The joy of learning

OMG my head is spinning. Today I have been learning about 'metacognition', 'deep learning', 'high order thinking' and 'constructivism'. This is mind-boggling stuff, and rather tricky to spell. There is no getting away from it, I am really going through with this PGCE Teaching course.

I have watched two lectures by a wonderful chap who sounds just like Eric Idle, and he certainly seems to look on the bright side of life with the little jokes and anecdotes he puts in his lectures. It was all on the internet so it could have actually been a Monty Pythoner for all I know, he was about a centimetre tall on my screen.
How's this for a great way to start a course:
Two parrots were sitting on a perch. One says to the other, 'Do you smell fish?' ... geddit? boom boom! Yup, he and I would definitely have got on if we didn't only get to meet in cyberspace.

It's interesting learning all these modern theories about teaching and learning methods. Apparently now we teachers don't instruct to a group of passive learners who learn by rote and regurgitate in exams. It's all about facilitating the learning and students have to take responsibility for their learning, constructing knowledge by analysing, evaluating and judging. Sounds a great idea to me, only trouble is I was taught in the old style and I am having to learn all this in the new style, there is no-one holding my hand here and making me nice cups of tea in a cosy faculty office when I can't think how to start my assignment essay. Eek!

I was the student in the back row of the lecture theatre with my eyelids made up to resemble open, alert blue eyes while I had my real eyes firmly closed, sleeping off the excesses of the night before. Now there's no one to nudge me if I start to snore or to lend me their lecture notes if I don't get round to taking any. Luckily the course is all beautifully guided with a detailed self-study workbook to go through and a crash course in study skills for the old farts like me who haven't had to 'compare and contrast' much more than which brand of baked beans to buy at Tescos for the last fifteen(ish) years.

And yet there are new distractions in the virtual learning environment. All is quiet in the house, there is no impromptu party thumping out loud music elsewhere in the hall of residence, I don't have to walk past a single bar on my way to the virtual lectures and tutorials. The dog is walked, the kids are in school, there is a flask of coffee on my beautifully tidy desk. What could possibly keep me from immersing myself in the books? These days it is not the pull of an afternoon with my friend Bob and her three male flatmates watching every episode of Black Adder then hitting the local student bar with the rugby team. Nowadays I have 'Farmville' and 'Mob Wars' and 'Livechat' to put me off my stride. They are just a double, sometimes only a single click away on Facebook... oh, how innocent we were in the olden days with only a drafty library and a microfiche for company.

Anyway, I really ought to get on with analysing that Ofsted report, I really don't have time to Blog. I am a student you see, and I can prove it. Not only did I pop into Farmville to harvest my crop of pumpkins when I should have been investigating the Core Subjects of the National Curriculum, I just fell asleep on Pickle's bed saying goodnight to him when I should have been preparing for a day in the classroom tomorrow.

All I need now is to stay up all night on ProPlus, sleep through my alarm every morning and have a lot of big rows with my flatmates about the washing up and my transformation will be complete.