PL 41/09: Work in progress

Yesterday the students at the LATINA course presented the educational triggers and digital stories they made earlier this week.

The presentation was lively and well attended. We had invited students from the other summer school courses, as well as interested staff from Oslo University College, to watch this demonstration of work in progress. For the Norwegians, in particular, seeing our ordinary routines and objects – shoes, teaching, plastic cards – from new perspectives was enlightening as well as very funny. We hope you’ll take a look.

We are also encouraged when we see that an increasing number of teachers – and learners – turn to new and more active forms of learning.

PL 40/09: Learning from mistakes

When we try to develop something new, we cannot avoid making mistakes.

A real expert – it is said -  is a person who has made all the mistakes it is possible to make – within a very narrow field.

Jon Mott, an American educator and blogger just wrote a nice blog post on failure:

Rarely do we tell students that we do not know how much they will learn, that we cannot even be sure of the outcomes, that they will have to participate communally before they will learn, that learning may confront their status quo in an uncomfortable fashion or, even more important, that we all fail sometimes and so will they.

PL 39/09: Big change in 2009

Earlier this year I wrote in my Norwegian blog that 2009 would be a turning point.

We have had digital technologies for a long time, but now they turn mobile and social – and become a normal part of everyday life. Schools, colleges and universities are forced to ask:

• shall we try to keep these tools away from our classes (and teach as before) – or
• should we try to integrate them – and change teaching (and learning) accordingly

PL 38/09: A story from Spain

Today LATINA turned to stories.

I’d like to share with you a small story told by another LATINA student. Her name is Clara. She comes from Spain and participated in our spring course.

Picture from Sevilla.

Like all LATINA participants, Clara wrote a blog. She studies librarianship – and called her blog Librarians in Trouble

PS 8/09: LATINA/lingua

LATINA is a global course.

This means that we cannot take English for granted. In the smaller European countries, students have to master English – at least in writing – since many of the texts they study are not available in the local language. But the demand for texts in English is lower in Spain and Italy, France and Greece, Russia and Romania.

Village in Nepal.

Beyond Europe, the situation is even more complicated. In Latin America, students basically need Spanish – or Portuguese. In West Africa, French is dominant. Angola and Mozambique use Portuguese in higher education. Arabic is supreme in the Middle East. Most of the big Asian countries – from Turkey to Japan – use their own languages for instruction at the university level.

PL 37/09: Multilingual LATINA

Yesterday – at LATINA – we explored the possibilities of Wikipedia as a tool for teachers and students.

Wikipedia is not just a web-based encyclopedia – it is a global network of interrelated user-created encyclopedias in more than two hundred languages. Including Latin. The Wikimedia Foundation also supervises a number of other projects based on free and open access to user-generated content.

In the LATINA Summer class 2009 nobody had English as their mother tongue. We use English as our common language (lingua franca), but speak other languages at home. The actual languages present in the class were Chinese, Luganda, Nepali, Norwegian, Polish, Swahili and Ukrainian.

PL 36/09: When did the course start?

The LATINA course started on Monday. Or did it start before that?

One of the questions Helge posed on the first day was: when did course actually start? The automatic response would be: today. The consensus among the participants – after some discussion – was: the course started when they committed themselves to participating.

We might say: A course is not a static object, but a social process.

PL 35/09: Trolls

At the Summer School opening yesterday, Heidi Dahlsveen told a story about trolls.

Post-modern trolls with 19th century flags and a helmet that no Viking ever wore (horns were used for drinking). Only the cell phones are missing.

The cute little figures tourists buy in souvenir shops are fakes. I hate them. They give a totally false impression of Real Norwegian Trolls.

PS 7/09: Blogging in context

In the LATINA course, we ask both students and staff to blog.

The point is not to write a lot, but to write regularly. If students write something every day, they develop not just the ability to reflect on their own learning, but also the habit of reflection.

Picture from LATINA Spring 2009.

We see the blog as a free and open form, which people use for many different purposes. They may turn inwards – to reflect on the events of day; describe problems, difficulties and solutions and to analyze their own work and thought processes. But they may also use the blog as an external memory: summarizing lectures, readings and discussions; testing concepts and expressions; exploring new ideas and relationships: storing information and information sources ….

The important thing is to express what you think and feel, observe and question. The blog works best as a personal genre.

PL 34/09: Twelve days to go

On Monday June 22, LATINA starts up again.

LATINA students browsing in the OUC Learning Centre.

The first LATINA course was held last summer, as part of the first International Summer School at Oslo University College.  The second course was arranged this spring, for a group of international students from Europe and China. Now I am looking forward to the third round – and add some reflections on how the course is developing.

Radical redesign

LATINA is a deliberate effort to redesign (reshape, restructure, “re-invent”) institution-based learning and teaching activities under fully digital conditions. A multicultural (global) setting is part of these conditions.

We see this as development work rather than as delivery of a standardized course package. A research component will also be added, which is well described by the Norwegian term ”følgeforskning” . This means research that follows – like a shadow – ongoing project or development work