Now this was a mission, initially I tried uploading the video directly from my computer but for some reason Blogger wouldn't do this. Long story short I now have a YouTube account and I have embedded the video into this blog which has seemed to work (Yay!).
My experience with the actually editing of the video using Movie Maker was pleasant. Movie Maker was very user friendly making this process rather enjoyable and reasonably quick for a video. Features such as adding music, titles, credits and animations are very straight forward. I believe a program such as this in Health and Physical Education would play a very important role. It would allow the students to show videos of them playing sport and even analyse sporting movements.
Week 4 I was introduced to a program by the name of MobaPhoto, the purpose of this program is to resize digital images. I found this program very easy to use and set up to be quite fast. Programs such as MobaPhoto could be used in education to help students add images to websites, wikis, blogs, movies, etc. Adding images to material which would only otherwise contain text can greatly aid the visual learners in the classroom.
Please find my resized digital photo below, it must be noted that the original image size was 6.90 MB and after resizing it was only 49.6 KB.
Week 3 of ICTs for learning design forced me to extend my knowledge from Web 1.0 to learn about Web 2.0 tools and online spaces. Web 2.0 is often referred to as the "read-write" web and usually has inbuilt toolbars similar to Word or PowerPoint. It must be noted that Web 2.0 is still owned by you, however other individuals and groups can publish, share, network, download, upload to create user-generated content. From learning this background knowledge about the Web interfaces, I then experimented with three basic "read-write" tools; Blogs, Wikis, and Websites.
After doing this I then choose to explore more in-depth Wikis and their use in an educational setting. I constructed the analysis by conducting a PMI (Plus, Minus, and Interesting) table.
Plus
Minus
Interesting
·Many Wiki hosting platforms are free
·Instant interaction with others
·Ability to post almost any form of information
- video, picture, etc.
·Quick to set up
·Can be accessed anywhere with internet
connection
·Information is online and available for
anybody to see
·Anybody can access - potential for incorrect
information posted
·21st century teaching
I believe Wikis have a place in the educational setting, they offer teaching beyond the classroom walls. They also have the ability for instantaneous feedback which is almost a must in the 21st century. Yes there are negatives of Wikis, largely regular maintenance to keep information correct and well presented. However I believe the positives of this platform outweighs negatives. A prime example of this is Wikipedia: It has become the largest and most popular general reference work on the internet and estimates to have over 365 million readers worldwide (Trancer, 2007). So the question I propose to you is, why can't this technology work in the classroom but be so successful all over the world?
An example of a successful educational wiki for middle school science can be found here.
For those interested here is my personal wiki which took about 20 minutes to make. Finally for all the visual learners reading this blog, check out the following video which explains the uses of Wikis in classrooms.
References
Holmes, G.
(2013, Febuary 13). Web2.0. Retrieved
from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/page/view.php?id=115356
Kharbach, M.
(2012). Teachers Guide on the use of
Wikis in Education. Retrieved from http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/07/teachers-guide-on-use-of-wikis-in.html
Trancer, B.
(2007). Look Who's Using Wikipedia.
Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1595184,00.html
Week 2 of ICTs for learning design required us to post a personal refection about the learning facilitated in the Mobile Phones wiki on the CQUniversity Moodle website. With this personal reflection we had to break it down and analyse it within the context of the learning theories which we summarised in last week's blog (Week 1 Reflection). I have chosen to use only two of the learning theories; constructivism and connectivism as I thought these were most relevant to the wiki. Constructivism: The wiki on moblie phones was primarily constructivism in design. Learning was founded upon social interactions between peers (learning/expert community), which in this case helped us to extend our own learning/opinions on mobile phones in education through other classmates' opinions on the issue. Through these social interactions we widened our knowledge base on the issue of mobile phones in education, which lead us as the learner to reach a zone of proximal development.
Connectivism: Sees learning as the process of creating connections and elaborating a network (Siemens, 2004). Which in this case was what took place in the mobile phones wiki. An initial opinion was placed by students then other peers added information with this process continuing. This allowed the students to learn more than their current state of knowing through connections of other students in the wiki. Some key principles of connectivism which we utilised in the mobile phone wiki were;
Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known.
Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
Decision-making is itself a learning process.
(Siemens, 2004)
The benefits of participating in a wiki like this is that it broadens your personal knowledge and opinion on the issue at hand. Potential issues includes peers or students not engaging in the wiki. I personally found it did widen my perspective on the issue of mobile phones in education. I think this form of learning is foundation for students as it strongly utilises two learning theories which stimulates knowledge beyond what the student would know without the help/interactions of others.
References Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm
