Reflective Synopsis - Assessment Task 2

Wow...what a course so far! I can honestly say I have never been busier, I can also say I have never learnt so much about different technological tools in such a short space of time. I have also never had so many different accounts set up. I have an account with Flickr, Mahara, Glogster and slideshare, and that's just the ones off the top of my head. Of course we have been introduced to too many ICTs to comment on here, so I will reflect on those that I intend to use regularly in the classroom.

While looking at all the marvelous resources, it is important to remember how they will assist children in their learning journey. Teacher centred and student centred learning has been often spoken about in our online courseware. It is always important to remember that the teacher is there to teach the students, therefore the students should be the central focus. I believe ICTs maintain a high level of student centred learning as it firstly gains the engagement of students and secondly, with most of the resources it would be the student who would be taking the lead in their project. For instance, if I was to give a project to a grade 4 class that required them to create a Glog promoting road safety around schools. They would, assisted my myself, research the issue and collaborate their findings. They would then design a Glog that will clearly promote their message about road safety and donate it to the school, local police and the community.

As I am a creative person with a strong background in theatre (particularly musical theatre), I have a strong belief of the benefits that come out of the arts. Drama and dance help with self esteem and building confidence in young people, they are also easily adapted to be embedded in other subject areas. If I were doing a unit on ancient Egypt, I could create a project where children are to choose a topic or story about ancient Egypt, research it, write a script, film the play, edit and post to YouTube or TeacherTube as a way of donating back to the community. This unit/project combines SOSE, English, Technology and the Arts.

Another resource that I found engaging and would use in a primary classroom are Vokis. As I mentioned in my blog http://miriamsblogonprimaryedu.blogspot.com/2010/04/ict-classroom-tools.html, I would use Vokis as an engagement tool to introduce a topic or theme. I could also program Vokis to answer or ask questions. This would encourage students to ask questions just to hear the technology. It is important that our students are absorbing and retaining the information that we provide them, if it means that teachers have to find alternative ways to present the information, I think it's necessary.

There were so many other wonderful resources to use in the classroom such as PowerPoints, Flickr, Wikipedia, Incompetech etc. If you would like to read about my thoughts on these tools please visit these pages: http://miriamsblogonprimaryedu.blogspot.com/2010/04/wikipedia.html http://miriamsblogonprimaryedu.blogspot.com/2010/04/powerpoint.html http://miriamsblogonprimaryedu.blogspot.com/2010/04/butterfly-life-cycle.html http://miriamsblogonprimaryedu.blogspot.com/2010/04/incompetech.html

In summary, this has been a wonderful learning experience for myself. I look forward to next year when I have a class of my own with whom I can implement these ICTs. As the world wide web keeps changing and growing at a phenomenal rate, there will be plenty of new ICTs available in no time at all. The world we live in has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. Children born today live in a world that is full of technology, it seems strange to shy away from teaching these children with the technological devices that they are so familiar with. We must do our best, as educators to teach these children higher order thinking, as they are our country's future.

Mahara and ePortfolios

Mahara took a while to get my head around and I'm still learning a lot about it. From my understanding, it is an online social networking site for professionals. I can see how it will be useful when I am a qualified teacher. I'll be able to store most of my teaching resources online and keep them organised. I could also add pictures and samples of my lesson plan and how they worked out. This would be great if I am applying for a new job, or just want to keep a record of lesson plans that worked well so I can re-use them in the future. It would also be great if a colleague of my who lives/teaches a long distance away from me, wants a resource that I have, I could give them the secret URL and they would have access to that resource.

I'm sure there are plenty of other uses for Mahara but as I said, I'm still learning about its features.

The wonderful world of Glogs

Glogs are an awesome device that could easily be implemented in the classroom. They are great, you can add music, videos, pictures and lots of little graphics (some that are animated). This would engage learners attention very quickly and hold their attention as there is so much you can add to glogs it would be hard to get bored! There are heaps of different themes to choose from so depending of the age of your class there is something to suit everyone.

This tool would be great for the 'Relate-Create-Donate" theory. If my class were to do a unit on 'Spiders', I would firstly get the students to research what spiders are found in our local area - Spiders in our backyard. Then we would take or find pictures or clear illustrations of the various spiders, present our information as to whether they are poisonous or not and add it all together on a Glog. We would then donate it to the community to educate locals and visitors on what spiders are found in our backyard. It could be on display on an interactive computer at the visitors information centre.

