The following blog has been created as part of my Managing E-Learning course at CQUniversity, Mackay.

Friday 26 August 2011

Reflective Synopsis

Reflective Synopsis



“Teachers today are working with students whose entire lives have been immersed in 21st-century media and technology culture. Today’s students are digital learners. They take in the world via the filter of computing devices including mobile phones, laptops, tablets, game consoles and handheld gaming devices. In many countries today’s students are referred to as ‘digital natives’, and today’s educators as ‘digital immigrants’.” (Teachers Talking Technology, 2011). As I reflect on my 6 weeks of Managing E-learning, I still feel like a ‘digital immigrant’, trying to make sense of a world I probably won’t ever fully understand and teaching it to a generation who has much more of an understanding than I do. In saying that, I feel much more prepared to tackle the wide variety of techno-tools now that I have completed this course. I will be able to apply the skills I have learned in this short amount of time and endeavour to educate my class on useful tools and maintain my students’ safety whilst using those tools.


Students learn best when they are actively involved in the process. (Davis, 1993). When students are able to be hand-on and engaged in the learning process, they are more likely to absorb the material they are being taught. ICT tools are fast becoming the best way to engage students as we enter into the technology century. As teachers, we must adapt and change to suit our students’ needs; this includes changing our teaching methods to include ICT tools. As someone who technology does not usually agree with or work for, the following tools were easy to use, fun to learn with and I could see myself using them in my future classroom.


Firstly though, let me begin with safety on the internet and how teachers can ensure that safety within the classroom and in the wider school community. The following was taken from a government site and would be perfect to use as an introduction to safety on the internet. It could also be put up in the classroom as a post to remind students what to look out for when surfing the web.


Tell your Mum or Dad if you see something online that upsets you, or if someone makes you feel unhappy. You can also talk to a trusted adult like a teacher: they can help.
Hide your password. Only ever share it with your parents – never with your friends. Someone else could go online pretending to be you and do something that could get you into trouble.


  Interesting websites can be fun. Check with Mum or Dad if a site is okay to use before you visit. Sometimes they can set up a good list of sites just for you.
Be Nice to people you talk to on the internet or phone. Name calling or being mean is not cool. Look out for yourself and for others.
 
Keep your special personal information safe. Never give your real name, address or phone number to anyone you don’t know in the real world. Use a nickname in chat rooms or when you play games on the computer.

 
(Commonweath of Australia, 2009)










As a learning manager, it will be my responsibility to monitor student activity on the internet but I think it is more important for students to be able to monitor their own thinking and actions when engaging in online activities. In saying that, making sure a website is appropriate for students to view is an imperative part of teaching with ICT tools. As a student myself, I encounter many pages when ‘surfing’ that would be inappropriate for a child to view. This is where the think strategy could come into place. As students’ become more familiar with the THINK concept, they will become more independent in their online adventures.


ICT Tools Unpacked


Tool One: Blogger


Blogs are fast becoming the new ‘dear diary’. I found this blog to be simple to use and easy to personalize. As a learning manager, I can see the benefits of using this tool in the classroom including using it as a place to communicate with parents, as a place for students to go to get clarification about homework or assignments. As I worked through the blog, I found that adding photos and video was a simple process. There was also a tool on Blogger that enabled you to re-size images once they had been uploaded. This tool would be simple enough to use with year one or two and in collaboration with the parents/guardians of the students. Tool One


Tool Two: Voki


This tool would be prefect for the start of a lesson or as a hook into a lesson. It can be personalized to look like you (as the teacher of the class) or to look like a famous person/ person from history that you are studying with your class. Voice can be recorded into the Voki or you can type text and it will read it in the accent of your choice. This tool is one of the few I found that would work with auditory learners. It is also easily embedded into your blog, if a class blog was going to be started for homework/assignment purposes. It adds a little something extra to a presentation instead of simply ‘talking at’ the class. Tool Two


Tool Three: Glogster


I must say, this was one of my favourite tools to learn about and use. As I am a visual learner, Glogster immediately sucked me in with its bright colours and effects that I could play with and change to my heart’s content. This is similar to Blogger in the fact that it is a ‘blog’ but it’s so much more than that as well. There are so many possibilities with this tool to use in a classroom. It would also work well with the interactive white board, as children could get up and add their own items to a class Glogster and personalize it to their own style. It could be used in conjunction with making classroom rules that can be accessed by parents at home, again with the class’ own personal spin put on the layout. Tool Three


Tool Four: Scribble Maps


As an Early Childhood major, this tool appealed especially to that side of me. For children to be able to ‘scribble’ (no pun intended) all over a map of their school or city just makes it all the more fun and engaging. This tool could also be used in conjunction with the interactive whiteboard as a whole class demonstration/lesson. It has many tools to play with and you can label your own school with a personalized tag. You can circle it, colour it in and draw a school building on the map to indicate where it is. Overall it is an extremely engaging tool that would suit a geography lesson in early childhood to a tee. Tool Four


Education Queensland identifies digital pedagogy as being "a new way of working and learning with ICT to facilitate quality learning experiences for 21st Century learners. Digital Pedagogy moves the focus from ICT tools and skills, to a way of working in the digital world". (Education Queensland, 2008). As studying teachers, we must keep up with technology to offer our future students and the future generations the best of technology and the best of ourselves as teachers.


