Higher Learning- A reflection

 

In completing this course, I have learned how ICTs are not simply using technology in place of something else but using them to amplify and transform each students learning. I have discovered many useful tools that i can use to implement my teaching practice within the classroom. I have discovered new networks of readily accessible information through social media. I am now a members of groups over Facebook, Twitter and other forums that have helped to personally scaffold my learning . This platform has also served to  inform me of the latest innovations and resources that help to create an engaging and efficacious classroom environment through a productive and enriching pedagogical practice that incorporates ICT as a means of enhancing rather than dominating a lesson. I have enjoyed the challenge of implementing it in the first week of my prac ( Including creating a Wix website for HASS, which I learnt to do through this course. )and I am looking forward to exploring new ways for its use for the rest of my practical experience.

Quiz Show

Copyright Quiz Britain

 

For my digital artefact for Assignment 3 I decided to create a quiz that students could use for conceptual understanding.  This quiz would be able to be used in three different ways. Firstly upon initial interaction with the website it could be used as a way of students self-assessing their prior knowledge or even completed as a guided activity with the teacher, so as to provide immediate teacher and peer feedback. Secondly it could be used to scaffold students’ learning during the unit by helping them to remember concepts and they way in which they were/are used. Finally it could then be used as a revision construct to assess how students have acquired and used their knowledge to complete he assessment task.

The thing to decide was which game to use? There were many options available to create an interactive quiz such as Quiz Maker, Quiz Bean and many more as shown on myenglishteacher.eu’s blog 50+ Best Online Quiz and Test Makers for Teachers. While these were all good options I was after something with a little more familiarity. Two options I found were online quiz creation versions of  ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ and ‘Jeopardy’ from the Super Teacher’s Tools website. This helpful website was full of many interactive game templates and other useful resources such as interactive timers, dice and spinners.

After deliberating for a bit on how to go about it, I decided to select the Jeopardy Style
Review Game I felt that by using this format, where students give the question as the answer, it would elicit deeper understandings of concepts more than simply asking what is this? What is that?

*Update*

So after virtually completing my interactive quiz I stumbled across, during a search for my Jeopardy style game, a website, from San Clemente High School, that showed you how to create your own PowerPoint Review Game Templates. It showed you how to create your own quizzes in various formats, including the Jeopardy and Millionaire styles. I may try this way at a later date….

The Golden Child

copyright fanpop.

As I mentioned at the start of my blog I had recently moved to Tasmania from Qld.  This has been a great  move for my kids as the change has brought about a renewed and revitalised interest in schooling. My two eldest are more settled and our our little ‘Golden child’ , when it comes to education, has gone to even greater heights. So it is because of their learning that I have found out about ICT that has been used to transform their knowledge. The older grades use Minecraft as a way of recreating historically imortant buildings, e.g. recreating the Parthenon.

Because my daughter just loves to learn constantly, she cries as school holidays approach, I am constantly creating task for her to complete or letting her muck around on sites such as cool maths or study ladder. However this week she introduced me to a new site that they were using at school, Scratch Jr.

copyright Tufts University

When students use Scratch jr they are able to create their own interactive stories or games.  This could be used for transforming practice by students to use the concepts they have learnt to create stories or games that exhibit their conceptual understanding. In the process, they learn to solve problems, design projects, and express themselves creatively on the computer.

Deep Impact

As noted at the end of my last post, I have created a website for my lesson plans for the HASS strand on similarities between an Australian and Indonesian town in relation each other. ( see below)

As you can see it was a guided investigation that focused on location and climate, demographics and culture and comparison of the two.

I found many valuable resources that would transform student learning.

In regards to location i found an interactive google map (fig.1) that allowed the student to type in a place and seek direction to another allowing them to determine their location to one another.

(fig.1)

Graphs that could be embedded to a website and additional information provided upon clicking them. (fig 2.)

 

(fig 2.)

 

an interactive game (fig 3.) that highlights and contrasts how children live and are educated in Australia and Indonesia.

(fig 2.)

as well as conceptual videos and an online venn diagram creator.

The Matrix

Do you take the WordPress pill and stick with what you know or do you go for the Wix pill and begin a new more dangerous chapter?

That was the philosophical debate in which I found myself. I was going about what is considered to be a standard process of beginning my blog and thought I would just continue, Neo style , with my existence and use WordPress to create my website since I already had my blog there. However, like Neo in the Matrix, my simple life of unknowing cyber existence began to have rumblings of disquiet. No matter how much I tried to begin to develop a website things just would continue to pop up that made me question if it was worth it. I decided I’d had enough of all the stray bullets that were rapidly approaching whenever I sought to begin…

© Village Roadshow

….and with that I took the ‘red pill’ and changed my whole perspective to Wix. Wix gave me a better insight into how to create a website. I started to create the website for this course and began building. But once more like Neo , I didn’t realise my potential for success. At every turn another Mr Smith would appear to sabotage my work. I needed an oracle to show me how I could create an effective website for learning. This oracle came in the form of another uni subject. The assessment item required for the course was a support package task. I ‘Reloaded’ and  found this the perfect opportunity to test my competency at web design.

