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.
I'm of a simlar opinion that it does help if the teacher knows how to use the ICT component they are teaching but I have found that there are many students out there that will know far more than the teacher in this area. However that doesn't mean you can't utilise that students knowledge for yourself and your classroom. The other problem is the ever changing of ICT's and I feel as though I would never fully understand all the aspects of the component. I would however endeavor to at least know what I want the students to learn.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you say about the students most likely knowing far more than me in the area of ICT's. But the point that I was trying to make was that I myself will only teach using things that I know how to use. When it comes to the students doing work I am happy for them to use any tool they would like as long as it is justified and allows for them to meet the criteria.
ReplyDeleteI see what you mean now and understand your point of view. I also agree with your approach to the students freedom in using different tools if it is justified as it creates a sense of ownership and control over their learning which will only add to their engagement levels.
ReplyDeleteThanks for clearing that up as I have enjoyed reading your posts.
I fully agree there, Darryn! There can be nothing worse than teaching using a tool that you only know a little bit about, which, when something goes wrong (which is almost always), leaves you with no idea what to do, and you've got 25 kids in your class and 50 minutes to go... makes the adrenaline flow! :D But, what saves you is the student in the class that knows how to fix it. As you say, though, teaching with a tool you barely or don't really know is either not an option or can lead to interesting (and potentially highly stressful) results.
ReplyDeleteThe most recent example of this was when I had to teach a class of Year 9 (or was it 10?) students how to use Game Maker, and I had never used it before. I had a play with it on the evening before, and then when it came to the class, just had them working through a tutorial, and when they struck problems and I couldn't problem-solve it, I would either ask another student how to do it or ask them to help each other. It was good for them anyway, as I was demonstrating the problem-solving approach they needed to use, as well as making no pretenses to my level of knowledge of that software at that point in time.
As one of my lectures said to me some time ago, I had gotten my head around the idea that the teacher no longer has to be the fountain of all knowledge, and that my role was to provide a scaffolded and purposeful learning journey for the students.