Trainee Teacher at RCS? Here's a Helpful Library Reminder

At the beginning of the year, we made a very short animation to summarise some tips about searching for things both IN the library, and electronically.

Here is the 90-second reminder in the version delivered to our Education students.  Watch it again, and see how much you remember!
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Traditional Music Forum invite you to a Consultation, 14 October 2017

Trad Music Education - A New Approach

There's a Traditional Music Forum meeting in Edinburgh on Saturday 14th October.  It's a consultation about building a 'framework for good practice, quality assurance, professional development or career-long learning opportunities'.  (Quoting from an article in Box and Fiddle magazine, September 2017, p.19.)

Click on the link above to visit the Eventbrite booking site!

Educationalist Phil Race - Assessment, Learning and Teaching

Education students here at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland will have heard their teaching staff talk about respected educationalist Phil Race.

We thought you'd be interested to visit his website to find out what he's working on these days, so here it is ... including keynotes, workshops, free downloads and details of his publications.

https://phil-race.co.uk/

What Do You Think about Learning Styles?

For several decades, we've been told learning styles are all-important.  But now the experts say learning styles are a "neuromyth".  What do you think? Read this article which appeared in the Guardian today:-

Teachers must ditch 'neuromyth' of learning styles, say scientists

Brush Up Your Study Skills

We've just catalogued a quantity of new study skills guides and books about teaching/education. Check the library's Recent Additions page!

The Pocket Study Skills series is particularly appealing!
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Research Projects for the Teachers

Here at RCS, we have hundreds of undergraduates, and dozens of Masters performers, but we also have students taking either a PGCert or an MEd in Learning and Teaching in Higher Arts Education.  That means doing a research project.  And then there are the PhD students, too.

New students are introduced to our e-resources, but unless you've taken a close look, you maybe won't realise that some e-journals are specifically aimed at researchers.

Here's the link that takes you to Research, Education and Guidance journals.  There are about 30 titles, so do take time to browse. For a start, Research in Drama Education must surely be useful to quite a few of our postgrads!



If you find a journal that's right up your street, do let the rest of your class know!


AND A LITTLE EXTRA
We recorded a presentation about getting the most from our library catalogue and e-resources. You will find it here:-

• via the Portal:- https://portal.rcs.ac.uk/shared-docs/karen-mcaulay-library-resources/ 
• and on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Aa87ctLRMZU?hd=1  

What do you know about Women and Education in the Long Eighteenth Century? Thursday 8th Sept 2016 ...

A Workshop was hosted by Glasgow Women's Library on Thursday 8th September 2016:-

Women and Education in the Long Eighteenth Century*

Organised by two recent PhD graduates from the University of Glasgow, a wide variety of topics is being covered, including a look at what instructional music was used by the young (and maybe not so young) ladies of St Andrews. 

Watch to see what transpires next!  Here's a report on the University of Glasgow's Music Research blog ...

• WELEC website 

* The "long eighteenth century" is just a way of describing the whole century plus the overlapping bits at either end! 

Children Need Music, insists Royal Society for the Arts

Spotted in the news today, on the Royal Opera House website:-

"Every child should have an education in arts and culture

"A strong cultural education is vital for the UK's social and economic future, argues Vikki Heywood, chair of the RSA."

No-one at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland would argue with that observation!  Read the article online HERE.

Essays on Engaging Music Students (Getting them interested, not hiring them!)

Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy

Morning, everyone! This online collection of essays looks as though it could be quite useful; we're sharing it on here this blog so our academics will be able to retrieve it in future too. There are two volumes now - the second has just been published online.

• Vol.1 http://www.flipcamp.org/engagingstudents/
• Vol.2 http://www.flipcamp.org/engagingstudents2/index.html

More about this project, quoted from the opening page of Vol.1:- 

"Engaging Students: Essays in Music Pedagogy presents short essays on the subject of student-centered learning, and serves as an open-access, web-based resource for those teaching college-level classes in music.
The motivation behind the assembly of this collection was drawn in part from our vision for a new format for scholarly communication based upon collaborative and swift peer review. We take our inspiration from hack-a-thons, in which creative solutions to a problem emerge from working intensely together in a collaborative environment for a limited time. Authors received feedback quickly, and the revision process consisted of efficient online interactions with the editorial group. The final result is not only open-access, but open-source. Each essay is licensed to encourage collaboration to continue post-publication, as the essays are distributed, remixed, and hacked in various ways. And the entire volume can be "forked" and used as the basis for new projects or updates to the current project..."  *

Do you have a Diigo account (for saving links "in the cloud")? Karen has a Diigo folder foreducation links - feel free to browse, and you might find other useful stuff! 

