Creating a digital video was so much fun and watching the end product was even better. Below is the video I created, unfortunately I didn't have the time to record any clips for my movie so I had to use the photos I had on my computer. I think it still turned out ok :)
iMovie is a great tool and was so easy to use. There are so many templates and themes to choose from which makes a great starting point for producing your video. You can use photos to create a photo story like I have, or use videos to really make your digital video stand out. I think students will really enjoy using this tool and it is a great way to engage students in their learning, as they are creating something from what they have learnt. For example students could be asked to create a video for a story they have written in an english lesson. Students can act out the scenes and characters and record them or take photos to describe the story they are telling. There are many things it can be used for and it is a very useful tool for those learners who are visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners. Students are learning hands on as they create their videos using visual and auditory tools, the end result is a learning tool that can reach multiple learners.
Teachers can also use videos as a teaching tool to explain concepts and engage students. Teachers can use animation software like goanimate to create a video for the younger students (younger kids love cartoons). The possibilities are endless for both teachers and students, and I think all teachers should be using them in their classrooms.
After hours of trial and error I was finally able to create a podcast. I couldn't embed my podcast to my blog but I was able to add it to my wiki :) Here is the Link. Podcasts are a great tool to use when teaching. Today we live in the digital world where students, children and teachers have access to so much technology. Almost all students these days have access to an Ipod, Ipad or smart phone which they use to listen to music, watch videos or play games, so why not incorporate learning into these tools so that students get the more out of learning. Podcasts gives teachers the opportunity to provide information in a variety of ways to better meet the diverse learning styles of students and the inclusion of current technology that students are using already (Macinstruct, 2013). We can use this technology for educational purposes. There are many great educational podcasts available for teachers and students to use on the internet, such as ABC, SBS, BBC and the Discovery school. I came across this website which lists ten fantastic educational podcasts.
Podcasts have many many benefits in education and for those students who are auditory/visual learners the benefits are even greater.
can record class lectures so students can listen again in their own time or before an exam.
'make up lectures for students who are absent.
can use as a recording tool during interviews with guest speakers
ability to replay and review information helps to embed lessons in memory (Macinstruct, 2013)
can be accessed by students when walking, on the bus, working out etc. can be used during multi-tasking.
meets the needs of students with varying learning styles.
Here are some examples of how I would use podcasts:
students can use podcasts to learn new vocabulary - students will record themselves saying the word then spelling it out. This will allow auditory and visual learners to memorise words by hearing and visualising what they hear they can really embed it into their memory.
students can use it in a project where they are required to explain a topic using a podcast.
The traditional approach to teaching where teachers lecture and students take notes - is being replaced with a collaborative approach where students are creating their own content and learning in the process.
'Many educators have found that the use of technology in the classroom has changed the interest level of many students simply due to the fact that they are using technology themselves for personal reasons and are more interested in material presented through this familiar medium.' (Macinstruct, 2013). In a study done by Brittain, Gllowacki, van Ittersum & Johnson (2006) it was also found that students preferred podcasts to the other formats such as power point and video, possibly because they could listen to the podcasts while engaging in other tasks (Scutter, Stupans, Sawyer & King, 2010).
There are also some disadvantages of using podcasts in education, particularly when used by university students. Some academics express a concern that university students will no longer attend lectures and disengage from the academic environment (Scutter, Stupans, Sawyer & King, 2010). Podcasting is also argued to lead to passive learning with students focussing on the audio facility rather than actively engaging with the content (Scutter, Stupans, Sawyer & King, 2010). It is argued that podcasting does not support the constructivist learning that is dominant in education today, as the constructivist view maintains that 'deep learning occurs when a learner is actively engaged in learning activities' (Scutter, Stupans, Sawyer & King, 2010). I don't necessarily agree with this as I believe podcasting is an engaging tool if of course used for the right purpose. The examples I have given above are quite engaging activities that would support constructivist learning in both primary and secondary.
The privacy concerns that are evident when using other tools such as images and videos is not a concern when using podcasts, as students speaking during a podcast do not have to identify themselves by name. Images are not added to any podcast so the privacy issues should be minimal for parents and teachers (Fryer, 2012 ). Despite this teachers should still get permission from parents before they publish any student podcasts. Like with any digital tool students need to be educated with copyright obligations. They may download music into their podcast or use a recording of an interview they have found on the web and have incorporated it into their podcast. Students need to be aware of copyright friendly music files or reference/acknowledge the source of their resources (Fryer, 2012)
Voice Threads
During my exploration of auditory tools I also came across voice threads, which I found very interesting. A voice thread allows multiple people from anywhere in the world to leave a thread of auditory comments/messages. A Voice Thread is referred to as 'a conversation in the cloud' (Voice thread, 2013). You only require a computer and the internet to create your own thread, there is no software to install. Voice threads would be a great way for students to interact with others and share their thoughts verbally.
Here is an example of one that shows how it works and the video below gives us some more information.
VOKI Podcast
After a frustrating few days of trying to upload my Voki podcast I finally did it! With the help of a dear friend of cause :). I really enjoyed creating my Voki it was fun and creative. Voki podcasts a great tool that can be used by students and teachers. Teachers can use it during class to introduce a new topic or have students create one to describe their experiences during an excursion, there is so much that can be done with it. I think the younger students would probably enjoy it the most. Using this tool in class will really engage students especially if the teacher records their own voices when creating the podcast. It is a fun, creative way of teaching and learning, and not so boring for the students.
REFERENCES:
Fryer, W. A. (2012), Tools For The Teks: Intergrating Technology in the Classroom, Retrieved From: http: www.wtvi.com/teks/05_06_articles/classroom-audio-podcasting.html
Scutter, S., Stupans, I., Sawyer, T. and King, S. (2010). Australasian Journal of Educational Technology: How do students use podcasts to support learning? Retrieved from: http://www.ascillite.org.au/ajet/ajet26/scutter.pdf. Accessed 28/03/13.
I created my first website this week and couldn't believe how easy it was. I was actually surprised that anyone can create a website for free. I used Weebly to create mine and I found it very easy. There were so many themes to choose from, including colours, fonts and format. The adding of pages and their content design was simple. Websites allow you to embed videos, pictures, hyperlinks, podcasts and has so many other features to allow users to be creative with. Below is the PMI I have created after developing a website.
PLUSES:
can be created and used by anyone
many templates to choose from
can have many pages and links to other pages on website
no one can comment or edit the website
can embed videos, podcasts, hyperlinks, images etc.
online storage of information for all students to access anytime, anywhere.
MINUSES:
must have computer and internet to access
cannot get feedback from others like wiki's and blog's
cannot trace each students input into the creation of the website like a wiki
INTERESTING:
Can be used by teachers as a class website to publish students work & news of what is happening in the class so parents can view.
can be used by students to create an online project on a topic.
allows children to be creative
students can take their classroom and learning into cyber space giving them a different platform to work from.
As can be seen from the PMI table above, there are many benefits and interesting things you can do with websites. My website is one on multiculturalism. I embedded a video from youtube, created a few pages to navigate to and added some pictures. I can see how useful websites can be in teaching and learning. I believe students will find creating websites can be very engaging and fun. I have come across a few websites created by students and it is interesting how it has been used to teach students Here is a website that has links to student websites. These websites have been created by students from different grades and the topics covered range from sports to country, animals and there is even one that represents a hypothetical restaurant (maybe a home economics students?).
Teachers can create class websites that provide parents with information on what's happening in class, what they are learning this week, who was student of the week?, upcoming effects etc. This could be a huge benefit to students who have gone a way for a week or two, or are ill and cannot come into class. I found a really good class website that you can access from here. I love the way the teacher has recorded the children singing 'Wheels on the bus go..." and the first thing you here when you open the websites are a class of children singing this song. It really shows just how fun learning can be. I think it will inspire students to work harder to have their work posted on the net so everyone can see and to be apart of creating this space will further engage them in learning. This is an excellent tool for constructivist learning.
