Learning from fellow bloggers!

I have learnt through the useful tool of blogging a variety of different resources and also technology that can be incorporated within the classroom to enhance students learning. Today I discovered and learnt about a new technology from a fellow blogger, Amanda who has shared a technological tool called ActivExpression that can be integrated within the classroom. I found her blog very interesting as I have never heard of the tool ActivExpression prior to reading her blog post. I think that this tool would be a great motivational and engaging device that would be able to assist the teacher with keeping students on task and engaged within their learning.

The ActivExpression device allows flexibility within lessons by providing students with instant feedback from their teacher therefore promoting further engagement within the students learning. This would be a great tool to integrate within the classroom across the curriculum learning areas by allowing educators to identify students’ progress and therefore recognizing which students needs more support within the learning content. This tool has significant benefits to both the teacher and the student’s; consequently I think the ActivExpression will be used strongly inside classrooms within the near future.  It will be interesting to see how long new ICT technologies like the ActivExpression to be implemented within the classroom to enhance students learning.

The debate of blogging!

Prior to commencing this course I have never heard of WordPress or knew what blogging was, now half way into the EDC3100 course I am constantly checking and relying upon the website WordPress to blog my reflections about how my learning journey is progressing. A fellow blogger, Mrs Brown shared a blog that she had come across by Shelley Wright who outlines how blogging is a new useful tool to creating a persuasive essay. However I came across Louise’s Blog which stood out to me as she was sharing an experience that she had with her sister in law who is a current year four teacher. Louise’s sister in law tried to sign up to WordPress to expand her technology use within the classroom, though Education Queensland has blocked her access to WordPress so it then develops the argument if blogging is a useful enriching tool that students can benefit from within their learning why has Education Queensland blocked access to the blogging site of WordPress?

In my own experience with blogging through this course, I have benefited in regards to my own learning experiences through reflections and positive interactions by allowing constructive feedback and comments from fellow bloggers. I think that blogging not only has benefits to students English though would be a useful tool that can be integrated across the curriculum. I now value the importance of blogging and will continue to blog throughout my professional career to share ideas and resources as a professional, however it leads to the question will I be limited within my career to allowing access to enhance students learning through blogging?

Integrating effective use of ICT’s

During the progress of assignment two the question that keeps coming to my mind is whether the ICTs I have integrated within my unit of work is enhancing the learning experience and students learning. To overcome this issue I have within my planning I asked questions in relation to the ICTs that have been used in regards to whether they fit within the context, content, the students learning abilities and learning styles, curriculum and the 5E’s of the pedagogical framework. The learning objectives are also examined in relation to fitting into the Blooms Taxonomy by then gathering further ideas to how these ICTs could be used to fulfill these learning objectives. What I found was a great help to analyzing whether the ICTs used within the unit of work where enhancing the learning experience for the students was measuring the ICT used against the Padagogy wheel. The SAMR model was a great approach to asking questions within the SAMR ladder about how the ICT based learning experience is enhancing the students learning rather than at a substitution level. I also have viewed Scootle which offers links to resources to align with the appropriate content descriptors, which has been a great help with developing further ideas to how to integrate ICTs within the learning experience. I have been following this plan to help identify whether the use of ICTs integrated within the unit of work enhance the students learning experiences…hopefully I am on the right track and achieving an effective use of ICT’s within my unit of work.  

Ensuring safe inquiry based learning activites

To ensure that students are accessing a safe internet source is I’m sure always on an every educators mind when allowing the students to access the internet for research. Having educators review the available  resources the students can access is important, although by having a student type the wrong thing can result with students viewing or reading inappropriate information, resources or images. I came across a variety of different resources that educators can utilize to overcome this issue of cyber safety. These resources allow parents and educators the confidence and assurance that the students are accessing websites that are safe online, in particular for inquiry based learning activities where students are relied upon to gather their own information. I hope everyone else finds these a great find and help!
– Kidsrex : Kidsrex is a fun and safe search engine for children to access to retrieve reliable information and resources. Kidsrex is a Google safe search which filters keywords phrases and URLS by eliminating inappropriate material.
– Kidsclick : Kidsclick is a children friendly search engine designed for kids by librarians. It is an easy to use tool allowing children to search by phrase, keyword or by the learning content (English, History, Science) with having access to digital resources of sounds, videos and images.
 

