Reflective Synopsis

Over the past seven weeks, myself and my classmates have gone on a learning journey through digital pedagogies and what we can do to better improve our abilities using these. The purpose of this learning journey was to arrive at a point where we can create, reflect, synthesise and integrate technology into the ever evolving classroom. 

 

The technological advances we have seen in the classroom in just the last 5 years are starting to leave traditional educational methods in the dark. These technological advances have started a chain reaction where we the classroom has expanded from just the people in the room, to being able to have the opinion and knowledge of every other person on the planet

 

The past seven weeks we have worked on several different units and reflect upon them to help us be at the point we are in our understanding, and these are:

 

·         The Modern Classroom

o   My Blog: http://simon-h-mayne.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/the-modern-classroom.html

 

·         The Mobile Phones debate using de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats

o   My Blog: http://simon-h-mayne.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/the-moble-phones-debate-using-de-bonos.html

 

·         Online Spaces: Web 1.0 and 2.0

o   My Blog: http://simon-h-mayne.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/alternate-teaching-tools.html

 

·         Digital Tools

o   My Blog: http://simon-h-mayne.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/media-in-education.html

 

·         Bringing it all Together: Presenting Learning

o   My Blog: http://simon-h-mayne.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/i-have-prezi-for-students.html

 

·         Interactive Learning

o   My Blog: http://simon-h-mayne.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/interactive-and-collaborative-learning.html

 

·         Collaborative Learning

o   My Blog: http://simon-h-mayne.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/online-collaboration.html

 

Blogs and Taxonomies

My blog posts to begin with weren’t of a very high standard. I didn’t completely understand how to write it, to meet the target audience. One week I received a 1/4, and that gave me that extra push to work a little harder and longer to create more comprehensive and insightful posts. In doing this is started using a couple of models to help write the blog entries. These are:

 

·         SMAR Model

o   The Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition model, allows for teachers to see how using different technologies in the classroom may impact teaching and learning (Schrock, 2015).

·         de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats

o   Explanation: de Bono’s Six thinking hats are six levels of critical thinking (de Bono for Schools, n.d.) to help focus on certain elements at a time. These hats are:

Ø  White hat – facts

Ø  Green hat – creativity

Ø  Yellow hat – benefits

Ø  Black hat – cautions

Ø  Red hat – feelings

Ø  Blue hat – process

 

·         Bloom’s Taxonomy

o   Explanation: According to Athertib (2015), Bloom’s Taxonomy, is used to classify the levels and forms of learning, and with further ability to apply these levels to digital curation.

At first I struggled to understand the importance and value which SMAR model, de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats and Bloom’s Taxonomy when it comes to the digital classroom and e-Learning. After engaging in the activity for the Six Thinking Hat’s in Wikispaces, I grasped the concept of what it can be effective for, and how I could use it in the future in my own learning models. My understanding of the SMAR model and Bloom’s Taxonomy came from engaging with peers in class, and in their blogs. I believe that the most effective these three is Bloom’s Taxonomy. Addressing the several levels of the pyramid, it makes the cognitive development of tasks easier.

Cyber Safety

A major part of creating lessons based on rich technology based learning, is Cyber Safety. Being cyber safe and cyber smart are two parts of being a digital citizen. Digital Citizenship according to Andrew Churches (as cited by Te Kete Ipurangi, n.d.) has six tenets:

 

1.     Respect yourself

2.     Protect yourself

3.     Respect others

4.     Protect others

5.     Respect intellectual property

6.     Protect intellectual property

 

This in sense lists exactly what cyber safety should be all about. The most important way to address this in the classroom, is by dedicating a lesson or part of a lesson, to helping the students understand these tenets.

Strung Together

My work of the last seven weeks, has been linked by a similar theme. This theme is Engagement. Successful engagement and learning outcomes of students in classroom, according to Cameron Wust (2015), starts when we as teachers stop talking. When he says this in terms of the digital classroom, it means we provide the tools, but let the students engage and develop their skills individually or collaboratively with their peers. As technology is a big part of day to day lives of students, then it’s obvious.

The best way to engage students in the classroom, is by integrating technology into the classroom. Using the digital tools we have engaged with ourselves, use them to promote successful engagement and learning outcomes.  

I believe that the use of technology in the classroom, will bring forward a new age of education. Learning all the different ways to use them in a classroom setting, has opened my eyes up to a far larger world than I had imagined, where I used to believe a PowerPoint was the only sophisticated program, and that was used only as an backup to the oral presentation. I cannot wait to use technology in my next practical, and try all of my favoured programs I have listed in my past blog entries.