I created the above SWOT analysis to assist me in reflecting on how the use of a wiki can assist learning. Looking at the diagram it is easily noticeable that the benefits of using a wiki is far greater than the negative aspects.
Wiki's are a great tool in bringing learner's together and I would describe it as a classroom in the clouds. It is not however an ordinary classroom of 20-30 students. A wiki is a public space and can have a number of users from anywhere in the world! This is what makes it so interesting to use. Students can have a science professor from a university in England, contribute information to students on their wiki, or provide feedback on their posts. As stated in the SWOT analysis, a wiki is a great way of gathering relevant, interesting resources into one page, using links or pasting images and videos. This allows easy access to a mountain of information. Compared to a blog, wikis allow more interaction between students as they are all authors and editors of the page and can correct their peers, delete or add relevant comments etc. It is a very useful tool for teachers to post quizzes or sample exam questions so students can all work together to understand and solve the question. For our ICT course we had to collaboratively answer sample quiz questions on a wiki, I found this activity very useful as we were able to exchange ideas, thoughts and correct each others mistakes.
I created my own wiki space this week My Wiki Project, and explored what I could do with it. I first created a project called 'Space & Planets Science Project'. Then within this project I identified 3 teams - Earth, Jupiter and Mars. I created a page for each team and then posted a youtube clip on each page about each of the planets. Then I added some questions to answer, guiding students on where to start from. The purpose of setting up this wiki was to allow students to work in groups to put together a science project on space and planets. Creating each page directs students to the group they belong to and allows proper organisation of information. This is just a small example of what I have come up with, but there is so much you can do on a wiki. I did have some trouble setting up the pages so they link to the project, but in the end I managed to do it.
Despite the negatives mentioned in my analysis, I will definitely be using wikis in my classroom. With any online activity there is always the issues of bullying, losing information and technical problems. Cyber-bullying can be an issue when using such tools in a school context, as students may write offensive comments about another student, or upload an image or video to the space. Although the teacher may monitor this space regularly it is impossible for them to monitor it every hour, minute of the day, and the damage may already be done. The Education Queensland Authority has developed guidelines for parents and caregivers on Cyber Safety and Cyber bullying which can be accessed from here . To deal with these teachers need to educate their students about the ethical guidelines and also monitor the information they are posting or writing. Students should not be revealing too much information about themselves or others while uses these online spaces. They should be adhering to referencing guidelines and copyright laws when they are using other peoples work, videos or ideas. As for losing information, students need to be very cautious of what they delete when they are editing.
Overall, reflecting on the wiki I can see how the learning theories of connectivism and constructivism are demonstrated in this ICT tool. Students are connecting with other students, collecting information and constructing their own learning through the guidance of their teachers. This activity allows students to build on their knowledge with new ideas through interaction in a shared social environment.
REFERENCES:
Department of Education, Training and Employment, (2012), Cybersafety and cyberbullying- a guide for parents and teachers. Retrieved from: http://education.qld.gov.au/studentservices/behaviour/qsaav/docs/cyberbullying-cybersafetyprintfriendlyguide.pdf
Horizon Project, (2010). Code of Ethics. Retrieved from: http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com/Student+Code+of+Ethics
I created the above SWOT analysis to analyse the use of blogs and the potential benefits and weaknesses it may have.
When I first started this course I really had no idea what a blog was and could not understand how a blog could assist students in learning. Now in my fourth week of this course and I can really see the benefits as I am using my blog. As seen in the SWOT analysis above, the strengths outweigh the weaknesses. Although there are many threats there are also as many opportunities and I believe through teacher guidance and discipline these threats can be overcome or dealt with.
