Blog + Twitter = Digital Logbook | eLearning

I am looking at the possibilities of using some social media technologies as digital logbook for industrial training and supervision because I believe digital logbook will turn industrial training experiences to an open source that will change the landscape of vocational education around the word by enriching industry based learning experiences. 

Technical and Vocational Education training (TVET) is a field of study where learners should develop skills to be able to function in their fields but there is a disconnect between school knowledge and on-the-field studies which make the use of logbook important for supervision and training of students while on practical attachment or industrial training. Across the globe the use of paper logbook is popular more than the electronic type but the benefits of information and communication technologies have not been fully untilised by trainers in the TVET fields for digitising record keeping among trainees during industrial training. Digital logbook which is hope to have much more advantages than the paper logbook as being proposed require Blog and twitter accounts which could help in addressing the shortcomings of paper logbook giving students more opportunities to upload files in many formats and providing opportunities for students to present works in many other  ways in addition to writing and drawing. This idea of a combination of blog and twitter as a digital logbook will be very useful for many reasons (See further details http://elearningeuropa.info/en/blogs/blog-twitter-digital-logbook).Blog and twitter are social networking technologies that give opportunities to users for different purposes and this novel idea for their use in technical education is important and will address a lot of issues surrounding digital record keeping and open resources. I seek answers to the prospect of this idea that is its workability.

Look at the excerpt from my draft work below:

On-the-job learning experience through logbook supervision

On-the job experiences especially those that have practical components demand the involvement of teachers and their students in knowledge construction and experiences sharing. Instructors perform practical sessions on the fields or at work places in order to impact student learning experiences during for example internship or industrial training. In Nigeria we called our industrial training for vocational education Student Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES), it is purposed for the development of technical skills that will make interns job-ready and to develop manual dexterities that will make them function in their chosen field and confidence to work as qualified professionals. Usually, courses like engineering, dentistry and medicine, and some artisans’ training employ on-the-job training approach to get students to find the connection between school knowledge and field experiences from more experienced people who are on the field such as in the hospitals’ surgical theatre, engineering workshop, laboratories, industrial plants etc. These are places where ideas and innovations are incubated and crossbred by the students and their teachers through multi-tasking and multidimensional interactions using multimedia facilities.  It is a place where mentor/mentee relationship is fathomed. This is essential for many a reason among which is to bridge the gaps between school theories and on the field practical knowledge that requires interaction with tools, techniques and materials. 

The goal is usually to expose students to practical know-how as the students watch while techniques are performed by field supervisors. Subsequently, when the supervisor is satisfied for example that manual dexterity in the handling of tools and performance of technique have been established students are allowed to carry out procedure which usually progresses from simple to complex types. This is exactly what we do with dental technologists on internship and on SIWES programmes at the dental laboratory jointly run by the Lagos University teaching hospital and the college of medicine of the University of Lagos Nigeria. I believe this is what obtains globally. Although this is usually an unstructured training programme as there are no outlined course contents and curriculum available to guide the internship programme. However, on a daily basis as schedules of work are made which are primarily dictated by the tasks of the day derived from job requisition from the dental clinic, students are expected to state in their logbook various activities performed and experiences gained while watching what others (supervisors) are doing or while carrying out tasks assigned to group or individuals.  Tasks of the day, in the case of a dental technology interns are job requisitions from the dental clinic which presented treatment cases of diverse simplicities and complexities. This includes fabrication of different dental prostheses for correction of oral maladies. Students learn from these tasks and grow in experiences as they perform given tasks (under watchful supervision) or through demonstration by a more knowledgeable person. Students take time to recall their experiences and document them appropriately instead of just writing and drawing as it is with paper format logbook. Digital logbook allows them to take a picture or make video and audio recording of these experiences and upload in their blogs and tweet these to their teachers back in the school, and friends and supervisors on the field who may be interested and will later look at them and subsequently make further contribution and also could re-share. Contents of a digital logbook could therefore be assessed progressively.  In a paper logbook students are limited to representing details of activities and experiences by writing and drawing. This limitation does not allow students to give more details as with the use of video and audio all of which are possible with digital logbook (blog+twitter) that is being proposed here.