Natasha and her program All in the Mind won not just the Gold Medal for her section (Health/Science) - but the big kahoona as well - the Grand Award - while Robyn's Into the Music won a string of awards for in the music section. Accolades well deserved.
RN success at New York Festivals
A big congratulations to my friends and colleagues Natasha Mitchell and Robyn Ravlich for their success at the New York Festivals Radio Broadcasting Awards.
on Self-Assessment
RMIT has a teaching policy that encourages and fosters peer and self-assessment. The idea being that by third year undergraduates are self-assessing most of their own work and practice.
When I first started teaching at RMIT I didn't really 'get it' and saw self-assessment as an easy opportunity for students to exploit. These days I think self-assessment is a really good idea because it weans students off being dependent on external affirmation and helps them develop self-confidence and independence.
Peer assessment is also good because it makes the value of a 'high distinction' or 'credit' determined by the 'student market'. Which I think is a legitimate way to go. If they slather HDs amongst themselves, it should make them wonder about the actual worth of an HD when they get one...
In industry, which is where my students are heading, you don't get a neat numerical score for your efforts and a grade that clearly marks your place in the pack - standards are relative, sometimes you appear to have done very well just because the competition is weak, quality of work can get confused with how enjoyable you are to work with – or how much they like you, or how similar your ideas/take is to their own, people rarely tell you what they think and tend not to tell you things you don’t want to hear because it makes them feel uncomfortable – sometimes the only way you know you have done poorly is because you don’t get another gig with the company, sometimes people just piss in your pocket as a way to get you to do more stuff – sometimes people don’t tell you how great your work is because they think you know this already.... Etc... And that the only way to traverse these fuzzy shifting confusing planes is to know, in yourself, what the work is ‘worth’ - both in relation to your own personal set of standards and in relation to the quality of work produced around you.
This blogging business
Recently, I've been looking at blogs and thinking about how they can be an effective tool in both teaching and project management.
Students are required to blog a lot at RMIT and staff are encouraged to use new technology in both delivery and crafting of the learning environment. I've been quite into this, and after a flurry of excitement find myself with several closed collaborative project blogs to contribute to.
All of these blogs are focused around managing their different projects effectively and also act as a space or central location for the developing project... a sense of it being something before it actually is something
I've found project blogs help keep all participants on the 'same page' and threads of conversations clear. I like how all participants in the blog have admin rights and equal opportunities to contribute to the discussion and evolving project. I also find it handy having blog posting notifications entering my email inbox re-tagged with the project forum - this makes managing several projects and multiple professional communication a lot easier
The other aspect of project blogs I find really helpful is the ability to sort and filter information through tags or labels. This is becomes a crucial function when managing a mass of accrewed information. I also like the capacity to build in links and references into the blog - so it acts as a developing information resource for the project group as well as a discussion space.
This blog here is my only open personal blog. It's new and I'm still in the process of working out what it is and what it's for.
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