Week 2: Reflection on mobile phone wiki

Reflection on the 'mobile phone in classroom' wiki

Plus other engagement activities.

Activity 3: Reflection on the mobile phone in class wiki

Good instructions were provided in the technical manual and on moodle yet l I was hesitant to just start writing. My global learner preference (and my detailed/sequential preference) meant that I understood the why and how of the activity but I needed to see the relevance of the task before fully committing, and I must agree with it too! I was unwilling to engage when I didn't understand why we were using a wiki for this activity.
I understand a wiki is a tool for recording facts and I felt a forum would have been a more appropriate tool for this activity.

Additionally everything I wanted to say was succinctly said by another class member. I didn't know what to do! I tried to add snippets but found it hard to improve on what was said. Being in a hurry I chose not to prove my position with research or reference my material.
If I was asked to do a 200 word summary I would not have made the same decision.

I viewed the format as informal, and once I saw how others were writing I decided I could get away with a quick answer approach.

And so onto the connection with our learning....

Learning styles
The wiki activity offered individual research into the topic with a collaborative answer. It was literacy/linguistic based.
Reading and hearing comments made by others in the class I would consider most students approached this as digital immigrants, which may explain why so many of us had trouble engaging with the wiki.

See the following moodle page for more information on learning styles, multiple intelligences and the 21st century learner.

If any one reads this and has suggestions on how I should be referencing please let me know! Yes, with more time I will find out myself. Next week!

Learning theory
The learning theory I believe the wiki activity demonstrated is social constructivism.
This can be demonstrated by the following points, from the moodle learning theory explanation:

• the activity was based on interactions within a learning community
• working with our peers we were in a zone of proximal development.
• we had the support of the teacher
• we had the use of a suitable tool
• we worked in collaboration

For some learning tasks I think using a group activity like a wiki or forum where students can learn from each other and be supported by a teacher is a valuable tool.

Scaffolding
The scaffolding for this activity was De Bono's six thinking hats
We were given the has framework so that we considered multiple perspectives.

The teacher structured the activity so that we were guided in our learning. If this was not the case it would have been a dog's breakfast of formats, thinking levels, opinions etc and it would not have been easy to compare responses across participants.This framework for thinking worked well to draw out our ideas.

Using a wiki or forum as a way to construct the knowledge means everyone is visible, the responses are recorded and the teacher can see the thought process for each answer.

The purpose of scaffolding is to try to lead us to a higher order of thinking. Considering Bloom's Taxonomy I consider the activity covered the base levels. However if we have not researched the topic, and rather have made comments based on opinion and current knowledge, I debate whether we have actually contributed to the first step; 'knowledge/remembering'.

The downside of this activity is that a person that is not motivated to participate may just sift through others responses and create an agreeable response. Alternatively someone that is hesitant to commit their answers to 'paper' may sift through others responses and feel more confident that they are correct and provide their answers.

In a controversial topic like this it was important to provide your answers, but not comment on the answers of others (not directly anyway).

I think some people didn't use the tool as a wiki - a source of fact. They did include opinion, however the scaffolded questions also led to this response.

*Note made after this was submitted:
After reading some class mates blogs I may be missunderstanding the word 'scaffold'. I have used it here, as I understood at the time, as a framework to structure the participants response, however it is more than that in that it allows multiple angles of ananysis for a simgle item and is aiming to introduce a higher level of thinking.

Also, I want to make this note on connectivism, from one of the linked articles.

"The capacity to form connections between sources of information, and thereby create useful information patterns, is required to learn in our knowledge economy."

I guess that is the definition really.


Activity 1: Productive pedagogies

I could not get the links to work so I ran through this mentally. I think this is a tad harder for me to imagine how to use these tools in a classroom setting as I am not an education student.

It is a straight forward system and I found it helpful to look at the suggested terminology.
I do wonder if it is just 'naming' what you are planning to do rather than ensuring you have good learning design.



Activity 2: TPACK
A plain English explanation of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK).

I couldn't top the video posted by a fellow student (Casey Williams)
This made it all clear! 

TPACK = teacher knowledge about teaching with technology.



Previously it was viewed that teachers were experts in a content field, and had pedagogy knowledge.
Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK)  is when a teacher had a knowledge of a subject and knowledge of how to teach it.
Then came along technology! Technology and TK started to be visualised as another field of expertise required by a teacher.