*Legal details:- "All contents on this site, unless otherwise stated, are copyright 2013 by the Engaging Students editorial board and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.  This is a FlipCamp project hosted on GitHub Pages"

Artistic Research Education - free downloadable handbook

European League of Institutes of the Arts

(ELIA)

This is a posting about a downloadable handbook for anyone involved in teaching researchers in the arts.  Not just performing arts, this is for all arts disciplines!

Announcing the SHARE Handbook for Artistic Research Education

The SHARE Handbook for Artistic Research Education, is now available in digital form and can be downloaded here.

More from the most recent ELIA Newsletter:-

"The publication was first presented at 'Research in the Arts, A European Infrastructure' in Brussels, hosted by the LUCA School of Arts, on 25 November 2013. It is the outcome of three years of work by SHARE, an international network working to enhance the ‘third cycle’ of arts research and education in Europe.   

SHARE is an acronym for ‘Step-Change for Higher Arts Research and Education’ (a ‘step-change’ being a major jump forward, a key moment of progress).  The SHARE network brings together a wide array of graduate schools, research centres, educators, supervisors, researchers and cultural practitioners, across all the arts disciplines [...]

 The SHARE Handbook for Artistic Research Education is a poly-vocal document, designed as a contribution to the field of artistic research education from an organisational, procedural and practical standpoint. As a provisional disclosure of the state of the art within specific constituencies, this publication seeks to be serviceable to many different agendas and projects, and it attempts to do this by demonstrating the lived contradictions of what is simultaneously both an emerging and fully formed domain of research education.

ELIA will continue SHARE network activities, pushing the agenda for artistic research and further developing this research community, together with global partners and collaborative networks for research within the arts.

Hardcopies of the book will be available at the ELIA Biennial Conference 2014 in Glasgow (13-15 November 2014). In the interim, copies can be ordered at the cost of shipping by contacting ELIA Office Manager Johan Deeder at johan.deeder@elia-artschools.org"

A blogpost for teachers and educationalists

Why don't students remember what they've learned?  Californian pastor and web-designer Joe Kirby has his own ideas, on his blog entitled Pragmatic Education.

There's interesting stuff here, though it's a bit hard to establish Kirby's context.  Read it with an open mind.  'Whittaker' would have liked to see an 'about the author' page!

One-World Schoolhouse (Salman Khan)

Flipping the Classroom, and teaching via YouTube

One of the most exciting books Karen has read for a while, this is about Salman Khan's revolutionary new approach to education via online technology.  Reading it, you begin perhaps with a little scepticism - does this approach really work?  What about the pedagogy behind it?  But the figures speak for themselves - the Khan Academy gets results.

We've bought a copy for the Whittaker Library - click here!

Details here

(Must we call it) Information Literacy

As you know, 'Whittaker' is a champion of digital information literacy - no-one's going to get far if they're not web-savvy these days.  But is it just me, or is the term 'information literacy' a bit of a turn-off for today's students?  Sure, they need what we're offering, but are we making it sexy?

Anyway, here are two thoroughly worthwhile initiatives, for educators and information professionals to engage with, while we ponder on the best way to promote the message!

• National Information Literacy Framework Scotland - from primary to tertiary level and beyond.
• And now there's another initiative - Information Skills for a 21st Century Scotland, with an aptly-named website, http://www.therightinformation.org/. (This was launched at the recent CILIPS annual conference - the Scottish part of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.)

Those nice folk at Jobs.ac.uk

http://jobs.ac.uk

Want a job in academia? You need the Jobs.ac.uk website!

• ALERTS!  You can set up alerts to be told about the kind of jobs you're looking for, and you'll automatically get emails when something comes up.
• ADVICE!  Useful postings, such as these:-

"Latest Career Advice Articles

• Academic Writing: How To Write A Textbook; Read this article
• Setting Up Your First Research Team – Part 2 – Processes and Interpersonal Relationships; Read this article
• For more job hunting tips, careers advice, case studies and other useful information please visit the jobs.ac.uk Careers Advice"

Ways to use Twitter for educational purposes

Worth a look - here.

'Letter to my students': a US professor tells it how it is

This came up on the Twittersphere - the letter which Steve Aird, a Maryland professor, sends to his students at the start of session. 

It basically says, getting an education is hard work. I'll teach you; you must do your bit; and you'll get the marks you deserve!  Read it here.