House tour!

And what have I learned today? Every year, members of Merton College walk backwards around their quad wearing their robes and drinking port, in order to counteract the space-time continuum.  Uh huh.

This was just one of several ridiculous facts we learned at the MCR Initiation today. MCR = middle common room; basically the collection of graduate students at St. Hilda's.  Our MCR is very active and holds so many events that it's almost impossible to not go to some of them, so it's been a great way to meet everyone.  Anywho, a bit of a photo tour...

25a, Alma Place.  It's a three-bedroom house with a common room and a kitchen and no dryer....

View from my window. Let's talk about the logistics of drying one's clothes at Oxford.  Look at this nice, sunny view of my backyard with my laundry.  15 minutes later, it downpoured for 10 minutes, and then went back to being sunny. In fact, it's possible that Oxford is actually the worst place I can think of for drying clothes.  However, that's really  a small deal, since...

Check out my fireplace! Win! 

Anyways, I got a much better feel for my master's course this week (MSc Education - Learning and Tech) It's highly theoretically-based and highly research-based; the first term will mostly focus on theories of learning, and whether the same theories can be applied to ICT learning. I'll additionally be in an Foundations of Educational Research class, and they've emphasized that we should start thinking about out dissertation topic now.  At this point I'm playing with the idea of doing a comparative study on educational policy towards technology within Europe, but clearly that will have to be paired down quite a bit. 

The most fascinating (politically charged?) talk this week actually revolved around the question "Is Education a Discipline?" Since the study of education encapsulates study of such wide range of topics (teacher training, primary, secondary, higher education, lifelong learning, formal/informal learning, workplace training, project-based, blended learning, educational psychology, pre-K, the list goes on) without having a common founding theory, set pedagogy, and a consistent research design, it's considered a field instead of a discipline at Oxford. Why does it matter? The underlying message of the talk was that the education field is therefore viewed in a different (read: worse) way then research from the other social science disciplines who follow a set rigor and pedagogy.  The talk was essentially a warning: beware, by studying education, you're putting yourself in the midst of the fray.  

I have to say, though, I think one of the most exciting things about studying education is the breadth of topics and the intersection of all of the other social science disciplines within the field of education.  Not having a set pedagogy allows sociologists, psychologists, economists, and even political scientists (!) to take different approaches to studying the process of learning. One could also argue that there is no more important area to study for the long-term economic, social, political standing of a country than the education system. 

Emma Watson did unfortunately not come out for the Ultimate Frisbee team, but Emma, if you're out there, we'd love to have you and you'd be great.  I'm pretty sure throwing a frisbee is much like wielding a wand.

Hasta luego, Lisa