FINAL COURSE REFLECTION

eLearning and iLE@RN

The framework and papers developed by the Catholic Education Office really brings to light the importance of building an effective teaching and learning environment. It is important that we as educators remember that Technology is a tool to achieve this goal. I have always thought that the ‘e’ stood for electronic and the ‘I’ represented the internet. After further exploration words such as Engaging, Evolving, Examining and Emerging seem to stand out more significantly. We live in an information rich age where all of these ‘E’ words are important to ensure that we as teachers provide the best education for our students. As teachers we need to be aware of the vast amount of information that the students can access and this information allows them greater control over their learning. We need to encourage responsible learners to allow us to remove the walls of the classroom. In our students we need to instil ‘I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR MY OWN LEARNING’ and I am involved in negotiating my own learning experiences. We as educators are responsible for developing the skills that the students require in order to work in this environment.

Blooms Taxonomy

The new model of Blooms that incorporates the use of technology has shown me in nut shell when each stage in technological development the children can be at. I know that the children I teach are in the use and remembering stages of this grid where as our year 6 students who are making voki’s, wiki’s, etc are up to the creating element of their learning. I think tools such as Flickr, mind mapping and second life fit between apply and create on the blooms grid.

Summary

Overall I feel as a teacher I have gained so much in terms of my own professional learning. I have been engaged in my learning through these tools and I have been able to gradually implement certain aspects of this course into my current year 2 classroom. I think it will be important for me to stay in touch with the growing changes in technology because by the time I am teaching upper primary who knows what technology will be around. I have found this very valuable to my professional development.

Module Ten - Learning Communities, Constructing Knowledge Together in Wikis

First let’s start with WIKI’S! Wiki’s are fabulous tools that I have seen been used with the children at my school in upper primary. Anything to do with using the internet children seem to be able to use however, building and developing wiki’s has made the learning for these children so much more engaging and enjoyable.

I like that it is a collaborative approach that children are able to add and edit information and it is not one child’s ownership of a project. Recently, Year 6 created wiki’s based on their political party that they’d developed. It really allowed the group to show what they’d learnt and also all the different ways that they can use technology and put it into this great document. Like the camping list, it allowed the students to add what they knew and developed a collaboration of work. After looking at Larissa Cunningham’s blog I liked her suggestion of using wiki’s a means to create a class story where children can add and edit the story. I also liked her suggestion of using it as a homework task so that children can add their suggestions to make a class list. Wiki’s have great value in an upper primary and high school classroom; I would love to hear other people’s suggestions as to how I could use them in infants.

Now to the question: How can Web 2.0 assist in improving learning outcomes for all students?

When children are engaged in their learning we all know that they thrive and really show their potential. I know as an infant’s teacher the children love to play on the computer. They are starting to teach themselves how to use specific tool that are useful to their learning like accessing the internet, searching and copying and pasting information. As for the Web 2.0 tools they have a great expansive use in upper primary and high school years. The children generally teach themselves how to use these tools and are able to teach me a few things. The web 2.0 tools can allow the children to showcase what they’ve learnt or show their gradual learning development over the course of the unit. Digital stories like podcast, vodcasts etc allow children to develop such skills as comprehension and vocabulary as they have the time to listen or watch and learn. They can replay, and watch things again to clarify their understanding. Web 2.0 tools is allowing the next generations of adult become more socially connected, organised and consistent with tools like Google Docs, and Flickr.

We can’t go backwards with technology so I think as an adult community we need to join the children as learners and keep up with the ever growing, ever changing world or technology.



Module Nine - Networking

As a staff we were introduced to scootle in 2009. I have found it to be a great professional resource as it allows me to be able to search for things that I am teaching at the moment. It has saved me a lot of search time when I am looking for specific topical websites. For teachers K – 12 I would recommend scootle as a useful tool. I have been looking at programming my Multiplication and Division unit for term 2 and was unsure of where to start. I had a quick search of Scoole and up popped a whole heap of different interactive pages I could use. I have now saved them as links in a Smart Notebook so that I can use them with my class. They would also be good to put onto my classes myClass page so that they can explore according to level of understanding. Scootle is very user friendly and definitely a favourite of mine!! It doesn’t have everything but it definitely a time saver for me!

I am a Facebook user but very quickly became aware for the importance of keeping the information on this site private. This is definitely not a tool that should be used in the classroom with the students or a means of communication between students. I think in your personal life it has a place but as a professional, I think you need to be very cautious of who you become friends with and what information you’re willing to share with your so called ‘friends’ on Facebook. As for other social networking sites I haven’t ever used any of them and like Facebook I feel they really have no place in an educational or classroom forum.

As for ‘second life’ if that is reality and really happening, where is education going to go from there? Creating virtual worlds that people can choose what they are wearing where they travel and what they learn makes learning very individual and egocentric. I think the children would love it, and probably learn a lot from being completely immersed in the content!