Works Cited


Teachers Talking Technology. (2011, August 9). 40-41. Mackay, Queensland, Australia.


Commonweath of Australia. (2009, August 19). How to be cyber smart! Retrieved August 26, 2011, from Cybersmart: http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/Young%20Kids/How%20to%20be%20cybersmart.aspx


Davis, B. G. (1993). Tools For Teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.


Education Queensland. (2008, August). Smart Classrooms Bytes . eLearning For Smart Classrooms, p. 3.





Monday 15 August 2011

Blogs Blog 2

Posting a blog about a blog is a bit of an oxymoron. As you can see from this blog, it is a simple and easy tool to use in collaboration with an assignment or a classroom task. Blogs are the new diaries and safe on paper wastage and also rid the need to decipher some student's writing.

Plus
  • simple and instructive
  • collaborative
  • able to be viewed by classmates and teachers
Minus
  • students may be apposed to writing on a computer
  • can get side-tracked by the "widgets" that are added to the blog
Interesting
  • Can embed information/tools from other sites

Monday 1 August 2011

Scribble Maps Blog 5

Scribble Maps is a perfect tool to use with younger grades. Students in Early Childhood classrooms get easily confused and cannot follow a large amount of instructions at a time. This tool can help "break up" the instructions and engage the learners in a fun way. Disadvantages therefore would obviously be getting side-tracked or going over-board with the "scribble" tools. This activity would have to be closely monitored.

Plus
  • large amount of interactive tools
  • easy to follow instructions
  • clear graphics with satellite capabilities
Minus
  • presents the ability to be side tracked with a large amount of tools
  • ethical issues are involved if children search for and label their houses
  • some children may be overwhelmed with the content
Interesting
  • children are able to see their own home and school in a real-life setting

Prezi - continued

Prezi is the new and improved PowerPoint. This exciting and engaging tool can be used with children of all ages to present a bulk amount of text in an interesting way. Downfalls for these tools however is the time consumption in making them and also some children may get motion sickness from all the movement on the screen. Fair warning if you're planning to ue them for an extended amount of time, have a bucket on hand!

Prezi





















Voki Blog 3




Voki is a fun and interactive tool that can be used to explain an array of activities or to give instructions. I can be personalized to fit in with a term theme or as a replica of the classroom teacher.

Plus
  • easy to set up and personalize (record voice, change styles etc.)
  • engaging tool to use with students to supply them with a large amount of information
  • can be used with visual and auditory learners
  • is able to be embedded on a website/blog
Minus
  • kinaesthetic learners may not be compatible with this tool
  • can get carried away with the personalization and recording devices
Interesting
  • language accents can be changed with text

Saturday 30 July 2011

Embedding Video

As I am not particularly fond of filming myself and putting it on the internet, I've decided to embed a clip from youtube instead. Lady Gaga (although at times a bit R rated) shows that you can be yourself and be proud, whatever that may be.

Wordle

I've always wondered how people get those cool covers on their binders and now I know! Wordle is a simple and easy site to use and could be intergrated into a brainstorming activity.

Making a Glogster Blog 4

Boy, am I happy Lyn opened the wonderful world of online filing to me as I sign up for more blogging sites in this course then ever before! Glogster is a very interesting and engaging way of blogging. I can see this site being very popular with students, though one of the fall downs may be that there is a lot to play around with and they could be side tracked with the appearance of their blog rather than the content. I tried to embedd my glogster on my blog but the page is too large soI print screened instead.

Plus
  • visually attractive
  • array of tools can be used
  • visual learners will be totally engaged in this tool
  • easily manipulated with instructive pop ups
Minus
  • students can be side-tracked with "making it pretty" instead of inputting information
  • some students may be overwhelmed with the amount of tools to use
Interesting
  • very similar to a Blog, but more visually engaging 

Monday 25 July 2011

Photobucket

This website is similar to Flickr in the fact that it holds photos in an online album. I think the difference is that these photos can be 'grabbed' from the website and used in other places. I like this website because it's simple to use and it's a place where i can store photos online incase my computer crashes.
www.photobucket.com
here's a print screen of the website, the photos are quite interesting.


