Giant!

I was spending a few minutes looking around one of my new favorite websites this evening and I came across a couple of items I saw briefly on other sites a couple of years ago. Did you guess that they were over-sized novelty items, if so, you probably know me well. Here is the GIANT beer glass that holds 5 beers.

In case someone prefers wine over beer, Vat 19 has got you covered! Here is the wine glass that holds an entire bottle of wine!!!

Finally the Mondo-Margarita!

Whale Surfing

I read this article today about Orcas that were surfing in big waves in New Zealand.
You can read the article and see the other pictures but I think they are pretty neat!

Giant Gummy Worm!

So if I have a prolonged absence from one of the blogs, like I have had from No-Profundity for the last week, I try to come back with something substantial, important, life re-affirming...oh, who am I kidding, this is the world's largest gummy worm and you can buy it!!! It is available from a website called vat 19, which I had not heard of before but was shared with me today.

In case that wasn't enough here is a video about this crazy product.

AEDT-510 Course Design References

Brendel, W. (2010). Transformative Learning: A web resource for the theory and practice of transformative learning. Retrieved November 8, 2010, from: www.transformativelearning.org/

Transformative Learning - transformativelearning.org

I have chosen to share two resources, this first one is transformativelearning.org. This website has a number of resources for both gaining knowledge about transformative learning as well as how to apply it. A number of the texts that are used by Seattle University AEDT and College of Education faculty members are shown as references for transformative learning as well. I found that convenient since this is an area of interest for me and in part, this interest I have has grown from some of those texts.

In a nutshell

Transformative learning is the process by which we call into question our taken for granted frames of reference (habits of mind or mindsets) to make them more inclusive, discriminating, open, and reflective so that they may generate beliefs and opinions that will prove more true or justified to guide action. Transformative learning often involves deep, powerful emotions or beliefs and is evidenced in action.

This website also has links to the 9^th Transformative Learning Conference in held next May in Athens, Greece.

Strength – The simplicity of Transformative Learning is a primary strength of this theory. On the site, there is a great description by Patricia Cranton in which the first two paragraphs succinctly outline the theory and the third paragraph, which gets more convoluted actually looks at application and influences upon transformative learning.

Limitations – This website has a lot of potential, it has a framework that could be useful but currently it is more focused on the conference than on presenting many resources.

Here is a video of Stephen Brookfield answering a question about Transformative Learning:

Brookfield Q5: View of Transformative Learning from OLA Media Project on Vimeo.

The Freire Project (2010). The Paolo and Nita Freire international project for critical pedagogy. Retrieved November 8, 2010, from: http://freireproject.org/

Freire Project – The Paolo and Nita Freire International Project for Critical Pedagogy - friere project.org

Below is a couple of brief excerpts from the website and they give a very summary description of the purpose of this site.

The project promotes research in Critical Pedagogy, and brings together local and international educators. We are committed to continuing the global development of Critical Pedagogy and to highlighting its relevance with marginalized and indigenous peoples.

Critical Pedagogy is a domain of education and research that studies the social, cultural, political, economic, and cognitive dynamics of teaching and learning. Critical Pedagogy emphasizes the impact of power relationships in the educational process. Emerging in the late 1960s with the work of Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, Critical Pedagogy has evolved as a cross-disciplinary field.

This resource site has is itself a very great resource for critical pedagogy and literally everything Friere! They have links to blogs, a Friere bookstore, websites, forums, a wiki and videos among others.

Strengths: One of the strengths of this site is that it is powerful with the multiple methods of sharing research and information with blogs, books, websites, forums, wikis, pretty much everything I just listed above.

Weaknesses: Provides a lot of research but I will have to dig around more to find material that is more specific to course design, I didn't see anything immediately jumping out at me for applying to practice.

Here is a short video, which is actually just the introduction to a 14-minute video on the site: