Educational Visit – St Fagan’s and the Museums

Our second and third visit involves Steph and I visiting St Fagan’s and The Museum. The Museum presented us with many inspiring ideas. Firstly, it was noticed that there was fairly large exhibition on rocks. We thought it might be interesting to look into rocks and further develop this idea into climate change or even space.

 Furthermore, there was a significant amount of information in relation to the Evolution of Wales which got us thinking that we the focus of our podcast could perhaps be on the History of Wales. Additionally, another possible and interesting idea to further look into is how life evolved and the species that no longer exist. 

St Fagan’s offered us many ideas associated with energy. It was fascinating to see how people used to live without relying on technology and electricity, using just coal and fires too cook food and as a source of heating. It would be interesting to see how these have significantly changed through time, as it is evident that not many people rely on coal to heat their homes today. 

Each of the educational visits have presented us with some wonderful and inspiring ideas that we could develop into an interesting and fun podcast.

Educational Visit – Botanical Gardens

As a class we visited the National Botanical Gardens with hope of some inspiration for our podcast. They have ‘over 8000 different plant’s, spread across 560 acres of countryside’

As it wasn’t a very nice day, it got Steph and I thinking about the impact the weather has on plants around the world and the effect this has on food sources. Further into our visit we came across a ‘Fungi Exhibition’ which we were very interested in. The National Botanical Gardens of Wales (2014) states that “The interactive exhibition reveals the intimate details of fungi in a way they have never been shown before, challenging misconceptions and showing how they are vital to the survival of earth.”

  

Finally, Steph and I were very fascinated in the Medicine section of this trip, it was interesting to see how different medicines were made and what they were used for.

However, although each of these ideas seem to be a good starting point for our Podcast, further brainstorming would be needed to decide upon a final idea. There are also two more Educational trips that we can go on to further explore possible ideas for our Podcast.

References

National Botanical Garden of Wales (2014) Retrieved from: http://www.gardenofwales.org.uk/ March 2014

How an out of classroom environment can develop an innovative scientific idea

It was decided that I would be working with Steph and before starting research for our podcast that it would be beneficial to firstly look at the importance of learning outside the classroom. Evidence from Braund and Reiss (2004) indicates that, many teachers believe that learning which occur outside the normal classroom has positive influences on the pupils. Waite (2011) proclaims that a number of forms of learning outside the classroom can enhance children’s learning, from museums to marshes. Furthermore, Braund and Reiss (2004) suggests that, access to outdoor learning environments allow children to see examples of scientific phenomena making it easier to understand. These sorts of trips can also have the ability to change children’s misconceptions about certain scientific beliefs that they hold.

DfES (2006 cited in Waite 2011) argues that, Learning outside the classroom is about raising achievement through an organised, powerful approach to learning in which direct experience is of prime importance This is not about what we learn but more importantly how and where we learn. (p.3)

For this purpose, Steph and I will be visiting a number of Educational facilities in order to develop our scientific ideas and make a final decision on what the focus of our podcast will be on.

References

Braund, M., and Reiss, M., (2004), Learning Science Outside the Classroom. London: RoutledgeFalmer

Waite. S. (2011) Children Learning outside the classroom, from birth to eleven. London: Sage

What is a podcast?

Bradshaw and Rohumma (2013) note that a “podcast is a digital audio file that can be distributed over the internet” (p.93). Podcasts can come in many different forms such as interviews, discussions, video clips or even information guides. Podcasts allow everyone and not just journalists to broadcast their ideas out loud and share information in a creative way. According to Richardson (2010) Podcast, just like blogs and wiki’s are now widely used throughout higher education to promote creativity throughout learning.  

For this particular assignment we have been asked to work in groups of no more than three people to produce a podcast to show how an out of classroom environment can develop an innovative scientific idea. In order to do this, we will be undertaking our research on educational trips such as St Fagan’s. Once we have an idea that each person in the group agrees on we will then do more specific research into the chosen topic in order to come up with the podcast. In the specific assignment criteria it is stated that ‘The podcast can be in the form of a film, documentary or interview or any other contemporary idea.

References

Bradshaw. P and Rohumaa. L. (2013) The online journalism handbook. Oxon: Routledge

Richardson. W. (2010) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. London: Sage

Olive Hopker Guest Lecture

On the 14th of February the Guest that took the lecture was Olive Hopker the ‘Head of Planning and Development at Swansea Metropolitan University.’

The lecture was about ‘Collaboration –v– Competition’ we discussed the difference between Collaboration and Competition in Higher Education.

