Flexible Learning Course

Kotare by dcysurfer / Dave Young

Please note that the course timetable has been revised for this week, and also for the final week's presentations - they will now be held on Monday 25 June 2012 - 13:30 - 15:30 in D314. I will have an Adobe connection so the distance people can join us. Those of you joining from a distance can connect via an Adobe Connect web conference on Wednesday 27 June - 13:00 - 14:00. I have emailed to ask those of you who have said you are ready to present to ask if this could be an option as time slots for people presenting on-campus are getting  full.  Please everyone check if your preferred time is correct on the mini-conference table on the wiki , and let me know if you will be presenting at either of these days if your name is on the not confirmed list. 

Kate Timms-Dean will be presenting this week's topic in an Adobe Connect web conference - Thursday 7 June 13:00-14:00. A recording will be made available if some of you make it to join in the discussion.

So what is the week 12 topic about?
Indigenous people are ethnic groups who live in a geographic area with which they have the earliest known historical connection. Historically, many Indigenous groups, including Māori in Aotearoa New Zealand, have been the subject of colonial expansion. This has often resulted in territorial and cultural conflict, and the intentional or unintentional displacement and devastation of Indigenous populations (Wikipedia, 2010). In the contemporary context, Indigenous people often feature strongly in the lower echelons of society in terms of employment, socio-economic status, health status and educational attainment. As a result, it is important to consider the needs of Indigenous learners in the development, design and delivery of flexible learning programmes and courses.

Activities
Post responses to the following activities on your blog - after you have accessed the readings and media material for Indigenous Learners. An additional article has been emailed to you.

• How can you include examples of New Zealand's indigenous culture in the design of your eLearning courses - language, society, history, political issues etc.?
• What approaches can you utilise to meet the needs of indigenous learners?
• Outline any experiences you have had working with indigenous learners.
• What were some of the challenges that you and the learners faced?
• How did this affect their learning?

The Education for Sustainability swirl

In this topic you will be exploring the meaning of sustainability for your practice and how to be a more sustainable educator. Before you can do that, it is necessary to understand the concept of sustainability in an educational context. For example, workload for teachers and students and the ways in which course materials, activities, assessments and class interactions can be structured or designed to support learning which is time and cost-effective and enduring while providing a high quality experience. The six principles of education in What is Education for? by David Orr is a good place to start your exploration. For example, principle 2: The goal of education is not mastery of subject matter, but of one's person.

Activity Ten – Sustainable Flexible Learning- work on the learning activities - no class time this week.

• How can you become a more sustainable practitioner?
• What sort of learning and teaching strategies meet your philosophy of sustainability?
• Post your reflections about sustainability to your blog once you have viewed the presentations and completed the readings.
• Read the article on student workload and find out how to calculate it - Lockwood, F. (2005). Estimating student workload, readability and implications for student learning and progression. Australia: ODLAA.
• Watch Sir Ken Robinson discuss Do schools kill creativity?: "we are educated out of creativity not into it". He ends with saying: "we have to educate the whole person". This 20 minute video is well worth watching. 

Two readings are recommended on the course wiki.