Reflective Synopsis

I have to admit when I first started doing this subject I was a bit apprehensive and did not see the point of it, since I began this learning journey I have found that this subject has helped me to understand and put ICT’s into perspective. I now have a deeper understanding of the potential uses and the benefits of using ICT’s in the classroom. I now believe that ICT’s can be both a new and exciting way to help engage the students in the learning journey. That is however, only if they are used correctly and not used too much.

The new technologies that I have been shown over this period of this course have shown me some new and exciting ways to go about setting up learning experiences in my classroom. As I am someone who has limited skills on the computer I have enjoyed learning some new skills. I have been shown plenty of information and tools that will be invaluable to me in the future.

The use of ICTS’s in schools has become more and more important in the last 10 years and it is important that we as future teachers keep up with the times and continue to expand our knowledge of ICT’s. Back in 2002, the then Director General of Education Queensland stated:

“ICT’s are at the core of teaching and learning in the 21st Century. Queensland's future depends on how successfully we integrate ICT in the curriculum and daily learning and teaching. ... Many teachers already use computers to enliven teaching and inspire students. In order to build a 21st Century schooling system..., we need teachers to understand how ICT promote higher order thinking skills and deepen understanding in all key learning areas (State of Queensland, 2002)”.

The statement above shows just how important the State government believed the use of ICT’s in the classroom to be way back then. Since then, significant efforts have been made to increase the use of ICT’s in the classroom. In 2005, Smart Classrooms three-year strategy was launched and subsequently set a new direction for ICT in schools. This strategy provided a cohesive, future focused mix of products and services for schools to teach, manage, learn and innovate with new technologies, and specifically focuses on sustainability, utilisation and transformation (Queensland Government, 2005).

Today there are also many learning design frameworks out there specifically designed for ICT’s and in this course we looked at three of these, they were TPACK, Learning engagement theory and The Big Six. Personally I like TPACK as I found it easy to relate the activity types to the essential learning’s and standards set out by the Queensland government for teachers.



















If you look at the diagram above you can see that TPACK or Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge is designed to be the integration of teachers’ knowledge of curriculum content, general pedagogies, and technologies. What is also shows is that TPAK can help to combine curriculum-based integration with technologically supported learning activity types within and across the majority of the key learning areas across all subjects. As this is brief overview only, in order to gain a better understanding of TPAK I suggest that you clink on the link to read more. To read more about TPAK please click here.

Today there are more and more technologies that are becoming available and throughout this course we have looked at a few of these. We started by looking at Blogs and RSS aggregators which in I believe to be a very valuable tool to use in the classroom. I believe blogs to be a very valuable resource to use as I stated in my week one reflection (click here to read week one reflection). The RSS aggregator allows the teacher to monitor their students work, as well as to ensure that their student’s blogs are following the rules of Netiquette and being used in a safe and ethical way.

In week one, we also looked at concept mapping and setting up a wiki. Both these tools I believe to be great and I will definitely be using them in my future endeavors both in and out of school. The use of a wiki is a great tool that can be used in a variety of ways. For example, as a wiki is an online space where users and guests can edit, modify, add, and remove information with intuitive editing tools, this can allow the class to work collaboratively to finish a task. The use of a wiki allows for many different people to collaborate and work together and allows students to display higher-order thinking by involving them in the transformation of information and ideas in to a new and exciting media.

We moved on to look at setting up websites, which I found very useful as I have always wanted to know how to set up a website and thought that it could be used in a classroom. The website could be used in the same way as a wiki but it also allows the information on the site to be controlled only by the people that create it, which would allow the teacher or students complete control of their work. I believe that the creation of a web site could be a great assessment piece that could replace a regular old essay or term project especially in History (which is one of my teaching subjects).

