Sharleen’s ED4134 blog

Item Questions

Graphic organiser: Inspiration

Which learning style/s does this ICT support?

Through the use of inspiration, it assists and aids the learning style of a visual learner. This is because the student will be able to see their ideas, and draw upon links on what they have learnt. Kinaesthetic learners could also benefit from this, as they are moving around information to suit were they want the information to be laid out. Kinaesthetic learners will be constantly busy using Inspiration, as they are busy using this program, rather than sitting down for a large amount of time.

How could this ICT be implemented as a good cognitive tool within the learning environment?

Inspiration can be implemented as a cognitive tool within the learning environment, for students to make a summary of what they have learnt. This allows students express visually, what they have learnt, build upon their knowledge, and make links to what they have learnt.

How is ICT enabling the development of creativity?

Inspiration enables a development of creativity as students’ are expressing their knowledge through organised information, and how they prefer to set out their work. Some students’ are able to be as creative as they want using this, or as simple as they like to suit their needs when creating their knowledge on Inspiration.

An Online Game: Le@rning Federation

Which learning style/s does this ICT support?

This online game supports those with learning style of a kinaesthetic learner and a visual learner. This is because both styles are present in the game selected.

How could this ICT be implemented as a good cognitive tool within the learning environment?

Students are able to learn effectively, through a game, which is engaging.

How is this ICT enabling the development of creativity?

This ICT enables creativity because students will be able to select games suited for areas they may be struggling in. Using games for the development of creativity will mentally challenge students on how to figure out to complete a game.

A selection of graphics/images

Which learning style/s does this ICT support?

The learning style which this ICT support is visual learners. This is because they are able to make relationships with text and the image provided.

How would this ICT be implemented as a good cognitive tool within in the learning environment?

This ICT can be implemented as a good cognitive tool within in the learning environment because this engages and further enhances a lesson. It allows students to analyse the text given with them how the image may relate with text. An image further enhances a text and to provide meaning with the supported text.

How is this ICT enabling the development of creativity?

The assistance of images enables the development of creativity because students are able to apply their knowledge by expressing what they know by drawing or selecting an image. Students are able visually enhance their work, which may be a motivation for them to complete their work, to make it visually appealing for others to look at.

A video clip: Teacher Tube

Which learning style/s does this ICT support?

The video clip assists those with the learning style of visual, auditory, linguistic learners. This is because visual learners think in pictures, and hence will be able to understand the video clips the visual will stimulus them and retain information. Auditory learners and linguistic learners will benefit from this as well, because they retain information through verbal actions, in which the video clip caters for as the audio will provide information for these types of learners to understand.

How would this ICT be implemented as a cognitive tool within the learning environment?

A video clip can be implemented as a cognitive tool within the learning environment because it is engaging for students. It will enhance their learning as it is different from the traditional classroom learning to understand information.

How is this ICT enabling the development of creativity?

This type of ICT can be incorporated for projects, to make assignments and projects more interesting. This will allow students to be more creative on how they present their work.

A sound

Which learning style/s does this ICT support?

This learning style supports auditory learners. This is because students learners will be able to listen music, notes and will be able to understand and preserve more information this way as they would have interpret what the sound is trying to convey. This will also benefit musical intelligence, in terms of music, as they will be able to decode the musical structure to understand information.

How would this ICT be implemented as a cognitive tool within the learning environment?

Due to the increasing use of technology i.e. ipods, teachers will be able to post up information for students to use, and students will be able listen to this when needed, and will be able to refer back to this. Other sound uses can also be retained through internet, which is easily accessible and students who prefer to listen to information provided for them will be able to do so.

How is this ICT enabling the development of creativity?

Sound develops creativity, as this enables the student to make notes for themselves to listen to through various multimedia means, such as an Ipod. This also another good way for students to present information for the classmates, for example if it is a quote, they may find the sound of the person who made the quote, and hear the tone the person made it in, to understand how the person felt when they said that particular quote. Students can use sound make presentations more interesting, and appealing for their classmates, and will even be able to make various audio compilations themselves.

NB: Songs used

ABC by the Jackson Five

Waiting on the World to Change by John Mayer

Reference:

Reference of music:

The Coroporation, Good,B., Perren, F., Mizell, A. & Richards,D. (1970). On ABC [Recorded by The Jackson

                Five].  ABC [Vinyl Record]. Los Angeles: Motown.

Mayer,J. (2005). Waiting on the World to Change [Recorded by John Mayer]. On Continuum [CD]. Los Angeles, New York, Tennessee: Aware, Sony & Columbia.

Music Player:

MIXPOD (2008). MIXPOD. Retrieved March 22, 2009, from www.mixpod.com

Articles featured:

Teacher Pedagogical Beliefs: The Final Frontier in Our Quest for Technology by Peggy A. Ertmer

The Growth of Enterprise Pedagogy: How ICT Policy is Infected by Neo-liberalism by Mark Brown

 These two articles discuss reasons why there is a low usage of ICT within the classroom.

Although there has been an increase in the integration of technology within the classroom, there is still a low use of high level technology being used in the classroom. Ertmer discusses that teacher’s pedagogical beliefs interferes with the use of technology. He further discusses that the teacher’s beliefs is reflected upon how they provide classroom instructions and how they teach.

Ermter further discusses the nature of beliefs and what impacts their beliefs, which are through:

·         Personal experience

·         Vicarious experience

·         Socio cultural influences

To allow teachers to incorporate technology into their pedagogical beliefs teachers can be, introduced to an array of technology one by one, to allow the teacher to become more confident in using them. Once the teacher is confident in using this type of technology, they will be more confident to incorporate and use technology within the classroom. To do this teachers need to be supported by:

·         Exposing the teachers’ to practice these skills towards the technology being presented to them

·         Observe how it works within a classroom setting

·         Ongoing support

·         Constant discussion on their exploration of the technology being used

However, when looking at the article The Growth of Enterprise Pedagogy: How ICT Policy is Infected by Neo-liberalism by Mark Brown, he argues that technology weakens the pedagogy and that schools are conforming to the use of technology due to the positive reviews of the effectiveness of using technology as an enhancing learning tool within in the classroom. He discusses that, ICT takes away the discipline and the need of consistent hard work needed for learning.  Although, Brown does acknowledge that technology should be used in educational context, and perhaps have an ICT subject formed separately, rather than integrating into the curriculum. I firmly disagree with this reading because students should experience ICT in various subjects, to have knowledge how to think critically, analyse in different subjects and to know how to apply these thinking strategies to different subjects.

NB: Songs used

ABC by the Jackson Five

Waiting on the World to Change by John Mayer

Reference

Reference of music:

The Coroporation, Good,B., Perren, F., Mizell, A. & Richards,D. (1970). On ABC [Recorded by The Jackson

                Five].  ABC [Vinyl Record]. Los Angeles: Motown.

Mayer,J. (2005). Waiting on the World to Change [Recorded by John Mayer]. On Continuum [CD]. Los Angeles, New York, Tennessee: Aware, Sony & Columbia.

Music Player:

MIXPOD (2008). MIXPOD. Retrieved March 22, 2009, from www.mixpod.com

During the tutorial and the readings, I had learnt the importance of WebQuests as well as the importance of questioning.

In the two articles they both focused on the use of WebQuests.

WebQuest are to encourage, engage and to motivate students to learn new content, which is preferably to be conducted in small groups, each student designated to a role in the task given.

In the reading Dodge explained how to make a WebQuest and what is essential in a WebQuest for example, an introduction a task etc.  Dodge also explained the differences of short term and long term WebQuests, and what the student benefits from doing these two types of WebQuests.

In a short term WebQuest students are uses the skills of knowledge, acquisition and intergration. Students are to understand and learn new information, which they have done in 1-3 class lessons. However, a long term WebQuest allows students to extend and refine their knowledge as well as to analyse. Long term webquests can take a week to a month.

Long term Webquests allows students to refine their skills of comparing, classifying, analysing, constructing, abstraction and deducing.

It is important for all WebQuests to be motivating for students, this can be done by giving each child a role or their own task within the webquest.

In the article The Question is the Answer by Jamie McKenzie, Mckenzie argues the importance of refining a main question into three questions of How? Why? And which is the best? This allows students’ to gain a deeper meaning of the task given to them, and will not be overwhelmed of looking for information on the main question, as they are breaking up the main question into three parts.

Once the main question has been placed into three parts of How? Why? And which is the best? Students are able to start the research cycle which allows them to stay on track and work efficiently. This is different from WebQuests as the Research Cycle orders them to have Seven Cycles to follow:

1.       Questioning and Planning

2.       Gathering and Sorting Information

3.       Gathering and Sorting Information

4.       Synthesis which needs further investigation or evidence

5.       Gathering and Sorting

6.       Synthesis

7.       Present

The reason this is different to Webquests is because the students have to break the main question into the three parts. Although the cycle is the same as WebQuests as students will have to gather, synthesis and present their findings.

The second article stresses the points of making questions refine, to make research and gaining knowledge of content easier for the student. This can be incorporated into WebQuests, to make learning engaging and motivating for students.

Below is a Webquest being used by kindergartens.

 Article: What is meaningful learning by JoRassen,Howland,Morra, Crismend

·         In this article, the authors discuss the benefits of integrating ICT is a cognitive tool. In this article as well as the tutorial it is important to understand that ICT allow students to be digitally literate as students’ are constantly developing their skills in reflecting, assessing, analysing and critiquing various information on the World Wide Web. The article continually informs me that technology is a cognitive tool because technology assists students learning, rather than students’ learning from technology. This is because students’ are engaged in meaningful learning. I agree with this, because technology allows students to gain new meaning and learn something for new, and example of a form of technology which allows students’ to be engaged in meaningful learning is WebQuests, this is because students are interactive in the lesson and are all learning something and socially constructing their knowledge in the given topic. Technology allows students’ to socially interact and share their ideas within their class, I agree with this point because this will allow all students in the class to be interactive within the classroom and show what the student has learnt.

 This image is able to show how technology can be used at a young stage.

Reference of picture:

Children with computer by the water by Mrs Gooding, Uploaded 14th March 2009. (Flikr)

Article: E:\ED4134\networkedlearning » digital literacy and how it affects teaching and learning practices.mht

·         In the attached article above, it raises complications on how digital literacy may affect education in Australia and the disadvantages which may occur if not integrated into the school curriculum. Digital literacy is the ability to understand information in a wide range of resources. The article discusses major issues affecting development of digital literacy in Australia that I was not aware with some of the points made. For example I was not aware of the source Free Open Source Software (FOSS). By reading this section of the article it alludes to myself that technology is constantly advancing and teachers’ should adopt to this change, of using FOSS rather than limiting themselves to using only Microsoft Office because FOSS will strengthen digital literacy. Federal and State Education need to be supportive towards the use of FOSS, which can be done through funding this towards schools. An issue that affect digital literacy in Australia is that education is finding it hard to switch to connectivism and network learning from centralised, closed learning. This is because teachers are finding it hard to adapt to the new technology which is present in today’s society. To counteract this issue teachers’ need to have training days to be constantly immersed in the new technological advances in society. Digital literacy affects teaching practices because of the future literacy needs will need to be addressed. This can be achieved by communities adopting and encouraging themselves to the wide variety of technological resources around them to benefit teaching practices. Networked learning will be changed from centralised learning and rather approach learning on a participating research level by the influence of technology.

Reference of picture:

Children’s University-Chatting with Aliens by library_mistress, uploaded 24th August 2006.(Flikr)

Constructivism is important in the classroom and in ICT as this encourages independent learning.  This is because teachers act as guides rather than ‘feeding’ their students with information. Teachers act as a guide for their student’s as they are directing their students’ to come to their own understanding of content.

Brewer et al. Had conducted an interviewed eight teachers and had come to conclusion for teachers to incorporate constructivism in their class, they must:

·         Build upon students’ prior knowledge

·         Active, constructive learning has to occur

·         Social interaction the growth of students’ autonomy was in affect

Teachers’ who adopt these points are able to make their students into critical, independent learners, as they are actively engaged in their learning.

Digital natives debate

During the tutorial we had discussed the Digital Debate by Sue Benette, Karl Maton and Lisa Kervin. I was able to understand that Digital natives are people who were born after the 1980’s, because during this time period children were immersed in technology. Through reading the article it can be shown that current students have a diverse way of learning, as technology has affected the way students learn for example the internet is interactive through clicking on various links, so this can benefit kinathestic learners. This can be shown through the article as Bennett et al. comment  that students are multi taskers and are able to process information faster. However, they also argue that there is little evidence providing that students are multi taskers, however may have a loss of cognitive ‘overload’ as the student is continuously moving from one task to another. I do agree that students do have various learning styles, for example a visual learner, and this can be achieved through using technology.

The article discusses how teachers need to adapt to the technological advances which is occurring in today’s society. I agree with this as well, because as students are being continually immersed in technology, that teachers need to know how to these so they are able to incorporate this into their lessons to cater for various learning needs that are present in the classroom.

Attached is the Inspiration map in relation to this article.

Reference
Bennette,S., Maton, K., Kervin, L. (2008). The ‘digital natives’ debate: A critical review of the
evidence. British Journal of Educational Technology, 39(5) 775-786.

Compentency Test

The final week and blog for this semester, which has gone very fast! However I feel I have improved in my skills in ICT due to this Workshop and the readings provided.

I have done the Competency Test again and I have definatley seen improvements! The first time I had done the test I had recieved the results of 35/75, however this score has changed to 67/75! Through these results it is able to show that I am capeable to help others using various programs such as Inspiration, when they have troubles, which is also able to reflect how I will help those in a classroom environment, as I would be able to help students when they have problems using various programs on the computer.

