This training day was an opportunity for both teaching and support staff to gain a deeper understanding of the role that digital technologies will play in our lives, and most importantly, in the lives of our learners. The day was a mix of external keynote speakers and bitesize training sessions offered by both external and Bradford College staff. The following blog post is a collection of the Library staff's reflections on some of the events we attended.
Minecraft for Education
Despite not having played the game, I attended the Minecraft for Education session on Staff Development Day. The instructor showed us a brief tutorial on how to use Minecraft in education and the benefits it can have to students. She also explained on multiple occasions that it was about using the game as a platform to learn. Getting the gamers to learn and not to turn learners into gamers so to speak, which I thought was quite a good analogy. After the video and a demonstration of how to create a world within the game & a view of the already planned subject worlds available, we were asked to download it and have a go for ourselves. It wasn’t easy at first, as access to it had been blocked on the College's preferred internet provider Microsoft Edge, but luckily it worked on Google Chrome. Once I had set up my Avatar I was on the go, starting to build a nice little virtual world. It was certainly more interactive and fun than your average training session and a nice alternative to all the slightly depressing A.I. takeover talk. I found it a new and innovative way to help students learn by interacting with them on their level and am excited to see how it can be incorporated within the college despite not being a member of the teaching staff. There was also a sense of irony at the thought of the students excelling with this new learning method while the older staff members in the session with me struggled to play around with and understand it.
Ashley Choudry
On Staff Development Day I got the most out of the Minecraft for Education session. I learned that everyone at the college can access Minecraft for Education with their college email. I also can save my own Minecraft Worlds so others can use them, and also use Worlds that other people around the globe have created. In the future we are hoping to use Minecraft for the Art of Problem Solving club we run in the college Skills Hub to provide another way for our learners to approach Maths. Minecraft can also be used to learn about elements of the periodic table for learning about sciences. The game makes it very easy to make bar graphs which will help students understand graphs and charts too, and how to display statistics.
Lewis Peel
Watch a video by James Golab.
Watch David Porter's animation below:
The Metaverse
The Metaverse session I attended as part of Staff Development Day was really interesting. Metaverse is company that provides virtual training simulations that allow students to practice before going into the real world. The simulations allowed maths to be embedded in real life solutions and students to practice skills where they if they made mistakes in real life it would lead to serious consequences. They had modules that included child care, nursing, construction and engineering and were working on more. They could also create a virtual campus to allow students to meet up and have lessons from across the country.
Haydn Clark
Keynote speaker: Deborah Miller
Group Director of Digital Transformation Hull College
Education 4.0. A Vision of the Future of Education.
Keynote speaker: Dan Pearson
CEO of UPS College
Digital Transformation: An exploration and evaluation of the digital transformation journey USP college have undertaken over the past 6 years.
I enjoyed the keynote speakers, Deborah "Digital Deb" Millar and Dan Pearson, who both gave entertaining and thought provoking talks.
As a Baby Boomer with a daughter who is Generation Z the differences in approach to technology was illuminating. What stood out especially was that for Generation Z images are more important than text. This is something I can think about when adding content to Library Online or Moodle.
Deborah Duffy
Ben Whittaker
The Ideas Guy
AI in Every Classroom
This session was a great discussion on the role of tools such as ChatGPT in Education, and how we need to be embracing these technologies, guiding our students to make best use of them, and using them ourselves to support our teaching and our own learning. Ben gave a vision of a new type of education more focused on discussion and less on essays and exams. I think he gave a good argument, though I still think that the ability to write an essay is a useful one if just for students to learn how to structure their thoughts in a written format - but I do agree that ChatGPT and other tools can be used by students to guide them in how to do this. There were a number of tools he went on to discuss which the Library team will certainly be exploring.
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