A week of working from home and 2 days into NZ 'close down'

It's been a hectic week. After a series of meetings on Monday, my division headed home due to NZ being put on L2 which required as many people as able, to work from home. Levels 1 - 4 are NZ responses to the spread of covid-19 into NZ.

Then, just after lunch on Monday, NZ prime minister raised the level to 3 - requiring as many people as possible to work from home and a shutdown of all non-essential commercial activity (Level 4) as from midnight Wednesday.

So today, is day 2 of the 'shut down' which sees all schools, community facilities, non-essential commerce closed. The entire population is not to venture from their homes except to shop for groceries or pick up meds at the pharmacy. Going for a walk is OK but has to be within your neighbourhood. Driving to the Port Hills for a walk is not allowed :( Today, it is wet, so staying at home, warm and dry, and getting lots of work done is not a hardship. It is the sunny, blue sky days which are difficult, when the hills or beach beckon.

The shutdown is to last 4 weeks. With Ara closed, my work team will be working with our teachers to get their courses running as distance learning courses - by just after Easter. Hence, we have been busy setting up resource sites and there will be a series of workshops on 'how to teach from a distance', next week.

I checked linkedIn just after lunch and see some of our heads of department have posted. Nigel Young, head of department of business and computing, who is relatively new to Ara but with a strong background in developing elearning posted good hints.  Michael Edmonds, head of department for engineering and architecture, reminded us about how we in Christchurch are well practiced in dealing with the unexpected due to shared experiences from the earthquakes and mosque shootings.

Also from linkedIn is Mark Nichols advise on shifting modes of learning.  Mark was elearning leader for the Open Polytechnic in NZ for a time and well-recognised for his expertise in 'distance delivery'. He has practical advise for 'administrators' and 'educators'.

Derek Wenmouth posted on 'connectedness' and some tips on ensuring that 'remote' discussions can be undertaken by being prepared and a summary of the protocols for non-f2f interaction.

So, time away from the physical busyness of the workplace, has allowed many to also do some reflection and consolidation. It will be interesting to see how things are, at the end of next week :)

Working from home

We live in challenging times. Although the number of covid-19 cases in NZ is still low and almost all originating from returning Kiwis or tourists, the government has raised alert level to 2 on Saturday, out of a 4 level scale.

Following have been persistent calls to raise the level to 4 , basically to snuff out any possibility of virus spread NOW rather than wait until there is clear evidence of community dispersal.

Given the dire experiences in China, Europe and now Australia (with a lockdown imminent in NSW and Victoria), it is perhaps best to pay attention to the calls for lockdown now rather than later :(

As part of level 2 alert, all employees who are able to are called to work from home. So today, after a series of planning meetings, all of my division will be working from home. We have had several 'tryout' days in the past two weeks. Zoom, our video conferencing platform and microsoft Teams have been mainstays for work productivity along with email and the Teams 'chat function'. As an institution, we are better placed than nine years ago, when the Christchurch earthquake struck and we lost all access to our internal networks and physical entry to our main campus for a whole semester.

However, many of our programmes, due to their vocational nature, will be hard pushed to go fully on-line. The practice-based / hands-on emphasis for our courses makes going fully into on-line and distance delivery, a major challenge. The focus for these courses is to develop small and well-structured 'projects' or inquiries for students to apply what they have learnt so far, to complete. We will evaluate how this approach has worked after things calm down.

For the moments, it will take some adjustment for all our team and the wider Ara community to adjust to working from home, whilst still being able to support each other as we move through the challenge.

Identity, pedagogy and technology-enhanced learning: supporting the processes of becoming a tradesperson -- previews access

Apart from the short previews of each chapter on my book's publisher's website, other means of access include:

• Amazon - hardcopy of book - has preview of parts of the Foreword written by Professor Stephen Billett and the preface which has summaries of chapters.
• Google books - has portions of chapter 1 and 2.

Happy reading :)

Horizon report 2020

The latest issue of the Horizon report is now up on the Educause library.

There is a good infographic, summarising the various emerging technologies and trends.

This year, there is a change in how the report is structured. The familiar 'horizons' of xx years to adoption, anchoring past reports, are not used. Instead, wider social/global trends - political, economic, social, technological, and higher education trends are reviewed as the influences and future trajectory for emerging technologies and practices.

The usual suspects featured in pass reports show up but this time around, rationalised better against the wider influences listed above.

The main technologies are also reported in a broader sweep. These are:

• Analytics for student success
• Adaptive learning technologies - related to above of applying analytics to enhance learning
• artificial intelligence and machine learning - ditto
• Open education resources 
• extended reality - ie. XR = AR/VR/MR (haptic)
• Elevation of instructional design - to bring pedagogy into the planning, development and deployment of promising technologies.

All in, a good summary, as always of potentialities. This time around, better linkages to the many societal influences on how technology may assist learners. Plus the need to attain expertise in understanding the pedagogical issues related to introducing the many enablers of technology enhanced learning.

Identity, pedagogy and technology-enhanced learning: book now published

My book, a product of last year's academic study leave, is now published and available on Springer website. The book's subtitile: supporting the processes of becoming a tradesperson, draws from my framework of trades work learning as being a phased journey of belonging to a workplace, becoming  and eventually being a trades person.

It's a significant milestone for me, being my first monograph. I enjoyed the process of writing the many chapters and am grateful to my colleagues and my ex PhD supervisor, Professor Stephen Billett from Griffith University. for support as proofreaders and advisers.

I am hopeful the book fills a gap in the literature of work derived from a practitioner's perspective, both as a tradesperson and a teacher of trades work. No doubt large component of scholarship is also consolidated in the book. However, it is the learnings attained through my apprenticeship and work as a pastrycook/baker that inform the direction and premises woven through the book. My aim through each chapter being to answer the query - how is this useful to a trades teacher? and what can be applied to teaching trades work from these concepts?

I am now working towards bringing together a collaborative project to leverage off the coming merger of all the polytechnics in NZ into one entity - tentatively called Pukenga Aotearoa/Skills NZ. A 'small' project to gauge the digital literacy and affordances of vocational education learners will help be bring together a team of vocational educator researchers. I am hopeful this initial project will pave the way to a larger, externally funded project to implement and consolidate the system/process of consolidated off and on-job support for trades learners. In essence, if we are to 'put the learner at the heart of the learning' then we seriously need to 'hear the learners' voice' and to support their learning from their perspective (i.e. the experienced curriculum) and not impose from logistical/institutional/funding requirements.