As an avid shopper that has spent a fair few years enjoying London shops and still dream of Saturday shopping sprees down Oxford Street, this week's Manaiakalani DFI course hit a certain cord with me.
Secondly it connected nicely (as things often do) to a conversation I had had earlier in the week with a friend in PR, who explained to me the importance of presenting well formatted reports. He explained how an amazing, however unformatted, 'messy' report, can be turned away or not thought as highly of as a less superior flashy looking one.
For me who has never been one for fancy lettering or borders, making things pretty makes me panic. I don't know weather it is a patience thing or just the fact that it has always taken me three times longer than other to write something, and that I have always been ashamed of my spelling so that by the time I'm finished I just want it gone.
However the connotations I gained through the following words allowed me to see the dressing up of work as something as important as an impressive shop window or nicely laid out shop.
“these windows inspire me to go in”
“they need to sell from this.
“....Trying to represent that inner window so that when someone is walking past they go ‘oh wow, I really want to go into that store...”
The session showcased the use of Google Sites as away of sharing learning opportunities with our students, and we learned the importance of a well laid out, captivating site, verses the opposite.
and.... I surprised myself.
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| My Website |
Here are some key points from the session:
To motivate our learners to engage with the curriculum we need to be creative ourselves.
Working in a Manaiakalani school we can't just expect the device to motivate, it is what we do with the technology (the possibilities) that motivates.
We need to think of multimodal ways of presenting the learning, and different types of literacies to extend and deepen learning.
We should think about the texts we are giving them, how can we use these texts to motivate students through cognitive engagement.
Draw them in so they are behaviourally engaged.
We all have different ways of connecting to learning, if we only teach and present in one way, only those that learn that way will succeed. This struck a cord with me, a student that traditional ways of teaching didn't suit.
Food for thought.... and motivation to take time and put the effort in to make presentations look engaging.
