Full Time: Man of the Match goes to Personal Learning Enviornments

It's Thursday night of week 14 and thus ends (this chapter of) my journey. I've been rather unfortunate this semester with the Sports Coaching Pedagogy unit. My involvement with the Qantas Joeys camps at the AIS have resulted in me being unable to attend four of our Friday sessions. I have found myself on a journey of guided self-learning. I try to avoid using the term self-directed learning as my explorations have been helpfully guided by Keith Lyons and the Sport Coaching Pedagogy 2012 unit content.

This guided self-learning has all be made possible by the Personal Learning Environment which we have all been a part of in this unit.

"A Personal Learning Environment is a potentially promising pedagogical approach for both integrating formal and informal learning using social media and supporting student self-regulated learning in higher education contexts."

• Nada Dabbagh and 
• Anastasia Kitsantas

Here's a great SlideShare presentation by Steve Wheeler on Digital Learning Futures - I believe it fits right in with everything Keith has been going through with us.

Digital Learning Futures

View more PowerPoint from Steve Wheeler

These personal learning environments have enabled us to progress from passive information consumers, to active co-producers (or produsers as Axel Bruns might say) of content. A simple Google search of "coaching pedagogue" and straight away in the top results I can see work by my class mates from this unit.

I've definitely found myself subscribing to this idea of 'produsage'.

"the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement."

Axel Bruns:  Produsage - A  Working Definition

Whilst at times we not be able to bring something new to the realm of coaching that is backed by empirical evidence, we can certainly share new ways of thinking. As we've covered throughout the unit, people learn in different ways and are more receptive to differing levels of stimulus. It's important that we do look to produse and share the information and resources around us, because we all evaluate and interpret things differently - perhaps our particular interpretation is just what someone else was looking for. For instance. I was racking my brain trying to think of a good way to sum up all these ideas of what a coaches role is. I realised that with a bit of searching in e-resources, that someone else had already basically said what I was after.

Coaching is a multi-faceted, ever-changing role. In today's society of instant gratification, instant messaging, and instant results, the scope of the tasks assigned to coaches is expanding. Coaches are expected to be leaders, mentors, disciplinarians, sources of support, and counselors-simultaneously.

Leif H. Smith - Why Most Coaches Fail

With a bit of tinkering and produsing, I can manage to say just what I wanted to, and perhaps in a way that someone else will also find useful. 

Thank you all for reading my blogs and contributing to my personal learning environment.

The role of a coach is multi-faceted and ever-changing. In today's society, the scope of the tasks assigned to coaches is expanding and a successful coach can not restrict him/herself to the training field and sidelines. Coaches are expected to be leaders, mentors, teachers, disciplinarians, educators, sources of support, delegators and counselors-simultaneously. 
Aidan Brown - Full Time: Man of the Match goes to Personal Learning Enviornments