Thank you to Jennifer Elsden-Clifton for answering questions from my regular Q&A on teaching and research interests of staff members.

What are your teaching/research interests?
At the moment I am interested in Professional Placement and how to best support students while on placement.  My research interests have been varied from health education, arts-based research, the visual arts and identity to popular culture.  I also believe that researching my own practices is really important – so a lot of my recent research has been around that. 
 
A favourite educationalist/author/theorist and why.
My favourite author is Megan Boler and her ideas around “A Pedagogy of Discomfort”.  I find this a key book to remind me about the complexity of education, but also to encourage us as teachers to take risks and push ourselves into uncertain areas.  The other key book that I would rate up there was one of my favorite is “Black Ants and Buddhists” by Mary Cowhey, I think we all need one inspirational (but realistic) story on our shelves.  The one I enjoy reading out aloud is “Who Flung Dung” by Ben Redlich.
 
What are you reading currently?
Kidwrangling by Kaz Cooke.  I am trying to read all I can about toilet training.  I am also reading “Disrupting Class” by Christensen which I borrowed from a colleague.

I am trialling the use of  Twitter for passing on quick information about  library services and resources to Education students. Students and staff are also welcome to post questions and I will respond (if able to do so within the 140 characters that Twitter allows!) or will direct to the relevant area. Look me up at EduLibRMIT.

If you’re new to Twitter registering takes about 30 seconds. Once you’ve registered you will be able to “follow” a range of “tweets” from universities, libraries, public figures, newspapers (not to mention friends and colleagues). See for example:

• The National Library
• ABC news
• RMIT
• The Times Higher Ed
• Alain de Botton

Meanwhile here is another video on the social media revolution:

There is an interesting discussion of Wikipedia in the latest TDR (The Drama Revew). The author notes that if you go to the entry for ‘theatre’ you will find that the entry is not particulary well written (in his words, ”slight” and “underwhelming”). Neither is he impressed by the standard Wikipedia defence that its virtue can be found in its open-source aspects, which allow a kind of consensus discussion around the topic by various participants; what he finds is mostly “anonymous sparring to exorcise spleen”.

The thing that he does find useful is the way it opens a series of associations and links with other articles and information. The point of Wikipedia is that its not that it is “volumes on a shelf” but that it occupies a kind of multidimensional space allowing inspiration, connections, lines of thinking and research. In his area of theatre studies he notes how the entry for the TDR editor Richard Schechner is linked to “‘New York University,’ ‘Tulane University,’ ‘Performance Studies,’ the ‘Performing Garage,’ ‘experimental theater,’ ‘The Wooster Group,’ and ‘SoHo,’ among others. (The link to TDR is still pending.)”

The author finishes by relating Wikipedia itself to his field of performance studies:

But this form of knowledge—open, combinatory, and mobile—is what I use in creating performance works that are born, live, and die in conversation with their environments and contexts. Performance does not just produce knowledge, it is itself a form of knowledge—caressing and recoiling against the conditions of its appearance. Wikipedia provides just such a way of looking at the world.

We might see Wikipedia as having a different kind of function, then, than the standard encyclopedia or similar. Students’ uncritical use of the information found on Wikipedia is a familiar problem. Use of the connections and lines of association that it allows them to explore is perhaps an underrated benefit.

As many people will be aware the University pays a fee yearly to Screenrights that allows staff within RMIT University to copy and make use of free-to-air TV.

School staff are welcome to contact the Library’s off-air-recording service and arrange for selected programs to be recorded on DVD and added to the collection in compliance with the Screenrights Agreement.

See also the EnhanceTV site for information on educational TV.

Social Theory from Alexander Street Press provides a comprehensive coverage of major social thinkers together with seminal texts from lesser writers. Essential for study in the areas of politics, economics, history, psychology, anthropology, religion, and literature, the works of many important thinkers in sociology have remained inaccessible until now. For many writers, the project represents the first availability of a major scholarly edition of their collected works. Extensive licensing allows readers to see both the original works and translations, searchable together in a single database for the first time. At completion, the product will include more than 150,000 pages, with well over half of the materials in copyright.

On trial until 26 November 2009

The Library now has copies of the new 6th edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA style).

APA do advise that there were some typographical errors in the first printing and have provided a list of corrections, which will be corrected in a new print run. The Library will aquire copies of the corrected version when it is available.

Thank you to students and staff who responded to our survey recently about services and resources. Such surveys assist us to be aware of those things you value and help us identify areas to improve.

Respondents to our recent survey were in the run to win a Nintendo Wii. I was very happy to see one of our School of Education students, Kate Francis, win the prize. I presented it to her recently and she tells us she is making good use of it.

A piece from today’s Irish Times in defence of the “exhilarating, bloodcurdling journey of childhood”:

Sometimes it’s not the kids we’re worried about. Stories such as Where the Wild Things Are tap into the real fears shared by children and adults: disproportionate punishment, dislocation, feeling unloved, and, worse than being ignored, saddled with the responsibilities of leadership without any proper training. It’s similar to what happens upon reaching adulthood: after commencing the wild rumpus, it’s hard to know what to do.

Congratulations to Jennifer Elsden-Clifton and Baia Tsakouridou from the School of Education who were recently awarded 2009 RMIT Teaching Awards.

Jennifer Elsden-Clifton
For outstanding contributions to education students’ learning through innovative and engaging activities based on student centred reflective practice across courses and programs in the School of Education

Baia Tsakouridou
For adding value to the ESL programs by incorporating a Pathways component, an Australian Film Studies unit and an ‘End of year celebration concert’.