Synopsis

EDED20491

Term 1, 2010

Tutor, Scot Aldred

Assignment 2, 1000 words

Reflective synopsis blog posting

BY

Michael Rhodes

Due 30/04/10






Submit the URL of your Blog via the Moodle Assessment Task 2 (Learning
e.Journal) link.


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Elearning can be a powerful tool when applied correctly in a classroom setting. Students are no longer bound by traditional methods of learning, they are free to use and accumulate information from a wide variety of sources. I see teacher's roles as being motivators and moderators. Student’s handicaps can be lessened and sometimes negated whilst using many of the user-friendly programs available today.

Students are not academically bound by physical locations, gender or age, as long as they have connectivity via the internet. Many communities, children and schools achieve this connectivity by using a satellite dish. Nowadays this enables children to learn 24 hours a day, privately or collaboratively, whilst being connected to the global village.

Fortunately, there are large amounts of different elearning types for teachers and students to use. This is particularly important, as not all students learn the same way, so different strategies using different elearning may have to be employed. Some pupils are auditory learners, some are kinesthetic, others may be visual, the main point is they should be guided to expand their realm of knowledge and creativity. Photo editing, sound production, film editing and quests are particularly useful in improving student’s higher order thinking.

Many students are not aware of their own technological potential, they may not have been given the opportunity to experiment with it or they might not have been shown what they can actually do with it. Quests have proven to be a valuable way of learning for many students, but authentic tasks appear to have a longer lasting effect. I also believe that children have the right to know how technologies actually work, this is what inspired my Power Point presentation concerning what makes a computer work (posted on my Blog).

Many techniques and strategies have changed since I originally started a teaching degree back in Adelaide, 1991. I think back to that time and now and remember how I laboured trying to make lessons interesting and engaging whilst using recorders, OH projectors and videos. I first discovered the power of using ICT’s whilst studying at JCU and during a teaching prac at Charters Towers School of the Air. I was impressed by the use of computer communication technology to teach such isolated children. The student’s acceptance, participation and genuine enjoyment was not what I had experienced at previous schools.

I am always searching for new teaching methods, as this is such a dynamic mode of learning/teaching. Students seem to naturally gravitate to using new and exciting technologies, possibly because they play such a large part of their every-day living. EDED20491 has encouraged me to explore new technologies whilst considering the advantages of using them in a classroom setting.

There are many elearning opportunities that can be utilised whilst teaching various aged students. When our youngest boy was four, he continuously stole his older brother’s Nintendo lite. He kept playing around with it and kept deleting my 9 year olds highest scores. It was not until 3 months later that we realised that he was actually beating the top scores! We underestimated his persistence and his abilities. What amazed us the most was that most of these games had written directions of what to do, but he could not read. Clearly, he was using other methods to play and master certain learning experiences. This is a good lesson to remember whilst teaching in a classroom setting.

I have personally been interested in computers and technology since my Dad bought a Commodore 64, I am sure you remember them Scot. In most of my jobs since then, I have been able to use a myriad of programs. Everything changed with the beginning of the World Wide Web when connectivity became the norm. EDED20491 has encouraged me to consider how and why we should use ICT’s in an educational setting. I have naturally adopted some of the pedagogies learnt in EDED20941 with my own children. In fact, they often conclusively prove what I have learnt about children needing to be engaged and guided to explore the net. Children’s safety is paramount to me, as is my own discovery of new and exciting ICT’s.

I have found that many of the teaching staff at my learning experience placement school are not particularly computer literate and that they delegate all of ICT work to one person. I have found all of the ICT resources in EDED20491 useful and appropriate to use in my teaching prac. I have saved some of my peer’s lesson plan ideas, as they will be of use to me as well. I have appreciated comments from my peer and in turn have enjoyed commenting on their Blogs. I have also communicated to a few of my peers on the p2p chat feature on EDED20491.

Once I discovered which topics were appropriate to discuss in which rooms, I did so accordingly. I now understand (as shown in my blog) that there are different blogs for different reasons. I started my EDED20491 learning journey blog rather unprofessionally but corrected this problem as I continued. Blog discourse is very important for the purpose of understanding, privacy issues and legal ramifications. At the very most, I am guilty for posting a poem concerning why I am studying and how hard it is to fit it all in.

Many of the students in my teaching prac class are underprivileged or have learning difficulties and the school is also grossly under-resourced with ICT’s, which makes teaching with ICT’s quite hard. This is why I want to let the students have as much hands on experience as they can. I will be taking in old computers, phones and digital clocks for them to take apart, explore their construction/uses/limitations and then document their findings for comparison and review. I am also aware of the gender gap concerning ICT’s and will endeavour to alleviate this in my class as much as possible.

