Reflective Synopsis

I came in to the GDLT program full of optimism at wanting to be a teacher for “little ones” in early primary and have a more positive influence on the world.  I have been in the accounting arena across a number of industries since I felt school in the early 80’s.  I have had a lot of information technology in my working life and even exposure to learning theories through training and professional development.  Life for me has changed dramatically in the last six years.  I am now a single Mum, work from home and have developed a blissful ignorance of technology.  However, starting ICTs has given me a renewed enthusiasm for technology and I am inspired to do some really useful things with it in my teaching.

Learning Theory

 Learning theories set the scene for how we can best gain knowledge.  Every individual learner learns in different ways.  No two learners are the same.  A lot of both physical and emotional actions occurring within a learner at any one given time during the learning process.

I related to Howard Gardner’s theory of MultipleIntelligences and found completing the questionnaire insightful.  Learning is a complex process and we need to be mindful of this fact when we are preparing to teach.

Learning is constructed through our schema and experiences in life, and builds as we go through life.  By learning collaboratively we learn more successfully because we are participating and using other people’s thinking as well as our own. 

I particularly liked Andrew Churches’ paper on Bloom’sDigital Taxonomy and his concept map.  The map demonstrates that we develop our learning by the more we are involved in the process.  The more we do, the more we understand, the more we remember, and  the more our thinking develops.  We move from simple concepts through to more complex process and problem solving. 

Mobile Phones Wiki Reflection

The Mobile Phones Wiki activity had a great scaffolding strategy with de Bono’s Thinking Hats.  This is a great tool to get you thinking on multiple levels in an endeavour to get a balanced and objective look at an issue.  It allows you, and sometimes forces you to consider a lot of different viewpoints which you may not have thought of otherwise.  This was a great collaborative activity as different people offered points, and learning was constructed through having to put on each hat.  I think the outcome was positive and enjoyable.  I gained new knowledge from the activity, as I am sure most people would have.  I was tested by a negative with this online space of only one person being able to edit at one time.  However, by being aware of this I was able to overcome the issue to complete the task.

This is a link to my blog entry on this activity.

Online Spaces – Blogs, Wikis, Websites

These online spaces were all new spaces for me.  Blogs and wikis were not in my vocabulary before ICTs.  I think all the tools have a place in a classroom, but my favourite tool in this group is blogs.  The functionality of blogging is easy enough for young children to use and would be a great way to get children writing.  A blog could be used like a journal to record a field trip to say a museum where images and external links can be added to demonstrate the topic more widely.  The blogs can then be shared with classmates and parents.  A blog would be the digital version of a journal or writing book.

This is a link to my blog entries on blogging, wikis, and websites.

Multimedia – Images, Audio, Podcasting, Videos

I have not had exposure to much multimedia other than digital images.  I find it hard to single out one of the multimedia tools for reflection, as it is important that learners have both visual and auditory senses stimulated during the learning process.  There is an English proverb – a picture paints a thousand words.  Images can support words and audio, as well move a learner beyond those words and audio.  Our experiences and knowledge to this point all influence how we interpret images. 

Young children would be able to use images, and resize them to reduce the space used and uploading time, to support their writing and therefore their learning in a number of online spaces or presentations.  Going back to the museum field trip, children could take digital photos, or use images that are not copyright restricted, and insert them in to their blog to support what they had learned from the trip.  The images could serve as visible links to their writing and demonstration of content knowledge.  Audio would also be support a more indepth experience, although is not a feature able to be put in a blog.

This is a link to my blog entry on resizing images.

Presentations – PowerPoint, Prezi, Glogster

Whilst I have not heard of Prezi or Glogster before, I am very familiar with PowerPoint from my accounting days.  Unfortunately, I have had to view a number of PowerPoint presentations from this time which were not very stimulating or engaging, and therefore I don’t view this tool with much enthusiasm.  The functionality within this program was not used well or to great effect.  The program is a little complicated for very young children.  Young children would be a lot more connected with the use of Mouse Mischief, a tool which allows the use of multiple mice within a single PowerPoint presentation. 

I really liked Glogster, a digital version of creating a poster – a digital version of traditional butchers paper projects.  A Glogster would be a great way for young children to demonstrate what they learned on their field trip to the museum by putting in images, audio, video, words, widgets etc.  It is a way to reflect on what they have learned, and they would feel rewarded by being able to have this publicly viewed by parents and classmates.  Glogster is also a tool which can be linked back to a blog, or other online space.  The use of Glogster links the Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy of creating, comparing, discovering, and summarising of the trip with using these ICT tools linking the learning process to the knowledge acquired.