Wow! Where will things go next??



Module Eight - RSS and Google Reader

According to http://www.whatisrss.com/ RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.

This really makes sense to me! I can’t believe how many things there are out there that I just don’t know about. Like Francesca Pelle, I have never found myself to be a very efficient internet user trying to sift through the loads of information to find out what I am looking for. There are so many sites that I visit regularly to see what’s new. With Google reader I could just go there and check it all out. It might be a little time consuming subscribing to all the sites but  I am sure it’d be less time then when I sit there looking things up everyday.

In the classroom I think it would be good for the students to be able to access news sites, blogs etc to see what is new each day. It could become kind of a daily comprehension task where they find the news of the day, read it and write down what happened in plain English. I also like Francesca’s idea for younger students: “For the younger grades who are not so good at researching information, the teacher could assist the students to subscribe to a handful of sites that are reputable and reliable for them to access information.”

Overall I can really see the benefits of this web tool and will try and use it and see how I go. Apparently it is addictive.

Module Seven - Delicious

I have never been a consistent user of any kind of bookmarking, not because I don’t like them but because I always forget that it is there. After working with my class last term and they were bookmarking via our school website it started to make me think how important it really is. Bookmarking in the normal way is very useful but as the YouTube clip said ‘What do you do when you’re not at your computer?’

After watching the YouTube clip and exploring the site I can really see its value for me professionally and for my classroom. On a personal level I think having the ability to go onto a website like ‘Delicious’ and find all the things that I had been looking up on my home computer would be very handy. I really like the network aspect of ‘Delicious’ or the ‘Social bookmarking’. As a teacher you can go and find colleagues and have a look at some of the sites they are using for resources for their classroom. I know as a staff we’re always sending little emails to each other saying check out this site if you’re looking for ….. However I think we could use delicious and be able to check out these site more frequently and remember them rather then moving further down my email list until I forget them.

I can really see how this could work in a classroom too. If you were assigning you students a research task it would be a great way for them to save the websites that they are using, share them with their friends and for me as a teacher to be able to suggest websites for them to use too. I think the use of delicious would have to be a lesson in its self; however, children seem to have an amazing mind for technology and would be able to use it proficiently. I think it would save a lot of time and student wouldn’t need to keep locating the websites they’ve been using and be able to share with their friends.

I think this is a very valuable tool and will try and be a more avid user of it in the future.

Module Six - Flickr



I wish I knew about ‘Flickr’ this time last year. On a personal level I think that Flicker is great! To be able to share photos with family and friends and get as creative as you want is awesome! I was travelling OS for 6 months and this would have made it an easy way for me to keep my family and friends up to date with where I was in the world. Here I can choose as an adult what pictures I wish to share

On a professional level I do have questions! We all know when we upload pictures onto Facebook that we basically loose possession of our pictures. With Flickr I know that you can make images public or private but how safe is it to be putting pictures up on the net. I think this would have to come down to the individual parent and family if they feel that having images of their children online, appropriate. I agree with Alana Costa that to be able to share images with children after a carnival or excursion would be great, so long as every child had parental consent. Also websites where children can search images can also be dangerous. How often do we type something innocent into Google images and come up with something sinister. If and when using Flickr in the classroom I think I would be very weary of what I allow my students to look at and use.

I also agree with what Greg Salerno said about the smartcopy website. It is good to have a resource out there like this website to be able to get more information keeping safe on the internet. I think that everyone should have a read of this important information to keep themselves safe.

Module Five - Creating and Communicating Online

Wow there was so much involved in this module! 3 great tools that have great potential for children and teachers alike.

Starting with bubbl.us! I have made a mind map of my ideas from web 2 and I have found that it is a good summary of what we've done so far. For me in Year 2 I think that this could be a little tricky for my students to attempt, however, for upper primary, they'd be able summarise their units of work, or even use as a tool to go back to throughout a unit so that they can see their knowledge grow. Mind maps are very common ways for teachers to present information so to have an electronic way would be great.

Now to glogster! I have seen this in action in upper primary and the children really love to use this web tool. I had never personally used it until now but can see the potential for all students and teacher. Personally I think I could use this to assist the school to promote our school open day as well as invitations for masses and as a presentation for children.  I would like to see the children use this as a means of presentation, as an assessment and a creative way to present their work. After looking at the ‘Decisions, Decisions’ glog I feel more confident in my ability to use this in my classroom. I think this is more of a whole class approach and could be uploaded to our class page so that parents can access what the children have been doing at school. I think this is a great tool!

I had a quick look at Prezi too. It seems really engaging and definitely a more interesting way of presenting and sitting through information. I think it might be the ‘PowerPoint of the future! I can see how students can just go onto all of these sites and create presentations for themselves without too much direction. Children are so autonomous these days and all of these are very self explanatory! Impressive web tools where else can things go, I am beginning to wonder??