Incompetech

I love this one! Music has always be used as a way to evoke emotion in people. Wagner was used during Hitler's reign as a form of propaganda. Certain musicals like 'Les Miserables', 'Wicked' or 'Rent' were such powerful pieces of theatre because of the fantastic music that was involved. If I could take that principle into the classroom, and use powerful music (even just as underscoring to a topic) and evoke just some emotion in my students it would make it a more meaningful lesson.

I found a little piece on Incompetech that started slow and had a steady beat, it moved into an eerie still phrase which built to a crescendo that was beautifully flowing. One idea I had was that I could use this piece as a starting point and ask children what insect they could see accompanying this music. I would get the students think of the mannerism that a particular insect might have and create their own movement piece to this music. This would incorporate a few learning areas such as science with the insect topic, music and dance.

Slide Share

I have been trying for a while to work out slide share and how to add audio to a slideshow but I was unsuccessful. I tried the different help sections and watching the tutorials but I think there must have been something wrong with my account as I don't have the icon to create a slidecast. The concept of slideshare would be easily done in Windows Movie Maker. There I could add all the slides and audio together to create the same effect. This could be used over the Internet for on the school Wiki as part of homework. Or if a child was away and needed to catch up they could watch the slideshow at home. The slideshow could be edited and reused many times.

I don't think I would use slideshare as a regular tool as it wasn't user friendly and I could create the same sort of thing with Windows Movie Maker and post to YouTube. I appreciate that it may be a technical problem related only to my account and therefore others may have had no issues with it. I think it's great that my lecture was able to show us all these different tools as I didn't know half of them existed, let alone thought how I could implement them into classroom lessons.

p.s If anyone had the same problem or knows how to fix it, please comment and let me know.

Thanks.

INSECTS powerpoint on slideshare

Here is the powerpoint I had made and added to slideshare. When I uploaded it, I lost my video on page 6 and readded it to page 5. So unfortunately I have a blank page 6.

INSECTS

View more presentations from Miriam.

Wikipedia

I did a search on 'fly' in wikipedia and found that there was a lot of information as I was expecting. What I was not expecting was that there was also a video on a fly cleaning itself. If my grade 2 class had performed a search on Wikipedia to gain some background information on flies, they would have also found this little video. It was very long but I found it fascinating to watch.

There was a lot of information on the page and a lot of it was in technical language. As I was looking at Wikipedia for use in a grade 2 class, I wouldn't use it as a device that the students could use by themselves. It think a lot of the students would have trouble reading and understanding the language used. I would be able to use Wikipedia in a class if the students were watching and listening as I directed them through the webpage and explained different terms. I would need to summarise the webpage and put it into a language that the students would be able to understand. I think they would find the little video on the page very interesting and it would captivate their attention. It is embedded below for you to have a look at.

For an older class, I think wikipedia would be a great tool to use for students to perform some background research independently.

Some ideas for Google Earth

Google Earth is a tool that I found very interesting. Once I had downloaded it onto my computer I found myself playing around, typing in addresses around the world with much enjoyment. I think if I can find so much interest in this tool, my grade 2 class is bound to find it just as interesting, if not more so.

An idea I had with regards to implementing this tool was, for instance if we were looking at how certain animals prefer certain climates we could visit the different habitats of certain animals. Using polar bears as an example, I could use Google Earth go to the Arctic Circle and get the children to see, first hand how different it is to the Gold Coast and why it might be that Polar Bears natural climate is the Arctic Circle. We could then look at the differences in habitat and discuss why animals have climates that they are more suited to. This would also bring in a discussion as to how and why animals have needed to evolve to survive in their environment.

Programming a tour into Google Earth would also be an interesting experience for the students. Via Google Earth we could visit many different habitats of animals that we were learning about. Flying from one habitat to the next would give the students a more thorough understanding of the vast differences of each habitat.

YouTube video on life-cycle of a butterfly.

This is a video that I found on YouTube that demonstrates the life-cycle of a butterfly. It's a great video that I feel kids would find interesting. I intend to show my grade 2 class this video as they are doing a unit on Insects.

Picnik.

butterfly-life-cycle
Originally uploaded by Miriam346

This is the picture that I re-sized and cropped on picnik. It was easy to use and did the job. I would be able to use Picnik as a tool for editing pictures to use in class. For instance if I found a picture that would be great to use as an educational device, but it had other images that I wanted to get rid of, I could crop the picture so it only had the image I wanted to use and re-size it accordingly.

butterfly life cycle

butterfly life cycle
Originally uploaded by jojoebi

This is another image I found that I could encorporate into my lessons. As my class are doing a unit on insects this would be a good image to show the different stages of a butterfly's life cycle.