 

References

Athertib, J. (2015, May 8). Bloom's Taxonomy. Retrieved from Learning and Teaching:

http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/bloomtax.htm

 

de Bono for Schools. (2015, May 8). Six Thinking Hats. Retrieved from

http://www.debonoforschools.com/asp/six_hats.asp

 

Schrock, K. (2015, 8 May). SAMR. SAMR and Bloom's. Retrieved, from

http://www.schrockguide.net/samr.html

 

TKI: Te Kete Ipurangi,. (2015, May 8). Digital citizenship and cybersafety in the classroom. Retrieved,

from http://elearning.tki.org.nz/Professional-learning/Professional-development/Digital-

citizenship-modules/Digital-citizenship-and-cybersafety/Digital-citizenship-and-cybersafety-

in-the-classroom#secondary

Online Collaboration

Online collaboration is something that allows multiple people on a global platform to communicate, synthesise and of course collaborate. This demonstrates that the benefits of online collaboration, is definitely globalisation. Globalisation in the sense that when working together, it doesn’t matter, where, when, who, how, or even what you are; the common goal is more important. We have viewed several different programs which allow for collaboration to happen, for instance, Wikki, Google docs, Prezi Collaboration, just to name a few. A constant site we have used for online collaboration is Blogger, the very site you are on now. Blogger allows, for public postings, and the ability to comment on blogs. We have used this technology to give feedback to our peers work, and to give other our own person point of view on topics we have been addressing at the end of each week.

“Work teams Cooperate; learning teams Collaborate.” (Paulus, T.M., 2005).

This quote I believe represents an important mindset that should be used in the classroom. Cooperation and collaboration, are two very closely knitted definitions, the only difference is what they are for:

Cooperate: the process of working together to the same end

Collaborate: to work jointly on an activity to produce or create something

Promoting working as a team in the classroom, is extremely important. Of course in the digital word, the task, outcomes, and process are completely different to in the real world. Online collaboration comes from talking (dialoguing), and having to find ways to collaborate together such as; Skype, Google +, Google Docs, etc.

Benefits

Maryellen Weimer (2013), indicates that there is five things students can learn through e-Learning:

·         They can learn content, as in master the material

·         They can learn content at those deeper levels we equate with understanding

·         They can learn how groups function productively

·         They can learn why groups make better decisions than individuals

·         They can learn how to work with others

Downfalls

After reading through fellow student’s blogs, Clare Bielenbergedse (2015), raises good points on the drawbacks and failures of online collaboration. These points are:

·         The possibility of plagiarism

·         The potential of technology failing (eg. a wrongly embedded PowerPoint)

·         The possibility of forgetting to reply to a comment

·         The loss of tone (potential for misinterpretation)

Using e-Learning in the classroom, may very well one day redefine education. This redefinition will only come about once we as educators can ween out the downfalls, and produce a learning space which is ethical and safe for student use. I do believe in e-Learning, and can see the definite potential after working with it throughout this class.  

 

References

Bielenbergedse, C. (2015). Collaborative Learning. Retrieved from

http://clarebielenbergedse.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/collaborative-learning.html

Morrison, D. (2012, April 27). Online Groups - Cooperative or Collaborative? Retrieved from Online

Learning Insights: https://onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/online-groups-

cooperative-or-collaborative/

 

Weimer, M. (2013, March 20). Five Things Students Can Learn through Group Work. Retrieved from

Faculty Focus: http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-professor-blog/five-things-

students-can-learn-through-group-work/

 

Interactive and Collaborative Learning

Student education is becoming more and more reliant upon the technologies we use, and not the tools provided by the teacher. To move forward into the contemporary classroom, educators must adopt these technologies as their own to better meet the needs of the students born in Generation Z.

This week, we explored a range of interactive and collaborative learning tools that can potentially enhance the learning experience in the classroom. These tools were:

·         Interactive Learning Objects

·         Mapping

·         Collaborative Authoring

·         Online Concept Mapping

·         Online Timelines

The use of these tools in the classroom are not necessarily a new tool, but are expanding and developing in such ways that they are becoming more readily available, and more beneficial as forms of teaching students. The elements of a Creative Classroom Framework (the New Media Consortium, 2014), has six elements listed under Learning Practices; Learning by Exploring, Learning by Creating, Learning by Playing, Self-regulated Learning, Personalised Learning and Peer-to-Peer Learning. These six elements can be related back to the above five tools, as they describe how they can benefit the students.

