13 January 10; Introduction I'm glad so many of you were able to be there yesterday afternoon, and I hope that this will be the last session disrupted by the weather. As we discussed, the schedule is tight, but we shall try to use the time as efficiently as possible.

We started by going through the module description in the handbook, and doing our best to clarify what all the jargon is about. That took almost the whole first hour, and so you were filling in the self-assessment based on the outcomes during the comfort break.

The discussion of your self-assessments yielded some interesting material (we could have done it in a more structured way--"Who rated item 1 as a 3 or below...?" approach but what that gains in clarity it loses in richness--a perpetual problem in teaching.) I noted some of the points thus;

(Note for those of you who do not have access to interactive whiteboards and indeed to other technology--improvise! Not only does it work, it's more fun, and you and your students will feel more in control.)

You were asking both for substantive ideas, (a.k.a. "theory") as tools for the exploration of your practice, and also for the opportunity to share your own stuff, those original contributions to teaching which all good teachers delight in making. I know that is a sweeping generalisation for which I would mark you down in assessed work, but I think it's true. Discuss!

That is great. It just so happens that it is precisely what one of the Big Ideas about social learning says; that a "community of practice" arises out of the interaction of top-down reified ideas and values and procedures, and bottom-up ad hoc solutions to problems and personal initiatives. See WENGER E (1998) Communities of Practice; learning, meaning and identity Cambridge; Cambridge University Press and here. We'll come back to that later.

So out of that we constructed a working schedule for the rest of the term. But by the end of the session we were behind schedule and had to carry over quite a lot of stuff until next week.

In my book, that is an important marker for an effective session. Assuming that the "distractions" were not off-task, grumbly or even malicious, which of course they were not, not getting through the planned material is an indicator of engagement and learning at the right level. What is more, I think I can claim that never in my experience has students' actual learning been jeopardised by violating the original scheme of work. Carpe diem (sieze the day), and then mop up afterwards.

What does worry me is when the material disappears too fast... that means it is going into a black hole.

So! We (Peter and I) left you also with some reading for next week (and if you weren't able to pick up the handout, you can read it here.)

One thing which emerged very clearly from your questions and comments was the impact of the range of settings and disciplines represented within the group--at least we are not going to have anyone walking away under the delusion that one size fits all in this business.  20:23