"Our
students have changed radically. Today's students are no longer the people our
educational system was designed to teach" (Prensky, 2001, p. 1). The 21st
century world we now live in is forever changing, adapting and evolving. There
is now a new learner "Digital Natives" or today's 21st century
student. Previously the older generation learner (post digital world) or
"Digital Immigrants" relied predominately on traditional teaching
methods e.g. pen, paper, blackboard, books. However today's students think and
process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. Instead of learning from these
"traditional teaching methods" students now learn through the digital
language of computers, video games and Internet (Prensky, 2001). Due to this
change teaching methods must now transition from "traditional" to
"Digital Native" focused methods. This reflective synopsis shows the
journey I took in learning to teach the "Digital Native".
Wikis and Scaffolding
A wiki is an online
space where users and guests can edit, modify, add, remove information with
intuitive editing tools, the most recognised of these is Wikipedia (Fasso, 2013).
This first activity I participated in was exactly that - a wiki discussing the
use of mobile phones in education. My personal experience using the wiki was
rather pleasant, however I did find the wiki a little tedious in editing and
adding new information. The biggest issue I found with the wiki was keeping
information clean and presentable. The dominant learning theory wikis are
founded upon is Social Constructivism, that is learning is founded upon social
interactions within a learning community or expert community (Fasso, 2013). For
more information on the learning theories refer back to my blog posting here. In de Bono's Hats, wiki scaffolding used was de Bono's six thinking
hats, each hat colour represented a perspective. This helped structure our
responses around a very open-ended question, Mobile Phones - should they be
used in the classroom? The benefits of scaffolding online collaborative
discussion like de Bono’s wiki are that teachers can:
Support
complex reasoning process in their students by scaffolding required ways of
thinking.
- Support contributions by all students in the group
- Make thinking "visible" so that teachers can see inside the reasoning of all students in the group
- Create a permanent, text-based recorded of discussions and conversations for future analysis and reading
- Enable learners to negotiate their own understanding through social interaction with others
(Fasso, 2013)
For a Plus,
Minus and Interesting (PMI) table and more comprehensive review on wikis please
refer back to my postings which can be found:
I could see myself implementing wikis as an 'out of school hours'
learning environment, where I could scaffold questions directly related to the
topic being taught.
(Crossover, 2011)
ICT Group 1 - Blogs
Group 1 tools
were Web 2.0 tools and online spaces; blogs, wikis and static websites. I
elected to explore blogs. Blogs interface is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you
get); this is a very similar interface to Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Blogs,
unlike wikis, have a single author however anyone can interact by commenting on
postings in your blog. I personally found using blogs easy and very
user-friendly, requiring much less maintenance, unlike wikis. Most of the work
is required in the initial stage setting up the blog's theme and design, after
this it's basically a case of writing what you wish and simply publishing it
for the readers to view. Below is a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats) analysis on blogs in the educational setting.
Strengths
- Creates a 24/7 learning environment
- Supports the learning theory of Connectivism through connection of the internet community
- Supports the learning theory of Constructivism through interactions with a community
- Can be used in a variety of educational scenarios, depending on scaffolding utilised
- Allows quiet/shier students in the classroom to voice their opinions freely
- Can be accessed from anywhere with internet access
- Easily allows bloggers to add images, videos, hyperlinks
- Many blogging platforms are free
- Instantaneous interaction with others
Weaknesses
- Publicly accessible on the internet by default
- Internet footprint, some people like to minimise this
- Moderation of comments
- Once the information is published its stored online forever
Opportunities
- 24/7 teacher/student interaction
- Access via modern devices e.g. mobile phones, tablets
- 21st century teaching
Threats
- Maintaining student safety, through moderation of comments
Practical Applications of blogs in education could be using blogs to
replace the standard class web page. This allows instructors to post class
times, rules, assignment notifications, suggested reading and exercises.
Second, it allows teachers to link internet items that relate to their course.
Third, blogs could be used to organise in-class discussions by utilising the
'comments' section. Fourth, teachers could utilise blogs to organise class
seminars or provide summaries of readings. Finally, students could create their
own blogs as part of assessment e.g. students have required readings for a
subject and are asked to summarise the readings in a paragraph in their
personal blogs (Downes, 2004).
ICT Group 2 - Images and Video
Group 2 tools involved web multimedia, which is considered paramount to
the 21st century learner. Unlike traditional learners which learnt primarily
unimodal and textual, the "Digital Natives" learning is multimodal,
meaning teaching needs to incorporate visual and aural elements with textual
elements (The New Media Consortium, 2005). A report by The New Media Consortium
(2005) summed up the 21st century learner, "21st century literacy is the
set of abilities and skills where aural, visual and digital literacy
overlap" (The New Media Consortium, 2005 p. 2). My personal experience
with using images and re-sizing images was great, I found it simple and fast to
do. I also found that adding images into almost anything increases the visual
appeal and makes information more interesting. For a more detailed explanation
of my experiences, click the link here. The
same could not be said for my experience with making a digital video, for that
review follow the link here.
