Inspiring times for pedagogy, my digital thoughts...

Once, I just had a few choices to put a lecture series together, PowerPoint, ohp, or simple chalk and talk. For me, they all have significant advantages and disadvantages.

But now, you can add to the above prezi, articulate, audio podcast, tweeting, ebooks, dynamic hyperlinked word documents to name a few!

I've previously blogged about using my iPad and now my iPhone as a lecture platform. This allows base ppt and ebook texts to be made available via our vle, blackboard. To this, I can add live, in class, hand scribing onto note pages that can then be emailed as a PDF. I can use twitter for in-class and post-class clarification and discussions, often the limited characters is beneficial to both parties.

By far the most popular, and initially counterintuitive, is making live notes in the lectures. Sounds familiar? This is how I learnt 20 yr ago, rolling acetates have been replaced with an iPad connected to a projector, but whilst the principal remains the same, most crucially what is being taught had changed significantly.

At university in 1993 I was receiving knowledge from an expert. In 2011, students can now gain that information instantly via the Internet. Often, this is done live in class, and I've seen seasoned lecturers challenged on facts from behind the wi fi connected lap top!

I passionately believe that students no longer want facts delivered in a didactic manner by slide after slide.

They need guidance through all the information. What is relevant in an ever increasing mass of noise.

They need techniques to deeply understand the data. Hence, the live notes and diagrams in class. Yes, you can can find a clinical sensitivity and specificity graph online in a few seconds, but can you draw it from scratch, and then manipulate it to explain how it drives treatments such as deep vein thrombosis (dvt) or breast cancer?

This is why students need distinctive and quality, evolving lecturers, who ate committed to both research and pedagogy.








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VC Distinguished Teaching Award Nomination

I have been nominated for a DMU VC distinguished teaching award. I didn't win, but very humbled and inspired by the following comment from a student.

Dr Basten is an amazing lecturer and teacher. He consults us on how we would prefer to receive our lectures. He doesn't just write a powerpoint, stick it on BlackBoard and read it to us. He gets involved, draws diagrams and explains how what we're being taught will be helpful after university and how we should answer any exam questions that may involve this subject. He's always available when we need help, either after a lecture or available by email to which he always quickly replies. I think he deserves an award because I look forward to his lectures, which I find easy to understand although the content is difficult. He is amazing."




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Left brain dominant

Apparently, according to my phone I am
LINEAR. SEQUENTIAL. SYMBOLIC. LOGICAL. VERBAL. REALITY BASED. you have a Left Hemisphere Dominance, you process information in a linear and logical manner, from part to whole. You are probably a list-maker: you enjoy making master schedules and a daily planning, and take pleasure in checking the tasks off when they are accomplished. Likewise, learning things in sequence is relatively easy for you: you have no trouble following a conversation, you are good at following directions and pay special attention to details. You are comfortable too with symbols, which involve linguistic and mathematical endeavors: you have no trouble expressing yourself in words, you are a good speller and you feel comfortable with assignments involving reasoning and analyzing. You adjust well to changes in your environment, adapt well to rules and have no trouble following them: In fact, if there are no rules, you will probably make them up to follow!

Is this me?

Tweet me @grahambasten and let me know!

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Useful Apps for iPAD

Having used the iPAD for teaching, learning and management over the last year at DMU here are my most used and most useful Apps:

Name	What does it do?
Task Task HD	Syncs your Outlook Tasks (Apple only do e-mail and calendar for DMU webmail.)
iGone	Syncs your Outlook Out of Office. (Apple only do e-mail and calendar for DMU webmail.)
Prezi Viewer	Viewer for Prezi Presentations
WebOut	Safari is not WYSIWYG. So if you use the Apple AV lead to connect to a LCD projector for a lecture the screen will be blank. This app allows internet content to be sent to a projector.
Mighty Meeting	Virtual cloud storage and AV out for ppt, pdf and doc presentations.
Penultimate	Incredible note book handwriting. AV out and ability to pdf and email handwritten notes.
Dropbox	Virtual Cloud Storage which links Apple platforms to desktop pc and internet
QuickVoice	Allows creation of email and doc files from spoken word
BlogPress	Allows creation and management of Google Blogger sites with link to Twitter for notifications.
TwitBird	Useful twitter app which shortens urls and shows previous tweets in the timeline
gDocuments	Access to, and management of, files in virtual Google Docs
AppShopper	Shows when apps are reduced for a short time
IdeaSketch	Bubble sketch app to visually show complex ideas
Pages	Apple’s version of word – accesses all doc, pdf and pages files, integrates with dropbox and email.
Keynote	Apple’s version of powerpoint – accesses all doc, pdf and ppt files, integrates with dropbox and email. Uses your iphone as a pointer and remote control.
Numbers	Apple’s version of excel – accesses all doc, pdf and xls files, integrates with dropbox and email.
Plain Text	Free version of pages, ok for basic text input
FileApp Pro	Views pfd files and doc files attached to emails if you don’t want or need Pages
LinkedIn	Linked In App

Wonderful message from a student

cant believe i got a 1:1 in degree, but as they say hard work pays off.
just want to thankyou for your help with project and tutorship, as that gave me a real boost to achieve a first.
see you at graduation


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HLS TF Presentation

Please find link to my prezi presentation about a year using an ipad for HE teaching.

Presentation given on June 20th 2011 as part of the DMU Health and Life Science Teacher Fellow Showcase.

HLS Teacher Fellow Showcase

http://hlsweb.dmu.ac.uk/ahs/elearning/TeacherFellows/Teacher_Fellow_Home_Page.html