The next tool we looked at is Windows Power Point and I must say that as someone who has never used it before I was surprised at the various uses that it can have. In class we looked at using power point in a few different ways, but just the other day I was looking for a tutorial on using it and I came across a new add on that Microsoft has brought out that I believe all teachers should look at and use in their classrooms. It is called Mouse Mischief and below is a link to a demo of it.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C0PIWbwmhg


We also looked at using images and video and as my preferred teaching subject in HPE I already have an understanding how these can be used in a classroom. I recently attended a residential school in Rocky for biomechanics and we used a fair bit of images and digital video to analyze specific body movements of athletes. The use of images and video can help students to understand the way that specific body movement can be done in the correct and most effective way which is important in PE. There are many other uses for images and video but this is just something that I can see as a benefit for using them if I teach PE.


I have to admit I was away sick for two weeks and missed some information that may have granted me the knowledge of how to use some different tools, but I have read the lecture notes and have looked at a few of the other tools and have found a few other that I would probably like to look into in more depth. For example Google maps and Google earth I feel would be beneficial if I end up teaching history. To be able to show the students the exact place on maps and in real time, that significant historical event happened, I feel found help the students to gain a better perspective of the event.


There were other tools that we looked at that at the moment I would probably not use in my classroom at the moment, as I don’t know how to use them yet. I would however like to learn how to use things such as podcasts and animations. I am also interested in learning more about learning managing systems such as black board and moodle as I believe that they will be a valuable tool to use in a classroom.

The longer the course has gone on the more that I have come to understand that ICT’s are now an important tool in the learning experience. I believe that ICT’s can help to engage students in a new and exciting way and allow students to have access to learning anywhere and anytime. I believe that ICT’s can help to promote higher order thinking and will help facilitate ‘life-long learning’.

They can allow students to gain information easily and help transform this information into real life situations. ICT’s can also allow teachers to provide effective pedagogy that can incorporate a variety of different teaching strategies and provide the opportunity for an inclusive classroom environment. Another important thing with ICT’s is that they can be implemented across all key learning areas and subjects.

The only problem that I can see with using ICT’s is that we as teachers should not lose site of the traditional approach to teaching. That is that teachers should not focus too much on using new technology if it is not the best way to teach something. I believe that a mixture of the new and the old will be the best way to effectively teach. If you read my post titled week 5 you can see that I have had a discussion on the way that I would use ICT’s in my classroom.

I would like to finish by saying that I have come to find this subject very beneficial and I am excited about using ICT’s in the future. I will continue to practice using the tools that we have looked at and will also search for any new tools that I could use in my classroom.


References

Queensland Government (2005). Smart classrooms: A strategy for 2005-2007. Brisbane: Department of Education and the Arts. [verified 20 oct 2006] http://education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms/

State of Queensland (2002). Information and communication technologi es for learning: School kit (2002-2003). [viewed 1 Oct 2003, verified 20 Oct 2006] http://education.qld.gov.au/itt/learning/docs/infokit.pdf

Week 5

Unfortunately I was away for the lesson in week 4 so I will just have to catch up the lesson from another students blog. However, I was there for week 5. In week 5 we looked at setting up a Voki (www.voki.com) and how to use one and copy and paste it to Microsoft word. This was quite interesting as I have never seen or heard of a Voki before. I do believe that this type of ICT could be used for a variety of activities in the classroom. For example students could use this in oral presentations as a little spin on the norm.

We also looked at a couple of other interesting tools such as book builder and tag crowd. These two tools I will have to investigate a little more as we only spent a little time on these and I did not gain too much information on them. I did see how the book builder could be a great tool but at the moment would not consider using it in my classroom until I became more familiar with it.

This leads me on to another topic which is that in my opinion we as teachers should research, practice with and fully understand the ICT's that we are going to use before we use them in our classrooms. There are so many ICT's out there now days and it is hard to know which ones to use. I believe that sometimes less is more, that is that we as teachers should try to use the technology available out there in a meaningful way, and that we should try to only use ICT's that will help the the learning process and not complicate it.

I may be a little old fashion but sometimes it does not hurt to open a book or give a lecture.