The ever-changing technology!

Today I came across a blog that really stood out to me. I am focusing on history within my unit of work for assignment two in regards to how times have changed within student’s daily lives in comparison to student’s parents or grandparent’s lives. A fellow blogger, Courtney shared a short humorous video on her blog post on how children react to being exposed to a Walkman. This video, Kids react to Walkman’s has several children being introduced to the Walkman and a cassette for the first time.  The student’s reactions are quite interesting with their initial responses, due to the advanced technological world that they have grown up within as the students are not familiar with the device.

This video helped link to my unit of work by having children identify that ‘times have changed’ and therefore so has technology. Children today within the 21^st century are strongly using new advanced technology around them when in comparison to their parents or grandparents who used technology such as a Walkman which ‘back in the day’ they would have thought it was the best thing! This video highlights the significance of the ever changing technological world. It really makes you wonder that years ago such technology like the Walkman was a great device, were now within todays 21^st century they are substituted for Mp3 players, Ipads, Iphones and Ipods. As educators we must then be able to embrace and integrate the ever changing technology to help prepare our students with the necessary skills for the students to be able to live within todays and the future of the technological world.

What a relief!

Well yes the two week Easter break has now finished and I am now feeling a little behind within the workload due to not achieving much work within the break. Yesterday our assignment marks were released for assignment one and I am very happy with the mark that I had received! I agree with Kathleens blog post that yes David must have heard our stress for completing this assignment and has given us a week extension on our second assignment! I knew I would have had this assignment submitted within the due date however due to the lack of time I have had recently I was afraid that the quality of my work would suffer. Yes we have received a week extension however I am still planning to submit this assignment as early as possible due to having other assignments due the following weeks, so yes this extension is a relief though the objective is to not take for granted this extension. Yes this extension has been greatly welcomed as this can allow myself to now dedicate more time to creating rich ICT learning experiences within my unit of work and also finish the remaining of the week eight learning path. Well better get stuck into this assignment!

Goal: to design ICT-rich learning experiences

Yes designing ICT-rich learning experiences can be difficult due to not currently having the broad understanding of the ICT’s that can be available and how they can be utilized to support and facilitate learning. To overcome this problem, I discovered within the learning journey the Blooms digital taxonomies and frameworks which extends upon how Blooms Taxonomy links to ICT by achieving learning objectives at the level of Blooms Taxonomy. Now by looking further into this, I developed ideas for integrating ICT’s within a specific learning context that I was considering in implementing within my unit design. Although I am still at the stage of exploring possible ideas within the unit design, further possibilities had emerged after using the Padagogy wheel which assists in developing further opportunities by applying my knowledge of the content, students, the curriculum and the pedagogical framework. I recommend to others that are having trouble with exploring possibilities and the appropriateness of activities to use the Padagogy wheel in alignment with the chosen content descriptors. A fellow blogger, Steve Druery has linked to his blog an article that features the key characteristics of good quality teaching and learning with ICT, this article I found was a great informative article which assisted with my own planning of the unit design. When I am planning my unit design I think it will be important to consider these key characteristics and integrate these in alignment with the Padagoy wheel to create ICT-rich learning experiences.

Getting back into it!

It has been quite a while since my last blog due to focusing on other courses and assignments for the past two weeks, which now I feel a little behind! A fellow blogger, Danielle Sager is also feeling a little behind in her blogging since submitting assignment one, who is also just like me trying to catch up on her blogs during the two week holiday break! Well it is now time to get back on track with EDC3100 and start commencing the second assignment! After exploring into assignment two, I felt a little overwhelmed when unpacking the assignment in regards to how much freedom is given towards choosing the curriculum choices of the context and learning area for the 3-5 week unit design. However when recognizing that a backwards design was the template for the unit design I was relieved due to previously utilizing this tool for the planning within other courses. I came across Kazmsith’s blog who shared an interesting paper; Principles of a Backwards Design which I recommend others reading, it gives a little more insight into a Backwards Design. I am now at the stage of considering a possible learning area that I would want to focus on for my 3-5 week unit design…I better get back to it!