Blog's are a great example of constructivist learning as students are socially interacting within a learning community. Students are allowing others to comment on their learning and reflections and are learning from each other. As stated by Good & Brophy (1990), 'learners construct their own reality or at least interpret it based upon their perceptions of experiences, so an individuals knowledge is a function of one's prior experiences, mental structures and beliefs that are used to interpret objects and events.' Blog's are a great tool in gaining insight into students thinking. Using blogs in a classroom allows teachers to visibly see what students are thinking, what their understandings are on a topic and can guide students onto the right path using various scaffolding strategies, to support those that are struggling. As identified in the SWOT analysis, blogs only have a single user which means each students blog is their own work of art and any comments posted by others are just feedback, which can be valuable to a student as it can allow students to learn from each other. Students can gain valuable feedback from professionals, teachers or students from around the world and is not just limited to their teacher or class. As stated by Winch & Holliday (2010), students as 'bloggers', are 'sharing their musings and experiences with a worldwide audience.' An example of one way of using a blog in the classroom is creating a blog on multiculturalism. Students as a group are given an opportunity to showcase a variety of cultural information from different cultures, such as photos of clothing, food, festivals and facts about cultural identity. They can embed google maps indicating where the country is. Students from other international schools can also engage in this activity by commenting on the information presented and can answer questions that students may have. This activity allows students to develop their cultural awareness in a fun and creative way and can also stimulate discussion forums. Blog's can be used individually by students or as a group, like in the example I have given, but I believe that the group blog is more of a group reflection and doesn't really focus on individual development and learning. Individual blog's however, allow students to personalise their learning experience.
I can definitely see myself using blog's in the classroom, whether as an assessment task or project, a lesson summary for students or parents to view, or as a notice board for students, reminding them of assessments, upcoming events, homework, lesson outlines etc.
Although the use of the internet has so many benefits to both the teachers and school community, there are also threats that we cannot ignore. As mentioned in the SWOT analysis, privacy and security is an issue that teachers need to be very cautious about. Without proper guidance students can expose themselves to complete strangers who may use the blog as a source to gain information on a child, for example, what school they go to, where and when they will be going to excursion, can see photos of them and can engage in conversations with them through the post comments. As teachers it is our duty to educate and guide students on what they can and can't do on blogs, and closely monitor their blogs.
Overall I believe blogs are a great way of allowing students to be constructivist learners and to engage in their learning. There is much that students can gain from using blogs if used properly in a controlled and safe environment.
Over the last two weeks we have explored the different learning theories, trying to understand the different ways people learn. We have learnt there are three basic theories, which are Behaviourism, Cognitivism and Constructivism.
Behaviourism focuses on behavioural patterns being repeated until they become automatic (Schuman, 1996). It is a learning process of reacting to external stimuli. Theorists such as Thorndike, Pavlov, Watson and Skinner have conducted various experiments to test this theory (Mergel, 1998). Watson believed that most human behaviour is established through stimulus-response associations through conditioning and he was credited with coining the term "behaviourism" (Mergel, 1998). I agree with Watson, in that a lot of our learning is through behaviourism, especially during the early stages of our learning, for example when we are learning how to toilet train our children we are constantly encouraging them to go to the toilet when they feel they need to empty their bladders, and when they do the right thing we reward them with either kisses and hugs or a treat. When they don't do the right thing then we punish them and hence we are shaping their behaviours and they are learning through behaviourism.
Unfortunately this theory alone did not explain certain social behaviours as Mergel (1998) mentions, children did not imitate all behaviour that had been reinforced. It was realised that learning is a process of acquiring and storing knowledge (Edudemic, 2012). It is evident that learning is much more than just understanding and remembering but it also involves evaluating, encoding, storage and retrieval of information (Edudemic, 2012). Cognitivism is about how we process information and how we store it in our brains. There are times when someone will try and teach you something but if you have difficulty understanding it then you will not store it in your long term memory. Information stored in your sensory and short term memories are forgotten and cannot be retrieved unless the information has been stored in your long term memory (Mergel, 1998). When looking at this I realise that as teachers we have to be able to reach our students long term memories by delivery lessons that will keep them interested and engaged in what they are learning and appeal to many parts of their brain. The activities we did in week one to see what kind of learners we are just shows how differently each individual learns, hence the reason why we need to be very creative in our pedagogy design. Using ICT tools will help us reach students through visual and media lessons. Concept and mind maps, like the one I did in week one, we can really get in touch with our brains and explore how much we have stored in our long term memories. It is a great way of organising and storing information.
