The first half of this term has been very full on for all
the subjects in the GDLT, especially this course. Although I did the required
exercises and readings, I did not update my blog until the week this task was
due. In a way, I am glad as it demonstrates to me a very valid point – if you
are using a blog with your students and don’t update it, what is the point? As
with all areas of pedagogy, there needs to be a large focus on time management.
This post is a reflective synopsis of the first half of term 1.
Use of e-Learning
e-Learning is so vital in this day and age as culture is
rapidly shifting towards a totally computerised society. There are several
reasons to promote e-Learning in classes, such as connecting to other
information sources/multimodal resources, working over distance, collaborative
working, using an information repository or engaging in interactive activities
(Fasso, 2012a). According to Prensky (2001), the children coming through the
current school cohorts will basically all be digital natives (as am I). This
means that they will expect to see, and learn best with ICT embedded in their
learning. The reasons listed above can be implemented on any number of new
smart devices – computers, laptops, phones, media players and even smart
televisions that have become part of everyday life.
According to Queensland Government Department of Education
Training and the Arts (2008), the push for ICTs in school is not just
about using them, the challenge lies in “shifting from teaching and learning
about ICT to teaching and learning with and through ICT” in a way that is “meaningful,
engaging and connected” (p. 1).
While technology should be incorporated in digital pedagogy,
under the TPACK framework it should be linked to both your pedagogy and content
knowledge, and should not be considered a separate entity. If this separation
occurs, the ICT loses meaning. Appropriate digital pedagogy needs to be used to
embed multimedia and other tools meaningfully. eLearning has strong links with connectivism. It is no
longer essential to know everything about a topic, the more important skill is
knowing where to find the relevant information (Fasso, 2012b).
Mobile Phone Wiki Engagement
After completing the mobile phone wiki activity, I completed
the following analysis on this linked post, as well as this post on Group OneTools – Wikis. I found that Wiki’s provided an excellent environment for group
working, and de Bono’s Hats are a good scaffolding to get people thinking away
from their comfort zone. The linked blog articles contain my thoughts on the
learning styles and pedagogy involved.
Group One Tools
The first group of tools we looked at were online spaces –
namely wikis, blogs and websites. The tool I am choosing for this synopsis is
websites for teaching. While there is a possibility for websites simply to just
be a collection of knowledge with no suitable pedagogy, they can employ many
learning styles, depending on implementation. I provide some insight to websites on this blog post.
As mentioned in the above linked post, none of these tools
are mutually exclusive. While a website can function well as a repository (Web
1.0), to me it is more like a blank canvas that can incorporate multimedia,
interactive tools and link to wiki pages (embedded Web 2.0 features) (Fasso,
2012c). This makes websites a strongly connectivist learning tool when used
appropriately. The webpage itself is not a support for learning unless
scaffolded (Fasso, 2012c). I will use this page on my site as an example.
While my webpage functions mainly as a repository to
accompany real life tutorials (I have put limited information on there so far),
there is still scope for pedagogy. Multimedia is used to help explain concepts.
Online quizzes and other interactive activities could be added, such as the tools explored in later groups. Links to wiki
exercises could encourage collaboration. These features could be added, even
though they haven’t been yet. My site also features a blog to summarise what
was covered in tutorials, as well as general announcements. Therefore I think
that websites can potentially utilise all the advantages listed in the
websites, blogs and wikis postings on my blog, and that any learning theory can
be applied to websites depending on the interactivity of the content. According
to Fasso (2012c), having the ability to embed artefacts built in other sources and collate multiple resources is the strength of the website. There are however issues, see Online Safety.
Group Two Tools
Group two was based around multimedia (pictures, audio and
videos). This linked blog post explores all three.
Out of all these tools, I believe that video is the most
useful for both learning and teaching, especially in my KLA (music). While it
would be logical to assume that audio/music would be useful (which it certainly
is), video has much better pedagogical aspects. As the blog covers the
advantages of using it as a teaching aid, here I will look at student developed
videos. According to Kearney and Shuck (2006, cited in Fasso, 2012d), students
typically use videoing in school for “communciation, observation and analysis, and
reflection”. Furthering this, Fasso (2012) says that “Outcomes of student video
production include affective, metacognitive, higher order thinking,
communication and presentation, literacy, organisational and teamwork and
moviemaking skill development”.
