Hello
Everyone,
For our
assessment 2 in ICT's we have to analyse the different technologies
that we have been experimenting with over the past five or six weeks
and combining that information to learning theory.
First
I'll start with Learning Theory.
When I
first started this course I was snowballed with the amount and detail of
information that was presented to me, striving harder and harder to keep on top
of things. The best thing about this situation is that I love learning, I love
learning new things, useless information and/or statistics. Unfortunately this
is most often not the case within the classroom, so we as a teacher need to
know the theory behind different strategies and implementations that
we express within the classroom in order to effectively engage our students.
We learnt
about how to "know your learner" through learning styles
and multiple intelligence, which you can find in my appendix 1. I
found this exercise interesting but predictable. I understand the
basis to finding out this information about my students but I have learnt since
starting this course, just because a student did a test and was determined as a
visual learner doesn't mean they don't learn in other ways. Knowing how my
students learn helps me structure my pedagogy but isn't dictated by this
information.
I
strongly support the statement by Prensky (2005) that "Engage Me or Enrage
Me", this statement and information about the use of ICT's in the
classroom have helped me persevere with ICT's. We are living in a
society where students are becoming self-taught e-learners (Quigley, 2011), in
which the gap between what they know and are able to do with this knowledge
greatly exceeds the current ICT curriculum found in schools (Quigley, 2011). If
we as teachers are able to embrace the ICT world within the classroom
and are able to scaffold and use different ICT's to connect bigger pictures
with relevant information, this will help inspire and encourage our
students to become engaged in learning.
By using
for example a collaborative wiki within a class will allow for contributions
from all students, teachers are able to identify every students reasoning,
providing positive encouragement and create something that can be analysed and
viewed at anytime. For a student using ICT's, this establishes an environment
in which constructivism can be used, allowing for deeper understanding of a
subject that can be continuously built on (Atherton, 2011). This in turn
creates declarative knowledge which connects to a bigger picture.
Constructivist
Learning
deBono's
Six Thinking Hats collaborative wiki provided a situation which helped
structure, through a series of questions, an exercise designed to ask me and
other students to think outside the box. By completing this task we were able
to identify and reflect on each person's prospective as well as
add additional information for six different questions on mobile phones,
developing an exercise that presented each of us with learning and teaching
experience.
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| http://www.mindwerx.com/mind-tools/5970/six-thinking-hats |
Wikis enable students and all learners a means to (Hadjerrouit, 2012):
- add value to traditional technologies of text-processing systems
- They help motivate students through self-learnt technology
- provides a way to differentiate between different users needs
- A way to collaborate amongst students and teachers
- A way of discussing and communicating ideas, giving each person a
'voice'
- Helps teachers assess each student’s contribution to the discussion or
project
- allows for peer-reviewed analysis and feedback in a
supportive environment
The deBono's Six Thinking Hats wiki that myself and quite a few other
students contributed in (appendix 2), help me identify everything
that is in the list above. For science, which is my teaching area for
secondary, I would be able to adapt a deBono's wiki
to incorporate different Key Learning Areas to promote learning and
thinking. Investigate what student’s opinions and views are in a particular
area or to provide a group project to investigate and assess each other’s
opinions providing feedback, creating a situation of self learning. deBono's
thinking hats provides a teacher structured pedagogy which helped
focus students on the issues that needed to be answered, if this exercise was
completed in a wiki without deBono then the focus would be lost. The responses
received would be endless but unstructured. With wiki's you can
password protect them disallowing everyone else to access them
providing a legal, safe and ethical working experience. All versions are
saved discouraging cyber-bullying to occur on these protected wiki
pages.
The first group of ICT tools, Blogs, Wikis and Websites
I created one of each of these, my blog (appendix 3) which you are
currently on, was a whole new experience for me. I had never done one before
now and I value the use of it. But I am unsure on how effectively I could use
this particular tool within one of my science classes as it is a single author
tool. Wiki's on the other hand (Appendix 4), provides a lot more flexibility to
creating group bases learning and assessments, allowing for collaboration and
discussions with multiple authors, definitely has its advantages with teacher structured peer-learning
(Pifarre & Staarman, 2011). But I would like to select websites
for my learning context in group one. Originally I created a website
when asked but didn't know what to put on it (Appendix 5), since then I wished
to look further into this ICT tool and came up with my website on Marine Sounds
(Appendix 6). My second area of teaching is Marine studies or Marine Science, I
wished to incorporate sound frequencies made by marine animals and
relate this back to an area which teenagers could relate to, e.g. music -
speakers and headsets. I found that students were able to relate to this more
when they could put the knowledge in a context they knew. I was able to embed
sounds, links to YouTube videos and a quiz to assess how much the student has
taken in from this site. I created this site (single author) there is no legal,
safe or ethical issues associated with this site.
The second group of ICT tools, Images, Podcasting/digital audio and
Digital video
From this group of ICT tools, I have chosen to use Digital Video in my
own learning context. Resizing images and uploading them to the internet is
definitely worth wild knowing, as this creates an endless opportunity to engage
in tools like online scrapbooking and slideshows, without the huge file to draw
you down. Appendix 7 shows how I have uploaded a range of resized photo's on to
my blog, uploading photos creates a range of legal, safe and ethical issues,
such as posting photo's of children, people who haven't given permission to
use their photos or what kind of people will be able to see these photos.
