Write something new

Okay, I'm currently struggling through a literature review on the concept of direct instruction of autonomous learning practices to first year university or college students - particularly from a library and/or learning advisor perspective.

It should be a walk in the park, all things considered, because a) I'm a librarian and I can find stuff, b) there isn't much stuff to find, and c) I'm the kind of verbose git who can spin an entire paragraph out of "there isn't much stuff to find".

Yet, I'm struggling.  I'm having difficulty thinking my way through this thing.  I just can't seem to wrap my head around how I should take what I know, augment it with what I can find and push it into the mould that has been asked for.  And I don't know why I'm struggling so much with the whole, when I can handle the individual parts without too much difficulty.

I think it's partly because I'm resisting the thing (I've reached a point where I really don't want to do it, even though it's the second last thing I have to do before I'm done with this wretched course and it will actually contribute towards a paper I want to write).

I also think it's because I've realised I'm reading the exact same information over and over and over again.  Over the last 20 or 30 years, people have been regurgitating the same stuff.  I've basically come to the conclusion that I'm really only reading the same three articles.

You have:

1) The "introductory literature review", which can be as short as a magazine column or as long as an exceptionally boring journal article, and basically consists of people saying:  "Here is what autonomy/self-directed learning is all about, and here is a summary of what has been written about it over the past 30 years".  These tend to conclude that autonomous/self-directed learners appear to be mildly better off than traditional students, but there needs to be more research.  Nothing new.

2) The "case study", in which a small group of people is given a project to do which involves some portion of self-directed stuff, and some portion of teaching them how to do the self-directed stuff.  They are then compared with the people who didn't do that project.  These always end up making the exact same conclusions:  Students using self-directed methods appear to be mildly better than those who don't, but we can't be conclusive about this due to our small sample sizes.  There is some contemplation about whether the fact that the sample group also self-selected for the study has tainted the results.  Nothing new.

3) The "pilot study", in which an entire class or cohort has a subject converted into a self-directed thing-or-other and a survey is done to see how well they all coped with it.  These tend to end up making the following conclusions:  students don't really know about this whole autonomy thing, and while some of them really appreciate it others would much rather have an actual curriculum - oh, and self-directed students appear to be mildly better than non-self-directed students, but we can't be conclusive due to the lack of a proper control group (and/or a small sample size).  Nothing new.

Really, people, I think the verdict is in.  After over thirty years of this guff I think we can safely say that autonomous learners are mildly better off than non-autonomous learners.  Yes?  Can we do that?  And can we now move on to looking at, I don't know, which methods of teaching autonomous learning skills to students give you the most bang for you buck?

Would that be too much to ask?

Maybe not that photo

I can't help but feel that the people who selected the photo to go on the cover of this book could have chosen a different one.  Maybe one from a different angle.

Fostering Autonomy in Language Learning

I just don't think they went with their best option, myself.

Praxis

An article by Cooke, which looked like it would have promising things about teaching students to learn autonomously from a library perspective, tuned out to be about how adult learners are usually already autonomous and librarians need to understand androgogy in order to best teach them.

I was exited to find it, as I like the word androgogy and thought it might actually be talking about the thing I'm trying to research, but as it turned out it wasn't about teaching autonomous learning skills after all.  Bummer.

On the other hand, it did use the word "praxis" in regards to reflective learning:  "praxis ... is a process of learning and reflecting on what was learned by repetition, revising or recreation" (Cooke, 2010, p.222).

I like it.  It fits neatly with my "before, during and after" approach to teaching autonomous learning skills.  I must find a way to use it in a guide or something...

It's kind of what I do here, from time to time, with posts like this - recreating the information in order to make it more memorable for me.  It probably bores the sox of everyone else, but that's the price we have to pay.

Not your mother

Real life conversations are great, aren't they?  Why, just last night I found myself having this one:

"As my mother always said, 'do what you do do well,'"
"That wasn't your mother - that was an animatronic kangaroo in Dreamworld..."

Eurovision initial washdown 2012

So, I've decided to turn something I half did last year into a tradition, and take a moment to share the Eurovision songs I thought had real "legs". That is, the songs I think could actually be heard outside of the realm of Eurovision tragics and might still be remembered in a year.

Firstly, my "winner" - the song I think was actually the most 'leggie' song from the finals:



Gaitana's "Be My Guest", from the Ukraine. Man, every time I hear this song I feel like sitting up a bit straighter. It's just a fun, upbeat, happy dance number with a good hook. It's good stuff.

The other songs from the final that I thought were strong enough to become radio hits post-Eurovision were "Should've Known Better" by Denmark's Soluna Samay, "Euphoria" (which actually won) by Sweden's Loreen and "Standing Still" by Germany's Roman Lobb.

I also particularly liked the songs by France, Italy and Spain, but in terms of "this might still pop into my head in a year's time, and I won't be annoyed by it being there", those were my top picks.

Sadly, Jedward's "Waterline" will probably also pop into my head on a regular basis, even though I thought it was a bit weak.  Was it just me, or did Jedward seem a little odd this year?  Last year it was like they were hyped up on some sort of substance, this year it seemed more like they were going through the motions.  One of them looked like he had resigned to being a hyperactive git for a living, the other one looked like someone was standing behind him with a gun muttering "I said, dance!" in a menacing voice.

I loved the Estonian song, "Kuula", by Ott Lepland, but as it is in Estonian I think it isn't likely to get much airplay outside of Finno-Ugric speaking countries.

As for the songs that didn't make it out of the semi-finals? There's always a couple I thought were better than some of the songs that did make it through, but this time around the only one I really missed was "You and Me" by the Netherlands' Joan Franka. It was a daft song, but I liked the music. Latvia's "Beautiful Song" by Anmary would have been better if it was less about winning Eurovision - a different spin on the song would have done it a world of favours, I think.

So, there you have it. While I think the winning song had some legs, my personal favourite for this year was "Be My Guest" from the Ukraine.  Will it still be my "winner" by the time the next Eurovision contest rolls around?  Who knows?

Joosten

Kathryn Joosten died this week.

As a friend of mine pointed out, it's kind of hard to know what to feel about that.  On the one hand, she was one of my favourite "hey, it's that actress!" actresses, and it always made me happy to see her in something.

On the other hand, her characters had a habit of dying off.  She's died so often on TV that it's like she's been preparing us for this moment for some time...

Nya-ha!

Well! Blow me down if they didn't have a höcher question in the exam!  There I was, just writing a blogpost to help me get things straight in my own mind, and low and behold they asked for it.

They also asked for Genitive prepositions, which was unfortunate.  I got während (during) mixed up with wegen (on account of) and put it in the wrong field - and then, of course, I couldn't remember what the word for "during" was because I'd already used während in the wrong place...

Learning a language is great, but it also kind of sucks.