5 comments

  • But it should be said that Richard’s thought provoking talk and great company were more rewarding.

  • At the risk of disappointing Richard, my main motivation for being there was the fine spaghetti. :p

  • Hi Richard,
    Thank you for sharing the PowerPoint for your presentation. It is interesting how you drew on the experiences of both you and Jackie here. At some point I would love to know what the “mime experience” and “podcast award” on the third slide were all about!

    As for Achilleas going the extra mile (or actually several miles) to be there for your talk, fine manners are not new to him, as we say in Arabic 🙂

    • Richard Fay

      The ‘mime example of methodological orthodoxy’ refers to my experience (during my CertTEFLA initial training) of using mime to eleciit language and being told in no uncertain terms that I shouldn’t try to elicit language before I had presented it. This was in the days of strict PPP (present, practice produce) methodological wisdom/orthodoxy.

      The podcast example refers to the UoM where praise/award was given for someone using podcasts n theor teaching, ie it wasn’t praise for how they used them, why they used them. Here, it seems to me there is a methodological orthodoxy that using new technologies = innovative = good = best practice. Against this stance, I was speaking about appropriate methodology in teaching and learning. I am sure that podcasts can be used in many and diverse ways in teaching and learning. The key thing for me is that they are used appropriately rather than simply used. I felt that, as announced, the award focused on the latter rather than the former, i.e. on use rather than appropriate use. I suspect that the lecturer concerned did indeed consider appropriacy but the discourse of best practice obscured this teacher thinking.