Week 3

Sorry it has been a while since I have posted on my blog things have been really hectic on the home front. Anyway this is a bit late but in week 3 on this learning journey that we are taking we reviewed the things that we have learned so far and then moved on to looking at powerpoint and a little on windows movie maker.

I found the things we did on power point really useful as I have not been very good at using power point and can see how it can be used to help in the learning journey.
Windows movie maker I have used before and it is also a valuable resource to be used in the classroom.

My Voki

Get a Voki now!

Week 2

This weeks lesson started with us discussing the legal and ethical implications of using ICT's. We talked about how we as future teachers have a responsibility to make ethical choices in what we put use in our classrooms in relation to using ICT's. It is important to remember that the things that we use especially when using the web must be both legal and ethical. Also when using the web remember that what goes on there is usually permanent and to make sure that we do not do anything that could come back to haunt us.

We also had a brief look at some ICT frameworks that we could use for our second assignment. These included TPACK, Learning engagement theory and the big six. We were asked to look at these and choose one that we would use for the second assignment. The big six is a good one to use as it is easy to link this to DOL and Blooms. It is easy to understand and I will be using it in my assignment.


We then went on and looked at the setting up and use of a wiki (http://www.wikispace.com/). This I found interesting as I can see how this would be very useful in a classroom. There are so many ways that a wiki could be used to help in the learning experience. For example the teacher can use it to deliver information to the students that they can use anywhere. The teachers can put information and links on the wiki so that the students can access them from home or anywhere that they have a computer. One use that would be really helpful to me in my future teaching is that, as I am hopefully going to teach history, I could put up links to specific sites that students will be able to find information on a particular topic instead of researching themselves and taking a long time just to find a website. It will cut down the research time in school time and allow the students to use the time more meaningfully.

Finally we looked at setting up a website (http://www.weebly.com/) which I found interesting and I am looking forward to when I have time to have a good look at setting up my own website. I believe that this would be a great assignment for students in history to set up a historical website and I will probably use it for an assignment in the future.

I am really enjoying this course so far and can see the benifits that ICT can deliver, not only in the classroom, but in day to day life as well.

Thanks for reading,
Darryn

First Entry

Hi all,
My name is Darryn Roche and this is my first ever attempt at writting a blog. I came into todays lesson thinking that I knew a bit about computers and how to use them. How mistaken was I. I know that I have alot to learn and am really excited about the challenge ahead for me. I have to admit that I was one of those aspiring teachers that thought that the use of ICT's was not very important in teaching but from having Wendy in senior phase I have realised that it is an important part of the overall structure in teaching. I still am of the opinion that it can be used a little too much and that a balance between ICT's and traditional teaching needs to be used.

This week in Managing Elearning we looked at a number of things that I found very useful for future use. Firstly we looked at Blogs (www.blogger.com) and I have now found out how to use a blog and can see the benifits of using one in the classrrom. I believe that it would be a great tool to use in lessons especially for reflections at home. Blogs are easy to use and can provide students with quick access to information from other students and teachers (this is particulary usefull when students are doing group work, thay can collaberate from home as well as at school, with out the need to meet in person).

This week we also looked at making a wiki (www.wikispaces.com) and this was interesting. I can see the benifit of using a wiki in the classroom. An easy way for students to look at the lesson that has been taught as well as a place that the students can edit information.

We also looked at concept/mind maps (www.bubbl.us. & www.text2map.com) and how to use them. This was the first time that I have been taught how to use them and I am glad that I now know. They are a great tool for using in the classroom and as Wendy showed us in real life as well.

Probably the best thing that I learnt this week was the online bookmarking page that we used (www.delicious.com). I thought this was really useful as it allows people to save a bookmark and then retrieve it anywhere they are. This will be a valuable tool for me and I will definately be using this in my classroom.

We finished the class by looking at the use of some tools such as Google maps and power point and some interesting ways to use them. This showed me that there are many different uses for ICT's than they were originally designed for. I am looking forward to next week.

Darryn