This is a link to my blog entries on Glogster, Prezi, and PowerPoint.

Animations & Simulations

There are so many tools available, and a lot of them are free.  It is really hard to know where to start.  I really like Google Maps and was impressed by the timelines in Dipity.  The Google Maps could be used as a hook to start the process of going on the field trip to the museum by planning a route there.  You could as view where an exhibit came from.

This is a link to my blog entry on Animations &Simulations.

Legal Safe & Ethical Use

We really do have to protect our children.  The web has brought with it a lot of great things including connectivity with things we might otherwise not have ever been exposed.  I think the biggest problem with the web is that with all this “access to everything” we unwillingly have been connected to a lot of darkness such as bullying, harassment, exploitation, abuse, pornography and other morally repugnant things.  There is also the misuse of things which are not our own.  There is a lot of time and money in intellectual property and therefore people protect this with things like copyrights.  We need to be mindful of using only those images, words and sounds which people have allowed to be shared freely.  From a teaching perspective, the Smartcopying website has a number of factsheets which give clear guidance as to what things we should or should not be using.  There is also a list of websites where you can freely obtain information for use in your teaching material.  Material that is free to use is usually published under Creative Commons.

We started off with learning theories and now we have so many tools it is a little daunting at knowing where to start.  But at the same time it is also very exciting.  ICTs are embedded in life in general and therefore they should be in our teaching.  Whilst realistically technology is not always available to all learners generally for economic reasons, it is still possible to be able to utilise some technology in the classroom.  In fact this is expected as evidenced in the policies of Queensland Studies Authority.

Embedding ICTs within our teaching can create the scene for learning as well as setting up children for life after school.  By using these tools constructively, creating enthusiasm for learning and really engaging children, I hope to can create a love for learning and knowledge within these children that will make them want to go and gather as much knowledge as they can.  The use of ICTs can be a very empowering process which would also instil confidence in young learners and their abilities.  And then they will have tools to create a positive path through their lives.

References & Readings.

PowerPoints

PowerPoint is a very powerful presentations software package.  PowerPoint has a multitude of features which could make it difficult to use for younger or less technologically skilled students.  I personally am a bit over PowerPoint as it was used extensively with training in my past accounting roles, and with very little creativity.  Most of these presentations were just a matter of loading you up with words.

Young students would be able to use the basic features of PowerPoint to create presentations.  I found it helpful to use the tutorial suggestions to plan my presentation in Word and then load that document in to PowerPoint to start the actual presentation.  It was easy to put in images, sound and text .  But the phasing in of points on slides, known as transitions, requires a bit more skill.

This is a link to my basic presentation. 

Making a PowerPoint presentation interactive takes a bit more effort than a basic presentation.  The process of creating storyboard in Word, then an outline, and then converting to PowerPoint is a well-structured process and makes the presentation more effective.   I liked the addition of Mouse Mischief which would enable all students to be involved in the presentation.

This would be useful with brainstorming and planning at the start of activities and would allow all students to collaboratively work.  Further through the process they could then break in to smaller groups or work on individual projects for assessment.

Group 4 Tools - Animations & Simulations

There are so many tools available that it is hard to know where to start.  With a lot of the tools free and functionality much the same throughout, it would be very easy to utilise any of these tools to link or scaffold activities when teaching in the classroom.  A lot of the tools are both visual and auditory so this will help with engaging students both when shown these tools, and when they are able to use them to complete their own activities.

I particularly like Google Maps and Dipity, a timelines tool, as they have so many applications and can be used across all the key learning areas.  These tools can demonstrate that distance that some topics have, such as geography and history, and also that there can be a lot of factors that make up a topic, such as the environment and global warming.  I used Google Maps to find where I lived – majestic Pomona. 

I have also used ABC Reading Eggs previously.  I found the ABC Reading Eggs to be great for my 5 year with starting to learn to read.  The website is simple enough for him to navigate around, and he is completely involved as the game based activities which require his input continuously.  Repetition of sounds, letters and words means it is practice, practice, practice, and all within what seems like a game.  There is lots of verbally praise and virtual stickers and avatars are accumulating whilst conducting each lesson.  The further you get through the lessons the more additional activities you can do – a great way to keep them engaged and rewarded.  Visually it is very stimulating as well.  There is lots of colour and cute little animated characters, such as Sam the ant who narrates most of the activities and is used to theme the scenes with the activities.  I am getting my children to learn to read, while my child is getting to play on Mum’s computer.  A win win situation for us both.

