Well here we are at the final blog post and taking a macro view. The course thus far has forced me to research, use, master and share tools that are required in the modern teaching world. It has given me technological knowledge.
We started the journey looking at learning styles and
intelligences and then a mobile phone wiki where we were both a contributor and
an analyser. We then went through Group One tools; Blogs, Wikis and static
websites, Group two; images, audio and video, Group Three; presentation,
animation and simulation, finishing last week with mobile learning.
This final blog piece, a synopsis, is another example of a
scaffolded activity; we have been asked to reflect upon the learning and apply it
to the classroom. While reviewing our course materials and blog posts helps our
recall and understanding of the course content we also need to apply the ideas
learnt to the education setting, analyse and evaluate the tools and research
and create a synopsis. Higher order thinking has been achieved.
At the end of six weeks I have created a substantial
reflective blog, have been exposed to
more than 150 tools used in primary and secondary eLearning and have mastered a
few too.
eLearningeLearning is and will become even more a part of teaching and learning in the future. ELearning must enhance the teaching and learning, and there must be a backup plan for your lesson.
The ‘e’ in eLearning refers to electronic and is learning using technology. Most commonly
it is referred to as mobile devices, however it
also includes electronic whiteboards, cameras, videos and MP3 (music) players.
These Information Communication Technology (ICT) tools are a part of students’
lives and will be ingrained into workplaces of the future. If you still need convincing that we are a digitally
enhanced world take a look at this info graphic from GoGlobe.com (2012) ‘What
Happens on the Internet in 60 Seconds’.
Learning Frameworks
Learning frameworks describe how learning takes place. The
models and theories relating to teaching primary and secondary students are:- Learning theory – Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Social Constructivism
- Connectivism
- Learning Styles & Multiple intelligences
- Bloom’s taxonomy (revised taxonomy)
- TPACK
- Productive pedagogy
- Digital pedagogy
Please refer to the appendix for links to my posts on these topics and further explanation of Bloom’s taxonomy and TPACK.
Starting at the Beginning:
Understanding Your Learner
Learning Styles
The main point of learning about multiple intelligences is
to recognise that intelligence can be considered on more scales than just
academic smarts. The learning styles test I undertook aimed to highlight that
we all have different learning styles and preferences. See the appendix for my
four posts on learning styles and intelligences. While I had a strong
understanding of the existence of personality types and how this could play out
in a workplace or social environment I had never considered structuring
activities in a classroom to meet a groups varied learning preferences. This
activity taught me how to consider the learner's styles when designing an activity
and gave me exposure to the types of activities I could choose to meet, or
stretch preferences. Everyone learns differently and as an educator you are
trying to engage the learner and reach an outcome, and this will only occur if
they can use their preferred learning style at least some of the time.
I also learnt about digital natives and digital immigrants. This
was helpful in understanding how exposure to digital tools particularly when
that exposure is from an early age affects how comfortable a person may be
using ITCs. For the digital native it will be natural. See this link for the
article ‘Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants' (Prensky 2001).
It also highlighted how much primary and secondary education
has changed in the last 20 years and as a result of this change young students
now are experiencing fast paced multifaceted experiences though their personal
mobile devices but are not having the experience at school, essentially the
‘engage or enrage’ debate. Here is a
link to Prensky’s paper ‘EngageMe or Enrage Me: What today’s Learners Demand'.
Learning Theory
The learning theories of Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Social
Constructivism and Connectivism have been discussed already and can be explored
further through the appendix. These theories contributed to our pedagogical knowledge.
Scaffolding: The mobile phone wiki
The purpose of scaffolding is to try to
lead us to a higher order of thinking. 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 wiki activity demonstrated how you can
have individual research into a topic with a collaborative answer. It also
demonstrated scaffolding. The scaffolding for this activity was De Bono's six
thinking hats. We were given this 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 and opinions and it would not have been easy to compare responses across
participants. This framework for thinking worked well to draw out our ideas.
The mobile phone wiki can be found here and my post here.Digital Understanding: Understanding Your Tools
Similar to the TPACK framework requiring technical skills the next part of our learning experience was to have exposure to the tools available in eLearning.
