Rethinking Teaching and Learning

After a rather long absence and a well-deserved break if I may say so myself, I am back on the topic of using technology in teaching and learning. Try googling "flip" and you will land up at a site for a pocket-sized video camera that looks more like a cellphone. It's designed with bloggers in mind and comes in various storage capacitites, uses USB recharge and as an optional extra comes with a handy mount that can be attached to different objects. A family member brought a Kodak version of the same device that also acts as a still camera and shoots in HD. It has a nifty HDMI output which means it can interface with your Hi definition home-theatre systems. On a more serious note (education is serious business) I am at this retreat where we are asked to think about our teaching and learning. The topic for our first day is to develop concept maps of a course that we are interestd in teaching. Mine was on video production and for the first-time I seem to make some headway with the development of this course. The interaction was great and there was a great sense of collegiality amongst the participants in our group. Overall there was a sense that things were a bit rushed especially from for those (including myself) for whom the concepts were new. Happy to say that I survived the first day. One of my tasks is to ensure that the technology used is working which is tough when everyone is making use of their own camera and very few are ophay with their own technology. Everyone is in high spirits but this is early days and i am interested to so whether the morale will continue to peak for the rest of the week. Anyway, still sitting up tonight putting final touches to the concept map.