The first thing that we talked about was the employment structure in Wales and the statistics. I learnt that Micro enterprise represents almost 95% of all businesses in Wales, therefore only approximately 5% of businesses are large as people these days are creating small businesses. The next thing that was discussed was Universities and how they collaborate with each other. This allows courses to be improved, sharing libraries and Internet sites such as turn it in. On the other hand Universities are in competition for a number of things such as Student recruitment, Staff recruitment and Research funding although they collaborate for research they compete for funding. All universities want the best staff possible.


There are many Collaboration benefits. Sharing experience and knowledge, cost saving, value of a ‘external eye.’ This meaning someone from the outside looking in, someone who is not involved sometimes has a clearer view on things. Swansea Metropolitan University and Trinity College are due to collaborate.

Swansea University says that the collaboration will

“Improve advice, guidance and information provision, extend support for Personal Development Planning processes offered through the curricula, focus more attention on employer liaison and marketing and expand online services and resources.” (2012)

The main benefit for the Competition is to promote efforts to do better and Provide choice, this allows choice of alternative products/services such as more choice of courses.


We later talked about the advantages and disadvantages of a Large Higher Education Institute and Small Higher Education Institute. We come to the conclusion the Small HIE are easier to manage as they have small classes allowing more flexibility although there are small resource bases such as libraries and there are limited choices. The disadvantages in a small HEI would then be the advantages at a large HEI the most obvious of the large HEI would be the large resource base. There are a lot more things; there is a wide subject base and a range of courses, meaning more opportunities for staff career moves. The limitations of being in a large HEI would be there are no flexibility with course’s if your on a course then you would have to stick to it as most of the other courses would have large classes. There would be complex structures and rigid procedures.

As I am in a small HEI at Swansea Metropolitan I have to agree with there are more advantages at being in smaller HEI as I am able to contact my lectures and tutors easily and prefer to be in smaller classes where we all get to know each other very well.


References

Swansea University (2012) Careers Service accessed 2nd April from
http://www.swansea.ac.uk/careers/recruiters/employerneedsandtrends/careersservice/

Policy and Practice: Governors

On the 23^rd of January we had a guest speaker due to Andy’s absence. Steve Gullick took the session. He gave us an insight on the role of governors today, he spoke about the role a Governor has and what it indicates and the purpose of a Governing body.  The department of Education describes the main purpose of a Governing body is to “help the school to set high standards by planning for the schools future and setting targets for school improvements.” (2011)

Steve Gullick told us that Governors were volunteers, which I found particularly interesting as they make such broad decisions such as the school budget, the start and finish time of the school and teachers salary. Which showed how much power governors have. He then went on tell us about the arguments that there are about Governors. One argument is that Governors should be experts about the decisions that they make, then on the other hand that Governors should not be experts but they should be people who live near the school such as the Parents and the Council as they want the school to do well. Another argument is that maybe Governors should be paid but the concern with that is that it may attract the wrong type of people to be Governors people who just want the money and don’t really care about the school but recently the new chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw cited on the BBC news said that "My view is that when a school is doing poorly, we need to think about paid governance.” (2012)

The Governing body is currently made up of people who have a steak in the school these can be

• Parents
• LEA’s
• Teacher’s
• Staff for example a Care Taker
• Community
• Headmaster

All Governors can only be Governors for 4 years and then another election takes place. School Search UK  “The full governing body meets at least once a term to discuss the running of the school.” (2006) This gives everyone who wants to be a governing a fair chance.

References

Department of Education (2011) Retrieved on 25^th January from

http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/leadership/governance/a0056625/the-role-of-governor-within-the-governing-body

Education and Family ‘Pay school Governors’  (2012) accessed on 1^st March from

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-17204548

Schools Search UK (2006) School Governors retrieved 28^th March from

http://www.schools-search.co.uk/school-governors.php

Visual Communication- Metaphors

This theme took place over 2 sessions. The first session we were put into groups of 2-3 and we had to create a collage. The theme was sense of place. Kate and I made a collage representing us individually and our lives. We put images such as make up, money, food etc. We had a section about university and a section, which was about us. It represented the journey of being in university and the responsibilities we had that we may have never had before such as finance, being able to budget our money for food and accommodation. During the next session we presented our collage to the class, we talked about the images representing university, which gave us a sense of freedom and then why different images were significant to us.

We then went on to discuss metaphors as a class, the first task we had was to think of artists that used Metaphors in their lyrics in different songs, It was surprising to see how many do. Some examples that Kate and I came up with were ‘The ice inside your soul’ and  ‘Baby you’re a firework’ we then talked about how metaphors are used to send out a powerful message. Not just in songs but also as images. Susie gave us a number of images to look at, one, which I found particularly powerful, was the image below.  Which is about animal testing.

At the end of this session we watched a video by Martin Luther King which was about his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, and looked at the different types of metaphors that he used to emphasis on things that he was saying.