All up, EDED20491 has been a good learning experience made even better by a tutor that promotes interactivity within the course, collaboration of students and exploration with ICT tools for teaching. Once again I would like to take this opportunity to thank Scot for his persistant ICT help and my peers for their comments and encouragement.

More week 8.....

Joe Wood's blog concerning the use of Google Earth would be really useful to use or adapt whilst teaching children about finding, marking and retieiving particular locations on our planet. The video was extremely clear about the use of this application and where you could use and store it.

The wikipedias content concerning educational ideas, plans and thoughts is a great resource for teachers and students alike. I was involved in the production of a wiki whilst attending JCU in Townsville. The only problem that I encountered was the mediation of that particular wiki. So prompt and fair mediation should be used whilst students are involved in or out of school. I would be interested in other GDLT students eperiences with open wikis.

Inpcompetec is a legal method of downloading certain music. I would enjoy using some of this music in various way, one being during short meditation periods used to reasure and focus children. I would also utilise this web site to find music to compliment PP presentations, art and drama classes.

Week 8......

The video clip that I posted above was downloaded from Utube on 18/04/10

I believe that this is a great time to be involved with teaching. There is so much connectivity to quality resources via the net and many technologies to display it. This a good thing as children are all so different in which the way they learn. The exploration of these resources, such as Utube, is open to all students who are connected to the www. I used Utube as a resource with great success whilst doing a teaching prac at the Charters Towers School of the Air. Some of the students required initial assistance, as I did with my Mahara and Blog accounts.

My fellow GDLT peers have also helped me with some ideas and reviews of my work in the EDED20491 course. In paricular, I have spoken at length with a peer regarding the use of computer programs with pre-readers and how they acquire the knowledge to participate in programs designed for children that can read.

I have always had the belief that a good technology is only useful if it is interesting, helps achieve a goal, shortens a chore and is user-friendly. Unfortunately this means a lot of trial and error with some programs/technologies to assess what is useful for one's own purpose.

Week 8......

week 7 activity 2.....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mickcate/4514616758/in/photostream/

I normally use Windows Picture Manager to crop or resize my photos so I am familiar with this type of application (Picnik)and its limitations. It would be very interesting to see how much the students already know about this type of programmand to see how, as Kearsley and Shneiderman (1998)discussed,they relate, create and donate using a technology that enhances their own work. With students editing their own photos, it would be an authentic learning experience and one that would assist their understanding of self-editing for the future.

I also believe that these types of editing technologies are particularly suited to visual learners. The steps used on most editing applications are easy to learn and fully reversible. These two attributes would alleviate a users fears of making mistakes and promote exploration.

I have placed a link at the top of this post that leads to a cropped and resized photo that I did on Picnik.

http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm
Engagement Theory:
A framework for technology-based teaching and learning
Greg Kearsley & Ben Shneiderman (1998) Retrieved 12/04/10

Week 7..............

The learning experience continues as I began to experiment with flickr. Although I have viewed friend's photos on Flickr, I have not joined nor learnt to use this program. Joining was easy, transferring another member's photo to my blog was not so easy. Maybe I missed something but I found it quite hard to transfer pics from the actual site. I will play around with it later and conquer the problem.

As a learning tool though, Flickr would be a wonderful way of introducing a different type of technology. Students would be motivated to share their photographic prowess and utilise a program that promotes creativity. A class account could be established and collaborative learning would take place via sharing of ideas, choosing photo subjects, taking pictures, discussing and comparing each group's photos. I have added another member's photo as required for this activity.

This may also hone the student's photographic abilities whilst creating a real-life record of what they were interested in at a certain time in their lives. These kind of pictorial diaries are easy for students to do, store and refer to at a later time. This type of program is also relatively safe as personal information can be hidden and the member decides who can see what.

Michael

Supplement to week 6...

Just a quick thank you to Scot for the assistance with accessing my blog. It really makes sense to use consistant usernames and passwords, ones that are easy to remember but are still have good security characteristics. These are also good lessons to pass on to students, possibly when we are discussing cyber safety, cyber bullying and/or viruses. It has also become apparent to me that self-exploration is a great method to expand student's curiosity and abilities. The other subject that I wanted to touch on is the way I am learning from many of the other GDLT students. It just proves that you don't have to be sitting next to some one to work collaboratively.

Michael