in it Gertie didn't have time to do the other work she had meant to. Oh well, maybe she should start planning her study time after all...

What's it all about?

Now some time up my sleeve to do a proper introduction. I am working as a lecturer at the Occupational Therapy school, and am enjoying the challenge of getting to grips with the polytechnic environment. My past occupational therapy experience has all been clinical, although I have done some teaching in outdoor education, in mental health services and in therapeutic recreation.
I guess the most important thing for me as a teacher is that the students get the learning done, and so my motivation regarding improving teaching is around making sure I develop skills in making my teaching tools and techniques as diverse and effective as possible.
My goals are related to learning more about avaliable technology, and trying to figure out how to add flexibility to a course that has some fairly structured expectations regarding content, environment and assessment.
The learning I have done recently regarding technology has given me confidence that even I can use it creatively! However some less than useful experience with software crashing, email accounts not communicating with my blog and Elluminate not working has not helped me develop a trusting relationship with the technology yet...

First attempt!

Here I am, finally part of the global blogging family. A reluctant learner at present, but hopefully success will breed motivation! I guess if I am to be a part of flexible delivery of courses, I need to experience flexible recieving of course material...