Week 3

Blogging:

I have enjoyed creating and editing my own blog space, its great to know that I have my own piece of the internet that is mine and mine alone. There are also many potential benefits of blogging for students in schools some of these benefits as well as some negative and interesting aspects of blogging are outlined below:

Plus	Minus	Interesting
·  Modern – keeping students up to date with developing technology as they learn to blog, post links, images, create voki’s and a multitude of other skills learnt in cyberspace. ·  Interactive – students can work together, read and  comment on others work ·  Fun – posting learning onto a blog is more enjoyable than writing a report. ·  Engaging for kinaesthetic and visual and auditory learners ·  Connects students with others around the world as learning goes beyond the classroom walls. ·  Encourages student response to others work ·  Encourages students to share their work with others ·  The teacher is able to track the students learning progress ·  Students learn to reflect on their own learning from an early age and to accept constructive criticism as well as positive feedback ·  Content is chronologically ordered and is easy to upload using ready formatted programs ·  Newest content is at the top of the page to allow the reader to start at the top and read down to where he or she left off last time ·  Teachers can use blogs as a simple tool to post announcements, assignments and notifications to students and their caregivers. ·  Students and teachers can post useful links to other websites to enrich the content being given ·  Students have equal opportunity to record their own thoughts and learning, from the loud student to the quiet student, both have equal writing space and a keyboard as their tool to voice who they are and what they stand for ·  Students and teachers are able to get to know each other in a new non-threatening space ·  Encourages all students to write, even those who may not enjoying writing ·  Close attention must be paid to spelling and grammar as others around the world can read posts ·  Blogging can open up the student teacher relationship ·  Blogging can allow students to communicate and work with professionals and experts on the content they are studying ·  Students are taking ownership of their learning ·  Enhances reading skills ·  Students learn the responsibilities that go along with public publishing (language use, content, copy write)	· Some students may not have internet access · May be confronting for some students to post their learning as there may be the fear of others reacting negatively to it · Danger of internet safety as students connect with people from around the world · Un-supervised blogging could pose potential dangers for young people such as predators and cyber bullying aimed at peers, teachers and others · Posting of copy write material without referencing the source · Blogging to complete an assignment for a grade can restrict students imagination and personal input into blogging · Students may find it hard to write their thoughts and learning	·  Students can explore a new world in a new way ·  Students are able to experience the seemingly  ‘grown up’ world of the internet from a young age with real learning possibilities available to them ·  There are various different applications that support web logging available ·  Private blogs are available so that students and teachers can communicate privately providing and receiving feedback without posting it to a public site ·

My experience so far with this blog as been positive in most ways. As far as a learning blog goes it has been scaffolded well. Each post has been guided by the lecturers to ensure that learning has been achieved. I have needed to engage with these tools in order to reflect on them, and although my skill level was low to start with I have been able to follow the directions to achieve this engagement. I feel that my skills are continually improving and this is due to the scaffolded nature of this task.

I also feel that a blog would be an effective tool to use as a means of sharing personal thoughts and information with friends and family and the wider world. I, myself am not inclined to do this openly but would be willing to sharing thoughts about an event or place on a personal blog. Students would also have this option to create a personal blog to share their learning or thoughts or both. This would have the potential to open the student up for cyber bullying or becoming a victim of a predator. Learning Managers need to ensure that students understand the dangers of sharing too much personal information on the web through personal posts such as blogs.

Wiki:

I have created a wiki space for this course. The link is http://chelle04.wikispaces.com/

I will use this wiki as a learning tool to gain skills using a wiki space. I have uploaded some images, written text and embedded a you tube link to a clip I used in a lesson with a year 2 class.  I found embedding the you tube clip a little hard at first as it did not work the first couple of times I did it, so I read the instructions again and kept trying – eventually I had success and it is now there for the world to view. The images I have uploaded are some photographs that I have taken. I found this task quite simple and was able to upload and resize the images quickly and easily. This task could easily be mastered by a primary school student from about year 3 upwards and what a great tool for sharing images and photographs both taken by the student and found elsewhere. Students could take photographs of the artwork or projects and upload them to share. This would give students a real sense of achievement as their work is now published.

