Distance period 3 and forward..

So much to do and so little time

Dear diary, I had to prioritise my tasks so I decided to leave learning diary as last thing..

There were three major tasks to do during the 3rd distance period: Familiarise the legislation concerning education, principles of learning and the first competence essay concerning learning community. The learning community essay I found the most hard. I had never been writing text this wide in English and about a topic that I knew almost nothing in beforehand! My topic was teacher's working community.

Essay 1: Learning community

The starting point was that I had to choose a topic that fits in learning community competence area and goes together with my group members topics. With that I did perfectly but in personal level it would've given me more if I could've invent a topic more concretely related to my teaching field. Of course working community is related to every field. Well I had to start with something since the time was running and I started to write 10 days before deadline. That was the first mistake but how was I supposed to know that this task should have been started in the beginning of the studies when I knew nothing? The second mistake was that I started to write without any plan or structure. And material for that matter. This made me feel a little bit of panic that I just have to write this no matter what. True, there is no other way to get things done then just do the hard work. And there's no better motivater then the final deadline Reading about the topic was interesting and now I know some basics about it but as a scientific work my essay didn't come out so professional. Well I plan the whole thing while I was writing it. The use of references was weak: I used the material that I found last minute, not the most new or reliable ones. I also defined my subject based on what material I could find. There was actually no time for reading the material through completely. But I passed. I got it finished before the deadline and we did a very traditional seminar presentation about it with my peer group. (boring talk blabla powerpoint).

It turned out that I have learned the competences of learning community at least ok. For the next competence essay I'll pick a topic much earlier and make a plan for the work and the material that I need. But now there's more time..

Principles of learning

The first task was to familiarise the main learning theories. We did this in group discussions in Mooodle and it went good. Then we had a group exam which I was a little bit scared of before. But it was very pleasant and I learned so much more that I ever would have if I had to do that alone. Luckily we had a summary about the theories made by Jari which we could use during the exam. This kind of groupwork I will use in teaching in the future.

So now is a time for Christmas brake, only one task to do before January. (exept that I should plan my PTT course) I'll get into that during Christmas days when there's nothing else to do.