(The New Media Consortium, 2005)
ICT Group 3 - PowerPoint
The third group of ICT tools consisted of; PowerPoint, Prezi and
Glogster. I chose to expand my knowledge in the area of PowerPoint as it's what
I'll be using most when teaching at schools. PowerPoint is a presentation tool
used to support oral presentations, and my initial knowledge of PowerPoint was
exactly that. After working through course material for group 3 tools I found
PowerPoint has the potential to be used for almost anything. "It is a
platform that supports the embedding of text, linking and interactivity, audio,
video and images" (Fasso, 2013). Armed with this information I choose to
creative an interactive PowerPoint or "choose your own path" story
book. The PowerPoint can be found here and a full review of my
experiences can be found here. Depending on the design and features used
in a PowerPoint, learning theories used could greatly vary. In the case of the
PowerPoint I created it uses the learning theory of connectivism, that is "learning
is a process that occurs within nebulous environments of shifting core elements"
(Siemens, 2004 p. 4). Meaning students have the ability to interact with the
PowerPoint and choose new pathways of information which gives them the ability
to draw distinctions between information they deem important and unimportant.
In the case of the PowerPoint I created students have the ability to choose a
body part and learn about it in more detail. This related strongly to the
learning theory of connectivism in that "Learning can reside out of
ourselves, is focused on connecting specilised information sets, and the
connections that enable us to learn more are more important than our current
state of knowing" (Siemens, 2004 p. 4).
ICT Group 4 - Google Maps (WK5)
The final group of ICT tools consisted of open-ended technology, for
this I choose to explore Google Maps. Google Maps is an application which
allows users to customise a map in a variety of ways. I found this application
very simple and straight forward to use. An example of how you can customise a
map and then embed it can be found here. I could
see a variety of uses for an application such as this in an education setting. For
example in a Health and Physical Education class you could ask students to plan
a cross-country track using Google Maps. Along with this map you could ask
students to list the distance of the track, possible routes, terrain type,
which can all be accomplished with Google Maps. Applications like Google Maps
are very similar to PowerPoint in that their learning theories both work off
connectivisim.
Legal, Safe and Ethical Guidelines
Ethical and Legal Issues
This refers
to the rules or standards of conduct applicable to a given profession or group.
Copyright
There are standards to uphold when using information other than your
own, this refers to copyright. Credit must be giving to the rightful
authors/publishers when using other information. For a comprehensive guide on
'how to' and 'when' to copyright look at Smartcopying or All Right to Copy?
Cybersmart
Students can
place themselves in risky situations by:
- Giving out personal information about themselves to people or organisations they do not know
- Posting unsuitable information online
- Agreeing to meet people they have only met online, without speaking with a parent or carer first
- Using provocative pseudonyms
- Sharing passwords
- Posting public profiles about themselves
- Specifically browsing or searching unsafe websites
- Responding to unpleasant or suggestive messages, or messages from people they do not know
- Accessing inappropriate or illegal material
(Australian Government, 2008)
There are also other risks regarding internet security, e.g. viruses,
trojans, worms, data theft, etc. To minimise the risk of these its recommended
that schools and students install a internet security program for online web
browsing (Australian Government, 2008). For a more comprehensive guide to
being 'protected' online feel free to look at CyberNetrix, also for information on Protecting Personal Information.
(Mark Oliphant College, n.d.)
References
Downes, S.
(2004). Educational Blogging. EDUCAUSE,
39(5), 14-26.
Crossover
(Website). (2011). Six Hats [Image].
Retrieved from http://www.futuremusiclab.com/xoiig/evaluation/
Fasso, W
(2013). Digial Tool 1: Blogs for Learning.
Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design, http://www.e-courses.cqu.edu.au
Fasso, W.
(2013). Digital Tool 2: Wikis for
Collaborative Learning. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491
ICTs for Learning Design, http://www.e-courses.cqu.edu.au
Fasso, W.
(2013). Creative Ways to Use PowerPoint.
Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design,
http://www.e-courses.cqu.edu.au
Fasso, W.
(2013). A Brief Overview of Learning
Theory. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning
Design, http://www.e-courses.cqu.edu.au
Mark Oliphant
College. (n.d.). Cybersmart [Image].
Retrieved from http://moc.sa.edu.au/our-schools/learning-technologies/cyber-safety
Prensky, M.
(2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
Siemens, G.
(2004). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. elearnspace. Retrieved from http://www.ingedewaard.net/papers/connectivism/2005_siemens_ALearningTheoryForTheDigitalAge.pdf
