Voc Talk café by Après-cours – Welding
Hello there VT teachers!
The Voc Talk Café is a place where you are invited to chat live about teaching a trade in today’s world. Originally launched in November 2021, the Voc Talk Café is now brought to you, on Zoom, by VT.PROCEDE and RÉCIT VT in collaboration with les Après-cours. The meetings are a safe space to get information and discuss issues, concerns and successes in the vocational training community.
Every Monday at 3:00 PM, the 1-hour session is focused on a specific trade sector but remains open to all vocational educators. The first 15 minutes present the topic and some of the key points and issues, and the next 45 minutes to discussion and exploration with the participants in the meeting.
We would love for you to participate – everyone is welcome! To join, on the day and time of the meeting, visit the Voc Talk Café Après-cours site here and click the big red button here to be admitted to the virtual room.
The next episode, on September 11, will feature a discussion about AR welding trainers with James Burn from the RÉCIT VT. Come join in!
Taste a tomato or pet a pug, and have a great rest of the day!
📱👩🍳 Robin
Great session! Thanks to all who attended. Here are the key takeaways of our discussion:
This discussion about the role of augmented reality (AR) in welding as a learning tool was animated and had lots of great ideas for application in VT! There was a tour of what AR is and how we already use it in daily life to demystify the technology as being too advanced and out of reach for most people. Then, we explored how it is being used in certain VT centres: to support students with little pretraining experience, or students that are struggling to build up confidence and skill. We took a quick tour of how it works and what it looks like before we jumped into the discussion, where we spoke about how AR welding trainers could offer some interesting avenues for student learning:
– confidence-building
– cost-effectiveness
– safe and secure environment to build basic comfort with welding tools
– remediation
– personal technique analysis and checkpoint verification
One point in particular, the accessibility for remote learners, opened up an interesting discussion about how this tool could be a form of ‘elearning’ for VT, whereby the student practices at home to build a basic comfort level before coming into a centre to practice with the real equipment.
We wrapped up the discussion with a question for next time – the manufacturers claim that AR welding trainers improve performance, and we would like to find scientific research that links AR to improvement in learning outcomes.
To see the video and read the notes, check out the Voc Talk Café by Après-cours website at https://apc-fp.ticfga.ca/metallurgical-technology-september-11-2023/
See you next time!
📱👩🍳 Robin