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News and editorial on life from the south of France, a regular series on how to move here and some random musings too.
Recent Posts Tagged With 'Psychology'
The last few days of ED209
As usual, the last few days before an exam are a peculiar mix of panic cramming and looking forwards to the courses coming up. The ED209 exam is a little peculiar in that of the three questions on the paper, we’ve already been given one (it ain...
ED209 revision: theory of mind
Understanding minds is the shortest chapter in the Erica Cox notes at just over three pages vs six pages for most of the preceeding chapters which certainly sounds good in terms of being able to learn the content. Understanding a theory of mind is th...
ED209 revision: executive functions in childhood: development and disorder
Although executive functions in childhood: development and disorder is probably one of the more complex chapters, the notes on it are amongst the shortest. Executive function refers to those activities that are under conscious control rather than bei...
ED209 revision: the development of children’s understanding of grammar
The development of children’s understanding of grammar kicks off with a run-through of the definitions of some linguistic terminology before moving on to look at the development of spoken language, learning word endings and finally learning wor...
ED209 revision: first words
First words covers quite literally the first words as grammar is considered by a separate chapter. This might sound a little odd at first but considering that children only deal with isolated words to begin with and add the various bits of grammar ar...
ED209 revision: early category representation and concepts
Early category representation and concepts is a dreadful chapter as it’s all over the place but here goes… We tend to group items into categories which eventually leads to developing concepts. The question is: how do children do this? Usi...
ED209 revision: national identities in children and young people
National identities in children and young people is quite a well structured chapter with relatively few theorists mentioned so, in principle, an easier one to revise than most. The chapter starts off with basic definitions of ingroup (ie your own nat...
ED209 revision: gender identity and the development of gender roles
Gender identity and the development of gender roles is a very structured chapter which has a number of quite disctinct sections each with their own crop of researchers. Concepts include gender itself which is generally considered as pertaining to the...
ED209 revision: temperament and development
Whilst early cognitive development seemed like a fairly well structured chapter, temperament and development seems all over the place at first glance and really only seems to get going in the second half which doesn’t suit my (relatively) organ...
ED209 revision: early cognitive development
Going by my revision plan I should have done sensation to perception first and indeed I have gone over those notes. However, the chapter from the book is an entirely different matter covering mainly the technicalities of the senses with heaps of new ...
Exam revision strategy for ED209
As those who’ve done this course will know, there is a LOT of course needing to be revised. So much in fact that, unless you’ve nothing else to do, there’s no way to do it all to the required level. However, there is the advantage t...
More rejigging of the course plans
Now that I’m starting to look at the course forum for SK277 it turns out that there are yet more problems in attempting to cross the ELQ minefield. The problem is that, thanks to ELQ, several of the courses that make up the Diploma in Health Sc...
The final TMA for ED209 so ’tis on to revision
Well, it’s almost out of the way. I’m currently sitting on 1850 words and 2000 is the target so I might run up that final 150 tomorrow. Or then again, I might just put it in as-is seeing as the mark I get on it won’t really affect t...
Finally making a serious start on TMA6 for ED209
I actually made a small start on this towards the end of July but August just pulls away from me every year so I’m only getting back to it now. As always the TMAs on this course seem harder than you’d expect for a level 2 course so there&...
I’ve finally signed up for the next couple of courses
After much debate I have finally gotten around to signing up for the Human Biology course and the related residential. The Human Biology course is something of a tangent to everything that I’ve done before. That seems likely to make it fall int...
Getting talked into overlapping courses
In my short term plans for OU courses the next one up is Human Biology which starts at the start of October and which overlaps my Child Development course by about three weeks. To reduce the work overlap what I’ve done is to buy the first book ...
Isn’t Child Development (ED209) a “girly” course?
I raised this question during one of the recent tutorials and was instantly shot down! However, whilst it’s not a “girly” course in terms of difficulty (I’m finding it harder going than even level 3 French!), it is a “girly” cours...
Choosing the option for the seen question cum project for ED209
The Child Development course has what’s called a “seen question” on the exam paper which is sort-of a misnomer. Yes, they’ve given us the actual question that’ll be asked but it really more of a project than a simple question to...
Isn’t it typical: when you’re in a hurry to see your marks, they don’t arrive?
As usual I ended up putting my previous assignment in at the last minute. That’s not because I didn’t start on it reasonably early this time around but because I always find that there’s some last minute thing that I can do to impro...
Researching your child psychology assignment on the internet…
Although I don’t read the blog stats religiously by any means it’s interesting to keep an eye on them now and again to see what’s popular and what’s not. For instance, at the moment I’m doing fairly well from people sear...
The first ED209 practical assignment
This is a somewhat peculiar piece of work that we’ve to do. Since it’s a practical you would obviously assume from that that we have to find a few children and do some practical experiment on them. These days that wouldn’t be quite ...
Choosing an appropriate sequence of courses in your studies
When you start out on the path of a particular qualification there’s usually one or two sequences of courses that you have to do if you want to pick up that qualification at some point but it’s not always clear just what overall sequence ...
Who are you? What do you want to be? Is it all a question of identity?
The latest assignment on the child psychology course is a bit of an odd one for me in that we’ve to do what is essentially a small research study and write up a scientific report on our findings. Although in previous times this type of assignme...
At last onto semi-familiar territory with the ED209 child development course
The third book is largely about childrens’ learning of which a large chunk is about learning to speak in the early years. Net effect of that is that I should be on more familiar territory courtesy of the English course I did last year where the...
Onwards and upwards with the psychology course
Somehow or other I managed to pick up 78% on the latest assignment which is pretty good going as initially I hadn’t a clue as to how to properly approach the semi-essay part of it. It was quite a strange kind of assignment as it was largely bas...
Building a support network for the psychology course
One of the essential things to do early on in starting an Open University course is to get yourself into a study group. Although there are regular tutorials associated with the course there tend to be quite a lot of things that don’t come up du...
Wow are some courses popular, or what?
One of the biggest surprises that I had when I started the psychology course this year was the sheer number of separate tutorial groups that it has in the area. Previously with the language courses it was one group to cover the whole of Ireland where...
I must stop browsing the prospectuses!
I’m something of an addict to browsing university prospectuses though sometimes it’s quite a while between getting the thing and getting around to signing up for a course. Last time it was all the way from picking up a prospectus around 1...
A big jump in the workload for the ED209 psychology course
I was doing quite nicely pottering along with the child development course this last couple of months and keeping my one month lead-time on the official course calendar until now. However, the next section of the course on the personal and social dev...
Can you get too much information about a course?
One of the big differences between the language courses that I’ve been doing over the last seven years and the psychology course that I’m doing at the moment is that there are a whole lot more people doing it: around six times the number ...