Digital Audio created a new way of looking at things for me which is explained
more in my appendix 8. Digital video (appendix 9) was a real eye opener for me,
I was able to take a small range of photos on my phone along with an audio
recording, transfer them to the computer and create a short-video from them.
This way of communication has endless opportunity within schools, from
presentations by student or teacher, distance education, assignments etc.
The legal, safe and ethical issues relating to digital video is the
concepts in which students and teachers chose to use this tool. A student
that diminishes another student through video, then posting it all over
the internet creates an area that needs to be closely monitored for cyber
bullying.
The third group of ICT tools, PowerPoint, Prezi and Glogster
I tried my best to create each of these ICT tools, PowerPoint
presentations I was already very familiar with during my
science undergraduate degree, they are very linear though. Glogster
created some issues for me as I had trouble trying to get my head around all
the buttons and features, it presented as very chaotic to me and then
glogster wouldn't recognise my file formats. Prezi was my favourite out of this
group, easy, simple, fantastic idea, creating a presentation that was
no longer linear. There are zoom-in and zoom-out
features, embedding video and pictures, voki's and animations. This
particular Prezi is quite simple but it’s definitely something I will bring
into my classroom (appendix 10).
The fourth group of ICT tools, iPod Touch, Samsung Tablets and Document Dropbox
I have tried out some other ICT tools such as Document Dropbox, iPod touch and Samsung tablet. Document Dropbox is a fantastic idea for group projects allowing each person to access the same version of a document no matter where they are. Auto-saving to Dropbox means no more excuses about leaving my USB drive at home. Working with any Microsoft program using track changes allows each person within the group to communicate between different versions. Within my science area this tool would be great for collaborating group projects at home or school between a few students. I cannot see any safe, legal or ethical issues with Dropbox.
Conclusion
Learning and developing skills in the ICT world and
incorporating this into the classroom enhances a student connection to the
learning material, by engaging them through a structured pedagogy. ICT’s alone
are not enough to create deep thinking and an engaging environment. Only
through good pedagogy and scaffolding of learning material combined with ICT
tools can you actively enhance learning.
Knowing your learner and content equals pedagogy
Scaffolding and ICT’s equal good pedagogy
Good pedagogy equal engaged learners and deep
thinking.
We need to engage learners to keep them focused,
stay on task and learn. Through this ICT course I have learnt a wide range of
ICT tool I will definitely be implementing into my classroom.
Thank you for everything, until next time
Nikki
Appendix
Appendix 1 Teaching and learning styles http://nikkislogsite.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/hello-again-said-i-was-going-to-be-back.html
Appendix 2 collaborative wiki on mobile phones http://fahe11001-3-11.wikispaces.com/Group+1+Mobile+Phones
Appendix 3 My blog http://nikkislogsite.blogspot.com.au/
Appendix 4 My wiki https://nikkiswikipage.wikispaces.com/
Appendix 5 My Original Website http://nikkisinteractivewebpage.weebly.com/
Appendix 6 Marine Sounds http://marinesounds.weebly.com/
Appendix 3 My blog http://nikkislogsite.blogspot.com.au/
Appendix 4 My wiki https://nikkiswikipage.wikispaces.com/
Appendix 5 My Original Website http://nikkisinteractivewebpage.weebly.com/
Appendix 6 Marine Sounds http://marinesounds.weebly.com/
Appendix 7 Resizing images http://nikkislogsite.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/image-resizing.html
Appendix 8 Digital Audio http://nikkislogsite.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/digital-audio-recording.html
Appendix 9 Digital Video http://nikkislogsite.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/movie-maker_18.html
Appendix 10 Prezi http://nikkislogsite.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/prezi.html
Appendix 8 Digital Audio http://nikkislogsite.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/digital-audio-recording.html
Appendix 9 Digital Video http://nikkislogsite.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/movie-maker_18.html
Appendix 10 Prezi http://nikkislogsite.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/prezi.html
References
Crompton, H Goodhand, L Wells, S, 2011, ‘Learning
and Leading with Technology’, Education
Research Complete, vol. 38, no. 5, pp. 16-19.
Hadjerrouit, S, 2011, ‘Investigating Technical and
Pedagogical Usability Issues of Collaborative Learning with Wikis’, Informatics in Education, vol. 11, no.
1, pp. 45-64.
Prensky, M, 2005, ‘Engage Me or Enrage Me’, EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 40, no. 5, pp.
60-64.
Quigley, D, 2011, ‘Internet and Independent E-Learning
of School Age Children in Thailand (One Study)’, US-China Education Review, pp. 749-755.
Pifarre, M Staarman, JK, 2011, ‘Wiki-supported
collaborative learning in primary education: How a dialogic space is created
for thinking together’, Computer-Supported
Collaborative Learning, vol. 6, pp. 187-205.