Glogster

This is the glogster I created.  The result is a very simplistic outcome, but all I could come up with in my limited timeframe.  I am happy enough to publish this publically.

I found Glogster easy to use and intuitive in the navigation, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing for me.  With more time to play and more exposure to the application then I could master this tool effectively.  I think it is still simple enough that younger children would be able to use this tool well. 

It is a good way to have students to get involved with ICTs and while using a great tool to demonstrate the knowledge they are gaining on a particular topic, and in a platform that can be assessed and shared with other students and school community, and parents.  Glogster could be used individually or as a group project, and can be as interactive as you want to make it by being able to use all types of multimedia.  I think it would be quite rewarding for students too being able to be published on the web for all to see.

I can see me utilising Glogster a lot more.

Prezi

My attempt to create a Prezi didn’t go well on the first few attempts.  I feel the techno-demons were trying to get the better of me with this.  I was able to start up an account, but couldn’t get through the loading a template step to begin.

However, having viewed the tutorial on the prezis in the course material, this seems like a very engaging activity at being able to add a wow factor to a presentation for students.  You could visually demonstrate very well the detail of a topic by being able to zoom in to text and/or images, all within a much larger concept.  It could also demonstrate that the bigger picture may sometimes not tell the whole story, or that the devil can sometimes be in the detail.

I could see this being a very useful activity, if I can get enough time to master the technology.  I love a challenge, so my prezi days are not over yet.

Podcasting - A Reflection

Podcasting is being able to broadcast audio and/or video via the internet either in real time or downloading for later use.  Downloads can occur with a computer, iPad, iPod, mobile phones and similar devices.

Podcasts are not my favourite web tool.  I am a visual learner and therefore my schema doesn’t lend me to audio recordings particularly well.  However, podcasting would certainly be useful in the classroom.  As Prensky points out in his article “Engage Me or Enrage Me”, students of today are very techno savvy and therefore embrace these types of tools to link them to the learning within the classroom.  Using both visual and auditory tools then engages the whole brain so that students can get the most out of the experience.

Podcasts would be good for students to do verbal reviews of books, films, or excursions, report on activities in the classroom, and even speaking a journal.  The audio part of the podcast would be a great way to develop communication confidence in those students who may not be very good with written language.

Digital Audio Recordings

I created a digital audio recording using the sound recorder on my laptop to test the microphone - you can listen through this link to my wiki (go to the bottom on the page). I downloaded Audacity, but didn’t use it as I wasn’t planning to edit the audio file at this time.  The editing of audio files could be limited by planning a script for the audio prior to the commencement of the recording.

Audio recordings would be a great way to enhance the learning experience by involving all the auditory senses as well as any visual stimulation.  Multimedia has been shown to engage the whole brain, as evidenced through Gardiner’s theory on Multiple Intelligences as covered in week 1’s Learning Theories.

Recording audio is a simple process so children in their early years would be able to handle the process.

Resizing & Uploading Digital Photos

Using the Moba Photo software from the Softpedia website, I resized a number of photos.  Like any digital tools, you need to ensure you read the instructions or options available so that you don’t end up doing something untoward.  With this in mind it was very simple to resize the photos.  I used the option for resizing to upload online.  The storage space for the resized photos was as little as about 5% of the original photo storage space – amazing.  I can see this tool coming in very hand when I do my family tree, as I will be able to insert old pictures of family which are mostly scans from original paintings and photos.  Here is a family photo I resized which was scanned from an original which was 60 cms x 40 cms.  My grandmother's family portrait. 

This type of tool would be very useful in an online environment.  Students could insert visual images as well as graphic organisers to support and reinforce text within spaces.  Because of the substantial reduction in storage space size a large number of images could be used without hindering the speed of the uploading of the space or the navigation within the space.  Hence the English proverb, “a picture paints a thousand words”.

An important point to remember is with using digital photos on material on the internet is ensuring that you upload the images, as opposed to pasting the image in to a tool.  The other issue is to consider the who owns the photo, and do they want the whole world to see it as once it is uploaded on to the web it will be available to the general public.