I like finding life quotes from photobucket that I can print out and put around a classroom or to encourage students. 

Edward the Emu


In class today we are playing around with voice recordings, music files and photos. following this post hopfully my partner and I will post a photo of the book and possibly a recording of a page. This technology could be highly useful within a classroom environment. With children progressing beyond adult knowledge, it is important to engage your students in every way possible. Many students might not even be interested unless there is some sort of multimedia input. Although this can be tiring for a teacher, it is where our preffesion is progressing too and we must keep up to be able to properly teach our future generations.

Flickr

So many people around the world find the most incredible photos! It just makes you realize how lucky we are to be here. The major downfall of this site is that I can't simply download a photo I like. I understand the purpose for this, but it is very frustrating.

Here is a pohto from Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/statelibraryofnsw/2959326615/

Blizzard, the pup in Antarctica / photograph by Frank Hurley


My head hurts now after all that frustration of finding a photo and I can see this website becoming a problem to use with young students as they too would find it frustrating when they can't simply 'grab' a photo like they do on google. Although this wesite teaches the value of copyright, it's not the website I would be using within a classroom.

Playing with Mobaphoto

Today in class we're re-sizing photos with Mobaphoto. It seems simple enough and here's a picture I've just resized! :)

This technology could come in very handy when trying to down-size class photos to upload to a class blog or if you needed to carry a portfolio of photos around on a usb. 

Fun Website

If you're into editing photos but don't want to pay a fortune for the photoshop program go to http://www.picnik.com/ I use it all the time to lighten photos or change the effects.

here's a few printscreeen shots to show you how simple it is to use.


Making a Weebly

ANOTHER website to keep up with. I never realized how many sites there are out there to post your ideas on. As a Facebook addict, I can safely say that I know know what my mother means when she says I spend too much time on it. I don't understand how some people can have a wiki, weebly, blog, facebook, myspace etc etc etc AND manage to post something in it every day!

I'm off to play with my weebly, here's the link http://www.nicolawaters.weebly.com/

Blog One - Week One and Two

DeBono's Six Thinking Hats

I am familiar with this high order learning/thinking tool as I've used it in one of my early childhood specialty subjects in term 3 last year. I find the idea of it very interesting and engaging as I am the kind of person who needs a specific structure to complete an activity and DeBono gets me thinking about every aspect of a task. I can understand the aprehension of some people to use theis tool in a young class if it hasn't been introduced beforehand as it would take young students a while to understand exactly what is required of them.





Moblie Phone Usage
The wiki used to discuss the issue of mobile phone usage in a classroom environment had both positive and negative points. Through my own experience, I found this activity to be quite interesting. It engaged the learner (myself and classmates) and provided detailed scaffolding and questioning as a guide. We broke off into smaller groups within the classroom which made the task more simple. Each group was able to "hone in" on important information instead of each individual having to do more work than neccessary. Having information on a website that is readily avialable for access by studetns at any time is certainly a plus, though this is where we began to encounter problems.



As we went along, we found that when we saved our work, if we hadn't refreshed the page it would write over other groups' work. I also went back into the activity at a later date and found someone had deleted our class responses and put their own in the place of ours. This is a well-known problem with wikis; the information Can be deleted by whomever has access to the site. Usually, this means the world over can access and delete/add things to your wiki page. This also adds the problem of personal information (names etc) being used on a site that can be accessed by others.



The learning theory underpinning this activity was in my opinion connectivism, as it is obviously technology orientated. This learning theory is also applicable because we accessed information online to complete the activities.


Wikispace
http://managingelearningnicola.wikispaces.com/

this wiki has been made to use in collaboration with this blog for the purpose of Managing E-learning

T-pack Round Table

Content: Creative Writing

Technology: iMovie or MovieMaker



As I am very much involved in Drama, creative writing to me does not just mean writing a story but it means being creative in the way you present it. When children are involved in something physical, they are more open to writing a 'script' or short story before performing their idea. This could be beneficial when trying to get students to produce a piece of writing that needs to be assessed without putting pressure on them. It could also be used with students that have trouble writing an entire story but are more than able to act it out. using moviemaker will engage visual, kinesthetic and auditory learners.



By Nicola and Margaux

Monday 11 July 2011

Problems! Week 2

We had a very confusing class today, we were editing a wiki page and had a few problems with everyone working on the same page. When we saved, we found that it deleted everyone elses work! In the end we found that we had to refresh the page before we edited. It may be the case that we should use seperate pages when doing group activites. We also looked at privacy issues when blogging. This is especially important in my chosen profession as a teacher. We also went over our assessment task two which has clarified for me what exactly is needed of my assignment.