An example of how higher order thinking can be included with
video in the music KLA could be composing a piece to go with an excerpt of
video, or vice versa. This can be seen as a strongly constructivist approach to
learning, as a lot of arts are. In addition to this, it lifts students into the higher orders of Bloom's Taxonomy. According to Saraniero (2012), applied
constructivism can include music students using “knowledge and skills such as
rhythm, note recognition, melody, and harmonics correctly in order to reach
their higher-order goals, such as expressing meaning through composing music”. Another
example would be recording a video of the students’ band playing and analysing
it through a scaffolded activity such as de Bono’s hats. This could promote
cognitivist thinking by self-analysis of what is actually going through their
mind whilst performing, and learning of self-help techniques outlined in the Dimensions of Learning.
To me it is interesting that when creating a video, it is a constructivist
task, yet finding and watching a video is more of a connectivist task. While I
think that videos are an excellent tool for learning, they should be used as an
aid and not an alternative to face-to-face pedagogy. The Khan Academy has many
free educational videos that attempt to do away with traditional pedagogy. The
advantage of this is being able to pause, rewind and review the videos.
An alternative to video is podcasting, which allows
distribution via an RSS reader. Read this post about blogs to see my ideas on
RSS.
Group Three Tools
Group three tools were all presentation style tools –
PowerPoint, Prezi and Glogster. The tool I would like to investigate further is
Prezi, which I have already done a SWOT analysis for on my Group Three Blog Post.
The term thrown around a lot for Prezi during classes is ‘Wow
Factor’. It really does look fantastic, and I believe is a much richer option
for exploring information then PowerPoint. Here is a link to the very simple one I made for my blog. I am taking a fairly cognitivist approach in saying
that I believe the physical factor of zooming sub-consciously implies delving
deeper into a concept, then stepping back to see the big picture. This
professional example Prezi shows and talks about this fact. While the delivery
of the content itself is primarily behaviourist in nature, multimedia can be
incorporated. I have also heard rumours about being able to have users input
answers to questions, but haven’t been able to find this yet myself, which
would make constructivist activities possible. As Prezi is more engaging then
PowerPoint, I believe it has the potential to make my classes more enjoyable
and I am looking forward to using it. According to Fasso (2012e), Prezi is
useful for when students are giving presentations as it allows them to justify,
illustrate and explain without adding details that get in the way of the big
picture. By exploring canvases freely, students could engage in non-linear
constructivist exercises.
I had never heard of Dipity before, and this
honestly surprises me. It is such a powerful tool for organising a spectrum of
information, even across a very broad or narrow time frame. The example I created here explores just a short period of history, yet collates so much
information from different sources and modes in just three topics. By taking an
activity that is strictly behaviourist (reading a history book) and making it
interactive - suddenly the eras are broken into topics, you can graphically see
how long each era lasted, there is a video of an example from that era and a
link to further information should they wish to take the behaviourist approach.
There are obvious advantages to using Dipity over hand-drawn timelines, notably
more information can be typed then written due to physical limitations of
drawing on paper, as small or large a section of the time line as wished can be
viewed and multimedia/external sources can be linked directly to the topic.
Group Four Tools
With group four tools, we were free to explore two tools of
our choosing; the tools I choose to look at were bubbl.us mind maps and Dipity
timelines. Here is a link to my review of my group four tools. The reason I
chose these two tools is that firstly I had already worked with bubbl.us and
secondly, they are both tools based around creating graphic organisers – one static
and the other interactive. The tool I want to explore in my synopsis is Dipity.
Online Safety
Before closing, it is important to note that online safety needs to be both taught and modelled in schools - view a blog posting containing my views on the matter here. While I feel that online safety is such an important issue, it would take so much more space than I have available to write all that really needs to be said about the matter. My blog posting linked above contains what I consider the major elements and links to other sites.
References
Fasso, W. (2012a). eLearning design. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=254722
Fasso, W. (2012b). Learning theory and eLearning. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=254715
Fasso, W. (2012c). What are the roles of ICT in education. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=254727
Fasso, W. (2012d). Group 2 technologies. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=254732
Fasso, W. (2012e). Group 3 tools. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=254738
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants. Retrieved from http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf
Queensland Government Department of Education Training and the Arts. (2008). Smart classrooms bytes: eLearning for smart classrooms. Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms/documents/strategy/pdf/scbyte-elearning.pdf
Saraniero, P. (2012). Constructivism: Actively building arts education. Retrieved from http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators/how-to/from-theory-to-practice/constructivism.aspx
