Friday, August 14, 2009

T&L Activities Friday 14th August

Today has been busy for teaching and learning activities. They have been:
  • Breakfast with a leader - six secrets of change leadership: Felicia Zhang, Laurie Grealish, Monica Kennedy
  • Finding the leader within - meeting 1
  • TATAL - holistic learning: Amy Griffin

Breakfast with a Leader

Despite the false advertising, this was a great session. It appears that only the intellect was to be fed - the body was starving at the end and was only appeased by a chocolate-chip muffin.

Laurie, Monica and the late Felicia discussed the six secrets which they had acquired at a recent conference (?). I carefully forgot to write down the secrets so they are still secret, nor did I record the reference. I will ask Monica later for the details. One of the major themes mentioned was the need for openness. Another was love your team (in an contextually appropriate manner). I really need to get the list of secrets - while the session made a strong impression on my, I cannot remember the details. Arrrrrrrrrrgh.


Finding the Leader Within

This was the first meeting of the group. Most of this was a getting-to-know-you exercise which also explored our concepts of leadership. The concepts shared were similar and focussed on themes of motivation, support, respect and inspiration. The remainder of the session dealt with admin matters for next week's retreat - I must remember to fill in the travel forms and email Janet the information she needs. The program looks promising.


TATAL

Amy lead TATAL today and she spoke about holistic learning. She gave three definitions:
  • Teaching the whole person
  • Systems-based teaching showing the interconnectedness of the parts
  • Holistic learning style as opposed to sequential learning style (synonomous with global learning style)
She ran us through a Learning Style diagnostic (Felder and Soloman) with four dimensions:
  • Active - Reflective
  • Visual - Verbal
  • Sensing - Intuitive
  • Sequential - Global
I came out as stronly intuitive and global, moderately visual and weakly active.

I will use this instrument on my students later if I can make time in a lecture.

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