There are a lot of images that could be used in the classroom to show children what an insect looks like. I could add 5 pictures of insects (and some that aren't insects) and get children, as a class to classify each picture to see if it is an insect or not.

Insect Fear!!!

Insect Fear!!!
Originally uploaded by Mr. Greenjeans

I could use this picture in class to get children to classify this as an insect by pointing out what makes and insect an insect. Such as 6 legs, antennea, 3 main body parts etc.

This is a great resource for the classroom.

Powerpoint

I have finished making a powerpoint presentation on Insects, as that is the unit that my grade 2 class is undertaking this term. I enjoyed playing around with powerpoint, adding pictures and videos. I tried to keep my powerpoint under control and not put too much in, as I don't want the children to get distracted from what I'm trying to teach them. My class is very enthusiastic about this unit of work. After each break, a number of children come back to class with different insects to show my Mentor Teacher and myself.

The use of powerpoint presentations will be a really useful tool in the classroom. Not just for an overview but also when I want to get into detail. It's great because you can add pictures, sounds and videos. All these different tools will help give children a more detailed understanding of any topic that I want to teach. Also the ability to use many different teaching styles will be an advantage so that each child has the opportunity to learn via his or her preferred style.

When I work out how to add my powerpoint onto blogger.com I'll put it up. Stay tuned.

Prac is underway

I have completed 3 days on prac and so far so good. I have a lovely grade 2 class without any major behaviour management issues. I am enjoying observing the Mentor Teacher and how she engages and teaches the children. I have noted many different techniques that she uses to transition children from one task to the next. The main one to regain their attention after a transition is the rhythmic clapping. She also uses the praise approach where she will praise a child who is doing the right thing by describing what she is doing i.e Sally is doing a wonderful job by sitting at her desk with her eyes on me. She isn't fidgeting or walking around, I can tell that she is ready to learn.

The use of ICT's is varied in that a small group of learners will use the computers during the reading groups. There is a smart board in the classroom, but as the teacher has not been trained on it yet it hasn't been used a great deal. During second break today I had a bit of a play around with it and found quite a few interactive websites that teach about insects (the unit of work for this term). When I have the opportunity to teach the class I intend to utilise some of the these websites so as to gain the engagement of the entire class straight away. PowerPoints will also be a useful ICT tool that I could incorporate into my lessons, the use of different sounds and moving pictures will give the children more insight in the life cycles of insects. Today we also had a computer class. During this class the children were asked to, in paint, draw an insect and using the text tool label the parts of an insect such as head, thorax, abdomen, 6 legs and antennae.

The children really enjoyed their class in the computer and look forward to any work that utilised ICTs within the classroom.

ICT classroom tools

Throughout the ICT course term 1 our lecturer, Scot Aldred, has introduced us to many different technological tools that could be of use during our teaching profession. With many of the tools I was able to see how I could translate it into a classroom situation.

We were introduced to voki which is a free avatar web program. This was probably the most interesting tool that I was introduced to. Voki could be used effectively in the classroom as a 'hook' tool. For instance, if i was taking a grade 4 class on colonisation in Australia, I could use a voki to introduce the topic and grab the attention of the class, getting them interested straight away.

While I could use a voki as an engagement tool for the class as a whole, the use of Blogs could be used as a tool for each child as an individual. Blogs could be used for students to reflect on a learning experience or as an assignment that can be opened up for public view. With their work viewable by the public, I would like to believe students would put more effort into their work so that it is to the best of their ability.

The wiki proved to be harder to get my head around than the other tools that were introduced to us. After a lot of thought and playing with the tool, I managed to get my head around it. From what I understand, wikis are a way to have a group conversation via technology, a bit like a blog that everyone can contribute to. The use of a wiki would be very beneficial for students working on a group assignment. Via the wiki they would be able to collaborate easily outside of school hours.

These are just three of the many tools that are available to us in the 21 century. Of course, as technology evolves so quickly I'm sure by the time I am actually out in the workforce there will be many new technologies that we can use. Children of today are born into a technological world that is constantly evolving. The Internet and it vast features are part of their everyday life, it is a natural progression that this technology, and subsequent technologies, should be brought into their learning environment for both engagement and educating children not for the past, but for the future.