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This is me

Hi, My name is Ulrika, I am a person that for most of my life have spent my time with children. Four of my own, many children of friends and my kids friends and also at work. I feel comfortable and equal to children – things are straight forward, and play can be both fun serious and interesting. In my work I try to help children learn to move and be able to use and control their body. I now want to create web-based learning about disability and how to learn. Because of this I am taking this course about On-line learning and my blog will reflect my learning process during this course – an adventure is about to begin.

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To my surprise, I am not so scared or frustrated anymore. I kind of enjoy searching for things on the course web-site and most of the time I find what I need. 

The first part of the course has made me think.  I am not that digitally illiterate – I do need technical support and would love to have a computer nerd friend that could keep a tab and  just help quickly when needed. That is the ”easy” part. 

From our litterature recommendations, my favourite this week was Maggi Savin-Baden ”Using problem based learning: New constallations for the 21st century”. Apart from talking about student engagement and learning and different forms of engagement and also innovative scenarios, she talks about different Modes of knowledge. Academic knowledge , knowlede from the world of work, and knowledge of the ”knowledge gaps” that creates uncertainty, even disregarded knowledge. From these modes of knowledge she describes 9 constellations for PBL (problem based learning) – for example PBL for knowledge management, PBL learning through activity, PBL for practical capability AND the last one: Problem based learning for transformation and social reform. 

I am a pediatric physical therapist, and people may think that my kind of teaching and learning is academic and practical. But I am quite sure that all subject matters can be brought to the level of transformation and social reform. What is it all about? Why do we have universities and how can we create a better world? I love reading her description of ”how students can examine the underlying structures and belief systems implicit within a discipline or profession itself, in order to understand not only the disciplinary area itself but also its credence”. Reading her article created a useful structure of all the subject matters, contents, kinds of knowledge that there are. I think that I have a scientific approach to my subject matter – I am a nerd really, wanting to problem solve, but I also am interested in knowledge of psychology and in creating a better world with equality and peace. 

My fellow classmate has so much faith in the ONL-space and he seems to think that everything can be taught on-line. That is a hopeful approach. I have a tendency to think about the self-esteem of the individual and how it affects our learning. In fact I read that poor self-esteem even when having better grades than others, creates neagitve thoughts about one-self and learning. In all studies I have read about self-esteem, women all over the world have lower scores than men in all areas of self-esteem. In fact in physical therapy we know that after having gone through knee surgery for a ligament injury, and then rehabilitation men and women can have equal scores on physical tests. However, when doing self-evaluations women score lower than men. Here is a question: Is it men that evalute themselves too high or is it women that evaluate themselves too low?