I have improved in all areas of the test from the last time I have taken the compentency test. These areas include:
-Trouble shooting
-Organisation of folders
-Word Processing
-E-mail
-Spreadsheet
-Technology Presentation
-Graphics and photography
-Desktop Video
-Constructivist Learning
-Inspiration
-Publishing
-Multimedia projects

I have noticed the first time I had did the compentency test the first time, is that most of the scores were either 2′s or 3′s, however this has changed when I had done the test again as I had gained 4′s and 5′s. The reason I had 2′s and 3′s the first time I did the test was because I had a vague understanding on how to use these programs, however as shown through the second test I have improved.

There are still areas in which I need to improve in which is:
-Spreadsheets: The reason I need to improve in this and would also be my weakness is because there are alot of codes to remember when making a spreadsheet. However as the workshops progressed I started to remember the codes to use in spreadsheet, such averaging scores or adding scores.
- Digital Video: This is also another weakness of mine, however it is not a very bad weakness as I had scored a 4 for this.
To improve on my weaknesses I would need to practice these skills as well as revise on how to use these weakness in the classroom.

How will your learning in this unit assist you in your future career as a teacher?

This unit will definatley assist me in the future when I become a teacher as it will enhance my lessons, it will allow motivation to occur, organisation and it will allow students to become interactive in the lessons. This unit will enhance my lessons as many programs will make students interested in learning. These programs may include Photostory, as I had enjoyed making a story using this program. I could see myself using this program at the start of a lesson, to engage students in a particular topic, for example writing a narrative can be done in this form.

Students will be movitated, due to the skills I have learnt in this ICT workshop. This is because technology is continually advancing, students will be able to use technology to improve the way they learn. For an example, is Powerpoint. Using powerpoint may engage and motivate students as I would be able to add film clips to this, and it is colourful which will interest the students. Motivation can also occur through individual work. Individual can be catered through the use of ICT skills, as some projects may be devised for students to work on their own. Such as using Microsoft Publisher. Students can use this program to create title pages or brochures etc. Motivation will occur through this as they would be interested in creating their own work. Students may also be motivated to compile study notes if needed. This can be intergrated through the program Inspiration.

The ICT skills I have learnt will help in the future when I become a teacher as it will allow students to be interactive in class lessons. This is because they would be able to use various programs to do their work, and explore new ways in presenting their work such as photostory.

The ICT skills I have learnt through the Workshop as well as the readings will help myself as teacher, with organisation. Organisation will occur through the spreadsheets, in which I have learnt. Spreadsheets will allow me keep record on a students progression of learning in the class through keeping spreadsheet. Powerpoint will help my organisation when it comes to meetings or presentation as I will be able to allow visual aid to assist my presentation.

The ICT workshops as well as readings have been definatley useful to myself and I would use what I have learnt in a classroom.

In this workshop as well as reading was about Powerpoint. I already have the previous knoweldge on how to use powepoint, so I found doing this Portfolio quiet simple, to compare the other Portfolio’s. To compare the other Portfolio Items I have found this a bit more simple than the others, because I have already had back ground knoweldge on how to use these program.

I would implement Powerpoint into classroom learning to assist visual learners, it can be used for class projects for presentations.

Overall I found this workshop and reading easy to understand.

I have decided to write these two blogs together because in this workshop I had learnt how to use photoshop.

In this workshop I learnt how to:
- upload photos
- take of red eye
- rotate pictures
- change the style of the photo such as making the photograph black and white
- add music to the photostory
- add voice record
- how to present a slide for an example if it fades
- write text on a photo
- I have also learnt how to APA reference the songs I have used in the my photostory

I think this workshop as well as the reading are pretty straight foward, I did not find it confusing to use as the program, Photostory, was straight foward. In future I would use this program to enhance classroom lessons to introduce a lesson or to conduct a class project of creating a story.

Photostory

Using photostory is a new experince, as I have never used it before. I learnt how to do transitions, chage a photos image by placing it into black and white. I also learnt how to upload music onto this program.

I would use this in a classroom environment as the start of the lesson to motivate students. Photostory can also be used as a class project to learn how to write a narrative through the presentation of pictures, in which this program will be useful.

I think I have done well for this portfolio item.

Reference:

Jackson, M (1982). Beat it [Edited by Fall Out Boy & Mayer, J] Thriller 25 [CD]. Island Def Jam.
 (2008).

Henneberry,J., Nadeau,M., & Blue,J. (2007). Pictures of you. [ Edited by The Last Goodnight] Poison Kiss [CD]. Universal Music Publishing Group

Agnus,B., Dolso,P..  & MC Double D. (2007). Goodbye. [Edited by Sneaky Sound System] Sneaky Sound System [CD].  Whack Records