An overview of the technical aspects: what can this technology do?

The online concept mapping program, Text2Mindmap, is basic way to create effective and multilayered mind maps online.

 

 

As you can see in the image above, on the left-hand side of the screen is a text box and on the right-hand side, is a default mind map showing the capabilities of the program. To use this program, you fill in the left hand text field, and you press tab to create a branch off the title above. Each time a new connection is created, it can be clicked and dragged and then locked into place.

 

This technology allows for students to easily expand upon ideas in a fun and interactive way. Students can easily create mind maps using Text2mindmap, with minimal input and assistance from the Teacher. This system does not have the ability to multi-author, but can be used in Peer-to-peer Learning (the New Media Consortium, 2014) in a collaborative group work setting. Therefore, Text2Mindmap can increase the learning outcomes of a group, when discussing and developing projects.

 

SAMR Model

Redefinition: Group tasks can be enhanced using mind-mapping tools such Text2Map. The tasks can be enhanced by using this tool to quickly expand upon the task. By saving the mind-map, the URL for the saved document can be sent to other students to continue working on or expanding upon the task.

Modification: You can redesign ordinary group discussions to have more interactive learning experience. Unlike traditional mind-mapping, you can continue to expand upon the idea without the prospect of running out of room.

Augmentation: This can be a direct substitute for traditional mind-mapping done on paper, the white board, or even when creating them in a Word document, with enhancements with fixed connections between points, and the ability to create a larger mind-maps without running out of space.

Substitution: This can be a direct substitute for traditional mind-mapping tools, with no functional change. Pen to paper can be just as effective as using Text2Mindmap.

 

 

 

 

I have a Prezi for the Students

A good presentation is all about communicating ideas to an audience for a purpose. One of my all-time favourite programs for presenting ideas is, Prezi. Prezi is a brilliant program which allows for a much more diverse and open-minded approach to design. It also a program which isn’t PowerPoint. Which every student see’s at least once, every school day.

Student engagement starts with trying something different. If we challenge the students by doing a class presentation with something out of the ordinary, we raise the chance of creating higher student engagement.

Technical Aspects

Prezi is an online ZUI (Zooming User Interface) tool, which allows users to zoom in and out of their presentation can display information that can be navigated through on either 2.5D or parallax 3D space on the Z-axis.

It has several tools which make it stand out amongst other programs, these are:

Prezi ZUI – the main concept of the program which is addressed above

Prezi Desktop – a downloadable program which allows for the creation of prezi’s in an offline situation, which allows them to be then stored on the device. Presentations created this way can be uploaded online so they can be accessed by multiple users.

Prezi Collaborate – an online tool that allows for up to ten users to co-edit and show their presentations in real time.

Prezi Viewer for iPad – app developed to allow students to view their prezi’s that are linked to their account.

Prezi has the ability to include; videos, images and audio. With its unique style of presenting content, Prezi can be an extremely power educational multimodal tool.

SAMR

Redefinition – Prezi allows for students to create vast presentations which can constantly be built upon with or without the collaboration of peers. This is something that students haven’t been able to do when using the normal schools programs such as PowerPoint haven’t been able to do before.

Modification – Oral presentations have always been left in the business or lack of in their PowerPoint Presentations. With the use of Prezi, students have the ability to go into great depth in topics, without creating busy noise. It also allows for a more engaging approach to the presentations as it moves around the screen, rather than presented simply slide by slide.

Augmentation – Functional improvement comes from the ability to be collaborative with other students in real-time, and does not need to be completed together using the same computer.

Substitution – when being used in the offline mode, this program can be a substitute for PowerPoint, with no functional change when presenting content and information.

The technical aspects of Prezi are innovative when it comes to incorporating them into the classroom environment. Prezi Collaboration is a brilliant concept that I would love to use in the classroom. To expand on this particular feature more, Prezi Collaboration allows up to ten people to work on a single Prezi, at the same time, in real time from their own devices. This would be a wonderful tool to use in HPE when comparing say a golf swing. The students would be able to upload their videos, images and audio into one presentation, then compare and contrast their performance against that of other students using the same Prezi. For myself I would use this as a backing tool when speaking on topics which need to go in to depth with rather than using PowerPoint.  

 

This is another example on how you can personalise and create a Prezi Presentation. This was used by using a desktop camera.

