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
·
The Mobile Phones debate using de Bono’s Six
Thinking Hats
·
Online Spaces: Web 1.0 and 2.0
·
Digital Tools
·
Bringing it all Together: Presenting Learning
·
Interactive Learning
·
Collaborative Learning
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