Group 1 Tools: Blogs, Wikis and
Static Websites
In this learning activity we are supposed
to recognise that the tools differ in the level of community involvement and who can make a change.
Wikis enable community involvement and the members can view and change
their own work and the work of others; the work evolves. The user interaction
with a wiki is frequent.
Blogs offer a medium level of engagement with readers being able to
leave a comment but not change the original content. The user interaction is
periodical.
Static websites (in the context that I think we are supposed to think
about it) is a 'read only' site; you cannot comment on or make changes to it.
The author may write the site and then make no or very little change to it and
a user may visit only once.
Using a Wiki
I had a preconception that wikis were for factual information and you contributed to a wiki if you could improve on the information provided. I looked further into the use of wikis, you can read about it in this post. Here is my wikispaces wiki. You can also see an example of a Wordpress blog I made some time ago for a friend who set up a foundation to raise awareness on organ donation www.taylorsgift.org.au
Group 2 Tools: Images, Audio and Video
Images
Students will learn better if text is
accompanied by images (Cisco Systems, 2008; Penn State 2008; Segers, Verhoeven, Hulstijn-Hendrikse 2008). There is no doubt
that 'a picture says 1000 words' but some people like to hear it,
and different modes show their strengths in different situations. As a learner
I have found images such as graphs very useful in understanding large volumes
of psychology data. In this format the images are used as a summary and an
alternative way to understand the data.I hadn’t thought about the implications of using images with children prior to the tutorial for this topic. There are two main issues; one, you have children taking photos, which may include other peers, and two you may have them accessing content that is inappropriate. Whilst there are policies and practices in place it is wise to take care when using images of children. Here are some ways to minimise risk:
- Teach students the legal and ethical issues relating to images before introducing these tools for use in the classroom.
- A teacher should always model appropriate use.
- The school will have a policy in place regarding photos of students and how they can be used. This applies to the public as well!
- Also see the appendix for links on working legally, safely and ethically online.
Audio
Audio is great for the auditory learner and those who cannot read effectively.
And let’s not forget the role music can have in learning, from the reassuring
'ding' of getting a question correct, setting the mood of a story, or helping
with recall. Initially though I debated with myself that anywhere audio could
be used video could be used - and would be a better choice. I have now come to
the conclusion that audio has its place as an equal with video as well as a
component of it.
Group 3 Tools: Presentation, Animation and Simulation
The tools I used for this topic were
Powerpoint, Prezi, Glogster. Voki and GoAnimate.The biggest lesson in this activity was to
consider the learner’s engagement.
Prezi is fun and dynamic and is a great step towards
engaging an audience. This tool allows the presenter to stop, start, go
forwards, backward and into more depth depending on the audience's needs. It
also allows easy manipulation of the contents, so is not intimidating to learn.
While Prezi appears to be quite a visual tool, it can incorporate many types of
media including audio and video and obviously has a textual component. This
means it is a tool that can cater to many learning preferences. Ditching the predetermined,
linear format is the best feature. It allows a teacher to put as much
information as they have into a resource that can then be used differently with
each group of participants.
See my creations on my blog home page and read the post here.
Final Post: Mobile Devices
Why are mobile devices important to
education? I have highlighted three reasons.
1. Mobile devices are popular
The popularity of mobile devices for
accessing the Internet is rising and it is estimated that next year, for the
first time in history, mobile devices will be used more than desktop computers.
2. It is an education system requirement
The education department requires teachers to use technology in the classroom.
Take a look
here if you want to explore
the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations' plan for digital education and technology in schools.
3. Our children will use mobile devices in their everyday learning
Today’s students are going to need to know how
to learn, and learning takes place in a number of formats, but typically an
electronic devices is used. Of the electronic devices, most will be 'mobile'.