So after much trial and tribulation I was able to begin to read the matrix. Because of this training I began to control he matrix and was no only able to control the world of Mr smith but also find ‘revolutions’ and create not only a site for this course but also develop a site that I could use on my professional experience based upon the geography focus provided by my mentor.

 

Matrix and Matrix revolutions and all associated characters remain the Copyright of Village Roadshow Pictures .

Ex Machina

© Universal Pictures (2105)

Merriam Webster dictionary describes ex machina as a person or thing that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.

This feels how my learning area activities and website development are being resolved as of this moment. I was really struggling in terms of how to get students to effectively communicate observations and events as an ICT enriched learning experience. Through guidance I came to understand that they were to be based upon he enhancement of the learning  experience, not simply substitute existing techniques. Integration, by teachers, of ICT means changing the lesson in a beneficial way. So, in reference to finding a convoluted solution to my apparently insoluble difficulty, I found myself drawn to  Wiencke and Roblyer’s (2004) TIP model.

Wiencke, W. R., & Roblyer, M. D. (2004). A Problem-based Approach to Teaching the Technology Integration Planning (TIP) Model. In R. Ferdig, C. Crawford, R. Carlsen, N. Davis, J. Price, R. Weber, & D. A. Willis (Eds.), Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2004 (pp. 1474–1477). Atlanta, GA: AACE. Retrieved from http://www.editlib.org/INDEX.CFM?fuseaction=Reader.ViewAbstract&paper_id=13687

This form of technological backward design allowed me to view all aspects of the learning activities from different stages at the same time. By correlating the formative and summative assessment to the learning objectives I could alter or improve my activities to meet the requirements as I went along, ensure there were adequate resources and organise the learning environment to provide a relevant and enriching ICT unit.

Confessions of a dangerously muddled mind.

So after viewing a few of my fellow peers blog pages, such as Saniya’s for example, I realized it was time to create my own mind map of my ICT connection cloud. As you can see in the image above there is a lot of interconnection in the ICT elements of my life. Although I tried to separate them into academic and personal uses you can see that there is more of a hybrid consideration to their implications of use. The three types of lines are demonstrable of how directly they are link to one another. The thick lines represent a direct correlation in terms of use, the thinner lines are representative of consistent though not explicit use and the dotted lines show an occasional or implied use.

So much like other elements in my life and also as a highly illustrative on the inner working of my mind the confluence and variability of the map is complex, juxtaposed, messy and a bit scrambled.

 

Dr StrangeRAT……(or how i learned to stop worrying and understand the transformation framework.)

So it has been a couple of weeks since my last post. I exorcised an assignment demon from another subject, which ironically required me to use ICTs to create a transformative learning process for myself to project my ideas for lesson planning to be assessed. Whilst I struggled  with the process itself, it was on finalising my essay for EDC 3100 I was able to understand how and why the RAT framework works. I created a PowerPoint presentation that explained my reasoning for the direction and implications of the learning. This meant that my reasoning, rationale and objectives were reassembled into a presentation rather than a written as an essay and therefore it acted as a replacement. By creating it in this form my language and justification was amplified so as to create a neat, coherent and flowing train of thought which would be easily decipherable to a marker. Finally it completed a transformation of my learning by helping me to learn new skills that didn’t take the focus away from my actual outcomes. I learnt new skills in PowerPoint presentations, such as how to use animations, create triggers, and embed sounds and pictures within the multi modal text as well as how to convert it too a video so that the assessors could watch it via clicking on a hyperlink I had embedded in my assignment.

 

Finally, as you can see in the above picture a new skill I have learnt today is how to photoshop, ( not the best effort,granted, but it was a bit of fun and a new skillpicked up along the way).

Dazed and Confused…no longer

So I was getting a bit, freaked, confused and bogged down for the past fortnight. Thankfully I (finally) found the 1st weeks tutorial (human not technological error, I’m afraid) and watched in just prior to Chris’ 2nd tutorial. That cohesive structuring has allowed for the neurons to begin firing and  believe I can actually undertake the assignment without fear. I have submitted a draft for feedback and hope that I am able to progress to the next stage from here.

Lets do this Peter!

*NOTE* As I was about to publish this post I have already received some feedback and I’m ready to transform it into learning.

A New Hope: A New home, a new semester, a new life.

This is the beginning of my new life. Although I am beginning my 3rd year in studying Primary education at USQ, I feel as though I am starting from scratch once more. Recently my wife, 4 children (3 boys and 1 girl) and I move from sunny Brisbane to the cooler climes of beautiful Tasmania. I was to start studying again as soon as we arrived but I missed the cut off date by a day. So, instead, I used this time to be a house Dad and look after my youngest son. After being a chef/cook for the past 20 odd years it was good to actually have a break and now i’m not working full time I feel refreshed and ready to tackle this course, semester and the rest of my degree.

Here’s to an awesome semester!

One of our last photos in Brissy. Sitting on the banks of the Brisbane River at Southbank with my four kids.

Picture of an overcast sky over the Tamar River looking down from our verandah.

The same river on a beautiful sunny day with the Tamar reflecting like a mirror.