Abingdon & Witney College

On 14 November I attended two sessions of the Access course at Abingdon and Witney College, Abingdon Campus. I wanted to meet the students and see how they were getting on with the e-portfolio. Today I will repeat the experience with a group at Witney Campus. Below are notes from the Abingdon visit.

I had a brief set of slides setting up:

• Introductions
  
• Aims and objectives
  
• ICT Competency

I used these to lead into a set of questions

• What do you use computers for?
  
  • Social contact?
    
  • Games?
    
  • Study?
    
  • Shopping?
  
  
• What do you like most about using computers?
  
• What do you like least about using computers?
  
• How do you think computers will be used in your future?
  
• What do you think about the e-portfolio system?

After a round robin in which the students each said a little about who they were and why they were doing the course, I explained the involvement with software development project.

I said there were wider aims to the project which were to explore the educational uses of information and communication technology (ICT) and to help them to develop skill to have control over ICT in their lives. I wanted them to have a growing awareness of the uses of information, particularly personal information and to know how to use the Internet to keep stuff so they can use it again.

Group 1

This group was all women: 11 participants on the day.

Reasons

• want to go to Uni to be a social worker
• to go to uni to do nursing
• works as a care attendant, wants to go into nursing
• to study psychology
• to be a midwife
• works in an old people's home, wants to do nursing
• nursing
• to study environmental science
• nursing or social work
• works as a care assistant wants to study midwifery
• to study speech therapy or be a primary teacher

Uses

• MSN and Yahoo Messenger
• e-blueies
• hotmail, and Yahoo mail
• Skype conferencing: 10 of us have all gone off to study. Meet on line every weekend; Skype video
• e-Bay
• mySpace ("I love mySpace")

Most

quick, instant, info at fingertips, cut and paste, shopping (Next, Top Shop), comparison shopping, friendly, pretty pictures, banking

Least

impersonal, when it doesn't work, freezing up, limiting what we can do, killing the high st, hate pop-ups, junk mail

Future

skype, more online admin, will be used a lot more

e-portfolio

can't log on, need step-by-step guide, do not know what you want me to do exactly, issue of trust, personalisation of templates, Good start for a CV. Need to go to so many places. Scroll down click, scroll, click. It is hard when you are cooking tea at the same time. Like the 3d glossy look of MS Vista. Petal is like a 2d photocopy. Not simple to use. I am a visual learner: too much text; need more structure in the white spaces; needs spell check; feels like hard work; why cant we use Blackboard to do this? Do not know "if we are doing it right"; limited to certain things; sometimes it "throws a head fit".

Group 2

Mixed men and women: 14 participants on the day:

Reasons:

• Publishing, politics
• Social work
• nutrituion
• to be a special needs teacher, Speech and Language Therapy
• Social sciiences
• Film and English studies
• Marine Biology and Oceanography
• Film and English Studies
• Languages (Spanish & Portuguese)
• Secondary teaching
• Started in property management, now want to be a primary teacher
• Teacher training
• Media studies at Bristol
• Have been a nanny, want to be primary teacher

Most

Internet, finding out, Yahoo, Google, Dogpile, not taking notes, MSN Messenger: this group has set up a self-help network using IM as a study tool to share challenges and relay information on the Access course: we did this off our own back.

Least

they crash, no visual interest, unsociable

e-portfolio

hasn't got a front end, needs personalisation, UCAS system is more immediately obvious, work experience form only allows 512 characters, need it for life not duration of term, put feedback link on the system.

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