References

Prezi. (2015). Prezi. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prezi  

Media in Education

 

 

 

Link to an Audio file

 

An overview of the technical aspects:

 

Using multimodal presentations in the classroom allows for students to have that extra bit of solidifisation when exploring a topic. Images, Videos and Audio are three easily accessed tools that all students and teachers have access to. 

 

The use of images in the classroom can be done from something that helps demonstrate a topic to something that challanges are creates a critcal thinking environment.

 

Video's can do used as examples, or even as a tool for students to use to educate others in the class about a certain topic. This is the best used as a teacher tool mainly, to explain topics and engage the students who are profiled as visual learners.

 

Audio of course is a media tool that they can use anywhere that video or images are unavailable. For instance, on a long car trip, students can listen to class content.

 

These three media tools are completely customisable. As a teacher means you can add/remove content, create or just simply change the colour schemes. images, Video and Audio can be made to fit each classroom environment and each student.

 

 

 

 

Though, it is highly important that these are not used as a soul source of information, or by themselves. They should be used to support content.

 

SAMR:

 

In terms of the SAMR model when using Video as a key intructional and educational tool in the classroom, which support student out comes.

 

Redefinition: Using video in the classroom allows for tasks which were once inconcievable come into shape. For instance students could use this technology to enhance their learning when it comes to Health and Physical Education. The students could record a golf swing for example and then have the ability to properly evaluate and critique the movement.

 

Modification: You can redesign once mundane tasks from creating PowerPoints to creating multimodal presentations. This would increase student engagement because it is something they can change and munipulate to be anything they want.

 

Augmentation: Digital videos can be a direct tool replacement to using PowerPoint. The videos can include for facates which would benefit the learning outcomes of the students.

 

Substitution: Creating a video with just images is almost the same as creating a PowerPoint presentation. Further dynamics to the video presentation needs to be included for it to be an ehancement to the classroom.

 

 

 

 

 

Alternate Teaching Tools

This week we were asked to investigate different mediums into which we could use to present classwork to our students. Of course, we have already done some small work with Web 2.0 sites (Blogger and Wiki are classified as Web 2.0 because they can be made open to public alterations and postings), so I had a look into what it would be like to create a site using a Web 1.0 tool (website).

  http://sineofmaddness.weebly.com/

Above is a very simple start to what potentially could be built into a worth while site. This could be used as a good tutorial or example site. Students do not have the privileges to edit or change the content. Therefore, this would encourage more in class and face-to-face conversation when completing a task they find complicated.

 

On my site as you can see above, I have used a math pun to hopefully capture more student interest followed by a small blurb which will entice them further. The background image is just helps to make reference to what your mind goes through, and for us, usually needing a coffee just to keep our own thoughts in order.

 

I believe that using a website as an educational tool could be a highly beneficial asset in the classroom. With the ability to include links to other useful sites, include images and videos, and of course text. It also allows for easy access for students at home who need assistance with the task at hand, just needs to go online and log onto the site.

The Moble Phones Debate Using de Bono's Six Thinking Hats

There is nothing funnier than watching a student sit in a classroom calmly staring at the ground for several minutes on end. Personally I have never noticed anything that makes looking in that direction as much of an emotional rollercoaster as some students experience.
This raises the question:

Should mobile phones be used/allowed in the classroom?

I was asked to participate in a group activity using de Bono's Six thinking hats. These six hats are:

• Judgement
• Process
• Creativity
• Feelings
• Benefits
• Information

Using this style of scaffolding, it was easy to quickly consolidate information from a range of perspectives on this topic. I believe that it is so important to make sure the information that we gather and use, is not based on a biased towards phones. Mobile phones are continually been upgraded and made more powerful, making them a valuable tool that can used to enhance the teaching of students.

The Wiki page we used was set up in a such a useful and effective way for easy collection of information. Personally, I am still unsure wether or not I like the website as an education tool, but it definitely has the potential to offer more access to more students., but can also limit the personal aspect of a group discussion on topics as mobiles phones. While participating seeing the names of students I know, made wanting to be involved something exciting due to the fact we could have a friendly discussion where we expressed our opinions without getting hot headed at one another.

Using a scaffolding system like this can be highly effective for the teaching of students because it offers a safe place to put forward an opinion. This needs to be backed with a classroom discussion to delve deeper into the topic and provide the a high level of retention so students can remember what was discussed down the track, creating greater learning outcomes.