Social constructivism is the third theory we learnt last week and that we have touched on this week through our wiki activity. Social constructivism is where "learners construct their own reality or at least interpret it based upon their perceptions of experiences, so an individuals knowledge is a function of on's prior experiences, mental structures and beliefs that are used to interpret objects and events." (Good & Brophy, 1990). This week we were required to voice our opinion on the use of mobile phones in the classroom on a wiki space using the de Bono's Think Hats tool. The activity was very socially constructive as everyone made interpretations based on their experiences or perceptions and beliefs on the matter. Everyone was able to build on each others comments and agree or disagree. It created a very engaging learning environment encouraging interactions within a learning community. Wendy modelled scaffolded various questions on the wiki space to guide us in our discussions. This was very effective as the page was designed in a way to avoid confusion and to organise information so it is easily understood. Scaffolding is very important in teaching especially on online spaces like Wikis. I viewed a TED video by Sugata Mitra, titled 'Build a school in the cloud'. In his video he gives an example of how scaffolding produces better learning outcomes, when he describes how he gave a group of children in a remote Indian village access to a computer and tested whether Tamil speaking 12 year olds could learn the biotechnology of DNA replication in English by themselves from this computer. He found that with having someone ask the children questions like how did you do that? what does this mean? children were able to achieve a pass of 50% in two months compared to a 30% success rate prior to scaffolding. Although learning is possible without teaching, the learning outcomes would not be great. Scaffolding is required to achieve optimum learning outcomes for students, to encourage higher order thinking and to organise students thoughts as was evident in the wiki activity we did on mobile phones.
ICT tools including Blogs and discussion forums are a great way of developing constructivist learning. This activity will be something that I would want to use in my classroom as it gives every student the opportunity to express their views and thoughts in an environment where they may feel more comfortable. I know from my own experiences that I am very shy and find it very difficult to voice my opinions in a room full of people. This wiki activity gives students time to gather their thoughts and ideas and to construct their answers in their own time.
The final theory that completes the learning theory framework is 'Connectivism'. This learning theory has developed in the 'Digital Age' and is a process of connecting specialised nodes or information sources (Edudemic, 2012). The video titled 'The Networked Student' on the Moodle site posted by Wendy (http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=115326) really helped me understand what is meant by connectivism, and also showed that teachers roles are changing. they are described in the video as the learning architect, modeller, change agent, connected learning incubator, learning concierge, synthesizer and organiser just to name a few. I experienced this learning theory through our mobile phone wiki activity. We were given the opportunity to connect with other learners and to do our own research and share with others on this virtual space. I really enjoyed this activity and can now really understand the power of using ICT and the positive impacts it has on students.
When I first started reading through the course material, it was very confusing and a lot of information to take in. Now at the end of week two I feel confident and can better relate to the material. Working with others online, discussing and evaluating material and creating new ideas, has allowed me to feel connected to other students and not feeling alone.
In conclusion I believe that the traditional learning theories alone will not allow this generation of students to have a complete learning experience. Behaviourism + Cognitivism + Constructivism + Connectivism = Complete Learning Theory (Edudemic, 2012).
References:
A Simple Guide to 4 Complex Learning Theories. (2012) [On-line]. Available: http://edudemic.com/2012/12/a-simple-guide-to-4-complex-learning-theories/
What is TPACK? To me TPACK means having a strong understanding and knowledge of the content you are teaching, the pedagogy you are using, and being able to use technology effectively to teach the content. Good teaching and best pedagogy requires all three components to be interrelated and not on their own. The you tube video helps explain it in simple terms. Enjoy!
