When you can’t see the wood for the trees

Have you ever noticed how you can fail to notice the seemingly obvious? Coaches, and occasionally educators, will advise their students to focus on the task at hand, to give 100% attention to the exclusion of all else.

Is this wise advice? Probably not. In a seminal study on inattentional blindness, Simons and Chabris (1999) demonstrated how we can sometimes lose focus on important issues when we concentrate fully on other matters. Likewise, in a study based on a real-world incident, Chabris et al (2011) provided supporting evidence of this phenomenon that resulted in a Boston police officer being exonerated of a criminal offence. 

In a classroom it can seem like a good idea to focus on the topic, or a particular student or group. In doing so, one runs the risk of not noticing something else of equal or greater importance. 

See for yourself:

• Chabris, C.F., Weinberger, A., Fontaine, M., and Simons, D.J. 2011. You do not talk about Fight Club if you do not notice Fight Club: Inattentional blindness for a simulated real-world assault. i-Perception, 2(2), p.150.
• Simons, D.J. and Chabris, C.F., 1999. Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception-London, 28(9), pp.1059-1074.

Shining eyes...

You might already be a fan of classical music. You might not. You might just like some of it from the soundtrack of a favourite film. It doesn't really matter; read on.

Benjamin Zander is a conductor, teacher, and speaker, renowned for his entertaining pre-concert talks. His TED Talk is on 'the transformative power of classical music', but the talk is about much more than that and I find it inspirational on many levels. 

Zander covers Shakespeare, leadership, teaching, grieving, the optimum number of buttocks required to play the piano, and conflict resolution, among other things. 

Whatever your views on classical music, it's well worth taking 20 minutes out of your day to watch this clip.

MS Office - like it or loathe it, you can't ignore it.

Today’s blog is on the topic of Microsoft Office suites. Enjoy!

I have used MS Office in various guises and different settings for around 20 years. Most of the time I just use Word for word processing, with the odd table and graph thrown in if writing a report, but in practice not much more than that. For teaching I use Word for producing lesson plans and some lesson handouts.

PowerPoint is seemingly ubiquitous software; in academia it is a workhorse of the lecture hall. In lectures, presentations, and training courses it’s pretty much the expected means of conveying information. I use ppt extensively for delivering lessons and for producing academic posters. There are alternatives but ppt is a familiar tool and I have yet to find other software as a full-time replacement. The private sector has branched out with the likes of Prezi but when it comes to academia ppt is still the main attraction. PowerPoint can be a pain to use and occasionally (depending on the presenter) excruciating to sit through - overuse of animations and transition sounds can ruin any presentation. Used well is an extremely useful tool.

Excel is a very powerful application with a wide range of uses. Trying to remember all its functionality can be mind-numbing. I have used it extensively in research for data storage and manipulation, basic calculations, running macros, pivot tables, etc., before transferring to an analysis package; just a fraction of its functionality. Most of the time I use it as a (very) simple spreadsheet, or for a dataset. In teaching it is very useful as a tool to monitor student progress and to simply log academic results.

As with most software, the MS Office user manual is handy but can be tricky to navigate for individual needs. If you need to learn to use any software or specific functionality, you can be sure that someone has made a tutorial and uploaded it to youtube.The information is out there!

The hall of mirrors

Reflective practice is practically inescapable. Reflecting on teaching, particularly early in a teaching career, is an important exercise in improving theoretical knowledge and practical teaching, and therefore becoming a competent professional (Hillier, 2005). There is always a new theory or practice to explore. Learning theory and teaching practice are closely linked and provide the basis for continual professional development in the discipline (Hillier, 2005).

In everyday life we hardly give it conscious thought. As humans we repeat actions at which we are competent almost subconsciously, and adopt useful new techniques, information, or methods as necessary to add to existing schema.

As a student teacher, the process is less familiar; reflection is conscious with a need to log areas for improvement and progress made. It’s more of challenge to question one's ability in writing and then justify how to address that. At the same time it is vital not to lose sight of areas of competence; these also require attention in order to maintain standards.

I have been reflecting on this recently. Reflecting about reflecting. You could call it meta-reflecting. Is it enough? Maybe meta-meta-reflecting is the way to go.

I'll reflect further on that over the weekend...

• Hillier, Y., 2005. Reflective teaching in further and adult education. A&C Black.

An introduction...

I graduated from SMU with a BA(Hons) is Psychology and Counselling as a mature student. Following a postgrad qualification I took the decision to gain a formal teaching qualification and enrolled on the PGCE (PCET) at UWTSD. I secured a teaching placement at Gower College and am delivering on the BTEC diploma in Public Services.

This Level 3 course offers students a comprehensive introduction to a potential career within the UK armed or emergency services, and/or a stepping stone towards a higher qualification. I find that many of the modules relate quite strongly to psychology theory, indeed some aspects are directly taken from psychology textbooks. 

This has helped to smooth the transition from student to teacher and made the process of delivering initial lessons enjoyable.  As such I have been able to focus more on the available technology and general administration of the course, something I found invaluable in the first few weeks of my placement.

This blog forms part of the PGCE course assessment and is focussed on the use of ICT in education. Forthcoming posts will address several aspects of ICT, and I intend at this stage to continue with the blog throughout the course.

A new day, a new blog

As part of my continuing journey in education I am now studying towards a PGCE (PCET) at UWTSD in Swansea. Today was the first day of a new module, ICT, which looks at the use of technology in education, and one of our first tasks was to create a blog.

This reminded me that I started a blog a while back but had added very little content. As a result of the lesson I revisited that blog and added a post from previous research we carried out here at UWTSD (then 'Swansea Metropolitan University') into student engagement with virtual learning environments  (VLEs). The research was presented at the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) Conference 2013. A further presentation on a different aspect of the research built on previous research on VLE use at SMU: Student engagement with VLEs: why and why not (Hutchings and Grey, 2013).

From the quantitative data we concluded that students tend to avoid using VLEs for more challenging topics - in this case cognitive psychology. Qualitative data in the form of semi-structured interviews revealed that students prefer using social media such as facebook to communicate with their cohort about course-related matters, and  avoid using chat or discussion boards built in to the university VLE.

This fits with the technology acceptance model (TAM) for most new students. If they already use social media for communication there is little perceived usefulness in learning another system for a similar purpose; therefore attitude toward using is reduced and actual system use consequently lower.

Technology Acceptance Model (Davis, Bagozzi & Washaw, 1989).