Digital Videos

Earlier in ICTs I used the Productive Pedagogies Tool to relate learning to digital technology to learn how to tie your shoelaces.  This is my attempt here.   A great way to link the activity with digital technologies is to look at the video on TeacherTube . This video can be used over and over again to reinforce the learning for the student so that the knowledge can be firmly implanted in their brain.  It is a shame I didn’t stumble across this earlier as it would be a great demonstration to start the activity, and use as a resource for repeated viewing.

 I am not particularly engaged by the video process as I have no experience with videos, I certainly don’t want to be in them, and I think there are some things that are better off being done by someone with more expertise than me.  There is so much vision to choose from out there on the web that my time restrictions stopped me at this process.  Just as for images and podcasts, this is just one more very useful tool that can be used in linking students with their learning.

Websites - A Reflection

I have created my website using Weebly.

The ease of setting up a website through Weebly is encouragement to use this online tool.  Once again is has similar features to blogs and wikis.  The thing that separates a website is that the content and structure are established by the creator of the site and is not able to edited or contributed to by someone else.  You can ask for feedback by putting in a contact form or using Facebook and such tools.

In the classroom it would be a good way to communicate to students with resources and activities they could do outside of the classroom, dare I say for homework and assignments.  This is really using the website as a scaffold to resources and information and would allow a student to self-direct themselves to information they required from you as the teacher.  It would also be a way to assess where students are at with their learning, by allowing the freedom to create this space to demonstrate their knowledge.

Personnally, I could see myself using a website to direct family and friends to images, video, and documents of interest to us alone, and limiting access to the site by security such as passwords.  Up to this point I have not been very willing to publish this information online via Facebook etc as it is so difficult to keep the information secure.

Wikis - A Reflection

Wikis, as provided by Wikispaces, are another online space which allows you to write and reflect, but also allows for multiple people to be involved in the space.  This is one of the biggest drawbacks with wikis also.  Only one person can edit the space at one time.  Also the netiquette becomes more prevalent as you do have more than one person editing the space, so appropriate rules or guidelines would need to be established in the beginning as to what a student could edit or delete, and therefore not jeopardise the learning process or outcomes.

It was easy to create a wiki once you sign up.  The functionality is very similar to most Windows based software and applications.  This is what my wiki looks like now.

There are numerous applications for wikis and some are outlined in Smart Teaching blog.  There are also a number of shortcomings for wikis which are outlined by the students of eBusiness Technologies with ProfessorMike Jones at the University of Toronto at Mississauga.

Also see my comments on using a wiki to do a critical thinking activity with de Bono’s Thinking Hats on mobile phones in the classroom.

Wikis allow for a very collaborative and constructivist approach to learning.  It is visual tool, which lends itself to group work  There are two great examples of wiki use in the classroom in the course materials, which I have linked to in my wikispace.

Blogging - A Reflection

Blogging seems like such a great way to write and reflect.  It is easy to set up a blog, which is an online space that you can share, or not, and allows for feedback to be made by viewers by commenting on your writings, known as posts.  The posts are listed chronologically and you can link to other images, websites, wikis, etc.  One thing you can't do with a blog is add audio files, however you can always to a link to a wikispace or website which has the audio files embedded there.

I used Blogger to set up my blog.  However, there are several other blog sites which offer free and chargeable sites to create your own blog.  As with most technology today, the more time you have to explore and play then the more features and information you can utilise to create your blog. 

Being an online space, blogging allows for flexibility of access, but also brings the need for being safe when using it, by not divulging inappropriate or personal information.  It also raises the issue of netiquette, that is, using appropriate etiquette when online.  For example, the writer needs to ensure that they use the right tone in their writings.  In a classroom environment there are various policies and procedures set down by schools and education authorities which details what is acceptable use of online spaces.  There are also the copyright implications of imbedding other people’s information in to your blog.  The Smartcopying website is a place where you can get guidance as a teacher as to what information you can put in to a blog, or wiki, freely and when you should seek permission to use information such as images, videos, etc.

Blogs could be used in a classroom to do journal writing, book reviews, presentations for topics, group brainstorming, and fellow student being able to comment or critique posts.  Blogs seem to be a great way to scaffold the learning with technology so that students can develop higher order thinking, and create, analyse, and reflect. 

Being able to use blogging in a classroom would obviously be dependent on whether there were sufficient resources to be able to provide the hardware (computer, ipad, etc) and the internet access.  Whilst it is certainly a lot more prevalent today, not all classrooms or students have access to this technology.