What did I learn today?

I went to the first hour of a CELT session on Facebook Communities & Social Learning, other colleagues stayed so I will catch up with them and find out how the rest of it went.  I had to get to the PgCLT session more on that later.

The CELT session saw Steve Woodward and Hadyn Blackey describe the work of Simon Jones, who makes extensive use of Facebook to support his current undergrads and keep in touch with alumni, who add their 'real world' experience and encourage current students with tricky parts of the curriculum, also encouraging for them to know that graduates are employable and making use of their degree!  It sounded a very useful support mechanism, he also uses it to post photos of field trips.

I've signed up to Facebook today as a consequence of this, I'm not sure I like the 'peer pressure' ubiquity of it, but if it's useful as a work tool for learning & teaching then I'm willing to try it out.

Today's PgCLT class informed us a little bit about writing a learning agreement, it's very much an individual document and not at all prescriptive.  I think there is a proforma in the Handbook, so will have to check that out soon and start drafting!  We also watched a video about what it's like to be a pupil/student with LD (learning difficulties), it really illustrated how difficult it is for such learners to process information & questions, and find motivation and generally function in a classroom setting. 

From watching this, I think I confirmed to myself that I probably speak too fast, I do this because I tend to think that the students aren't interested in the content of a library/legal research skills session and I don't allow enough time between points or for student reflection. I will try to focus on this and work on making improvements in this area.

I also had an idea today about how I might change things for next year - I would like to get the students to write their own legal research guide. I will discuss this with the other Legal Sources Skills and Methods module tutors.  The students could choose which format to use, something simple like a Word doc, or a blog post(s) or something else entirely?