Advantages of Mobile Devices in Classroom
Learning
- students
learn how to access information
- enormous
variety of engaging educational applications
- more
likely to cross over learning styles
- learning
anytime, anywhere
- encourages
students natural interest in the tools and devices and focus them into
using them for educational gain
- offers
another level of interaction between student-student, student-teacher and
student-parent, teacher-parent
- teacher
resources
- personalised
learning experience
- update
of texts etc - updates rather than purchasing new editions of texts /
resources
- devices
can carry huge amounts of information
Ethical and Legal considerations
It is important for a teacher to model good
practice. Our course content talked about the ‘fair use rule’ and the ‘10% rule’,
however copyright still needs to be considered and pieces should still be
referenced. Teachers should make use of the tools available, like NetAlert and
NetSafe Kids to reduce the possibility of harmful content, harassment, bullying
and socialising with inappropriate people.
Conclusion
As stated in the introduction the materials
we have covered so far have contributed to our technological knowledge., I have had exposure to more than 150 eLearning
tools and when considering the TPACK framework model provided in the appendix, this
is the ‘river’ of technological knowledge that we need to be aware of but not
necessarily master. More importantly I can see how these tools support learning
within learning theory, for different learning styles and for different
learning outcomes (higher order thinking). While I may not have the background
of a BLM student I will develop better learning activities now that I have this
knowledge.
References
Churches, A., Studies
in Ed Tech: Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally, Tech & Learning, 2008 http://www.techlearning.com/studies-in-ed-tech/0020/blooms-taxonomy-blooms-digitally/44988 accessed 14/4/2013
Cisco Systems, Multimodal Learning
Through Media: What the Research Says, 2008
E. Pyatt, Combining Media and Text, Penn State Learning
Design Community Hub, 2008 http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/webdesign/media/combinemediatext
accessed 14 April 2013
Go-Globe.com, What Happens on the Internet
in 60 seconds, 2001 http://www.go-globe.com/web-design-shanghai.php accessed 10 September 2012
Prensky, M., Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, On the Horizon, Vol. 9 No 5, 2011 http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf
accessed 14/4/2013
Prensky, M., Engage Me or Enrage Me: What today’s Learners
Demand, Educause Review, 2005, http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0553.pdf
accessed 14/4/2013
CQ University, FAHE11001: Managing
E-Learning, Digital Tool 1:
Blogs for Learning, retrieved from http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/pluginfile.php/302824/mod_page/content/8/blogs.html 13 March 2013
Segers E., Verhoeven L., Hulstijn-Hendrikse N., Applied Cognitive Psychology, John Wiley &
Sons, 2008
Stansbury, M., Analysis: How
multimedia can improve learning, eSchool News, date
unknown, http://www.mirandanet.ac.uk/vl_blog/?page_id=54
accessed 14 April 2013
Appendix
Learning Theory
See my following posts on learning styles
and intelligences:
One of four: Learning Styles
Two of four: Multiple
Intelligences
Three of four: Reflection on Prensky's Ideas
Four of four: Multiple
Intelligences
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Higher order thinking is a reference to Bloom’s Taxonomy. In
most cases the best learning activities are purposefully designed to encourage
higher order thinking skills.
Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy and Blooms Digital Taxonomy, Studies in Ed Tech: Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally, Andrew Churches, Tech & Learning, 2008 http://www.techlearning.com/studies-in-ed-tech/0020/blooms-taxonomy-blooms-digitally/44988 accessed 14/4/2013).
Engage or Enrage
Engage Me or Enrage Me: What today’s Learners Demand.
Prensky 2005, Educause Review, http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0553.pdf
Digital Natives &
Digital Immigrants
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. Prensky 2001, On the
Horizon, MCB University Press, Vol. 9 No 5, 2011 http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf
Working legally,
safely and ethically online
The following links have been provided on Moodle, at http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=88334
http://education.qld.gov.au/web/schools/riskman.html
http://education.qld.gov.au/strategic/eppr/national-copyright.pdf
http://education.qld.gov.au/strategic/eppr/legal/lgspr001/
http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/go/pid/946
TPACK = teacher knowledge about teaching
with technology.http://education.qld.gov.au/strategic/eppr/national-copyright.pdf
http://education.qld.gov.au/strategic/eppr/legal/lgspr001/
http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/go/pid/946
A plain English explanation of technological,
pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK).
Previously it was viewed that teachers were experts in a content field, and had pedagogy knowledge.
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.
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