Strengths	Weaknesses
·      Collaborative learning ·      Supportive ·      Fun ·      Easy ·      Interactive	·      Risk of inappropriate content ·      Potential for damaging content to be posted ·      Non-scaffolded spaces will not support learning
Opportunities	Threats
·      Students can work together and share ideas and build knowledge ·      Share knowledge, information, research, ideas ·      Assist peers learning ·      Build relationships online ·      Build online knowledge and confidence	·      Non cooperative members ·      Important information deleted and lost ·      Inappropriate content published

Websites:

I've just created a website using weebly.com it is fantastic. I haven't looked too deeply at the features available yet but so far have found it to be very user friendly. I believe that higher primary students would have no problems understanding and operating this tool. It could be used to share work, excursions, incursions or many other aspects of learning.

The link to by weebly site is:
http://chelle04.weebly.com/

Week 2

DeBono's Thinking Hats

The 6 thinking hats created by Edward DeBono for the purpose of a thinking framework to scaffold learners thinking and learning. This process is valuable to scaffold thinking and learning and allows different thinking to be applied to different situations. It is a framework to guide rather than restrict thinking. Students can use this framework as a valuable tool to reach a deeper level of thinking and then engage in higher order thinking by thinking about their thinking.
This process was used to scaffold our thinking about the question of mobile phone use in classrooms. This process has worked well with a large variety of thinking coming forward.

This forum is reflective of constructivism. During this process the learner takes an active and self managed role in learning. The learner seeks out knowledge either individually or collaboratively. In order to participate in this forum we were required to seek out information and then share this information with our peers to collaboratively build knowledge.

The forum also reflects the cognitivism theory as this involves mental processing of information. Information is transferred to the long term memory through organising, chunking and connecting this information. Edward DeBono's thinking hats provided scaffolding for information to be organised and grouped. So now this information that we have individually and collaboratively constructed has been organised and stored into our long term memory.

Behaviourism states that the learning is acquired through external stimuli. This stimuli can be in the form of physical rewards, or motiviation to learn more. During e learning the material can often be broken into smaller steps and provide positive or negative feedback along the journey to motivate the learner. I was motivated by the behaviourism theory to participate through the motivation to learn more, knowledge of the outcome of passing my assessment and because I was only required to contribute a smaller section to the forum.

Reading this wiki has been interesting, I participated personally by commenting in the red hat, intuitive section. This hat provides opportunitiy to put forward feelings on the topic. My feelings have both negative and positive perspectives as outlined below.

"Mobile phones are a great device with many features listed above, these features each have endless teaching opportunities for teachers who are willing and able to embrace this technology. Students can learn how to organise themselves and their school task, record events through a photographic diary and many other things".
"Some things I don't like about this idea is the potential for distraction that could come about in classrooms if the use of mobile phones isnt introduced and monitored well. Also there would be a lot of work convincing some parents that their child really is learning while using a mobile phone as there are still parents who don't believe in the child having a mobile phone".


The black hat provides the judgement perspective, the negative aspect of the topic.
"The art of hand writing might become a dying art if mobile phones are used to complete homework, send messages and complete lessons. Will the students of tomorrow be able to write their name?"

Benefits of participating in a wiki like this:
A wiki like this provides opportunities for all students to participate. It is less confrontational as there is no face to face discussions. There is opportunity to participate anonymously. Wiki's like this one help participants to build trust in their peers, as they share their thoughts and learning in a public arena. One element of trust is knowing that your peers will not change or delete your comments, another element is trusting your peers judgement about your personal thoughts and learning.

Issues participating in a wiki like this:
Issues that could arise from a wiki like this would be other participants changing or deleting your comments or posts. In order to participate each member would need to have complete trust in their peers.

Drawbacks of participating in a wiki like this:
I found it hard to comment on this wiki, as I did not want to post information that was incorrect. I did not want to look silly in front of my peers. If using a wiki like this for students they would experience the same feelings of apprenhension.

Wiki's like this one can contribute to student learning by providing the students with the opportunity to share and build on their own and their peers knowledge. It could be a very effective collaborative learning tool if learners are scaffolded effectively. Scaffolding would include how to use a wiki, ethics involved in participating, such as not altering or deleting other persons comments and posts, being sensitive to other learners abilities and perspectives.

By providing specific questions to guide thinking this wiki supported the collection of a range of perspectives from each individual participant. This range was extended by allowing a variety of participants who come from different walks of life and have different views about the same topic. Each participant will be able to provide a unique perspective for each different thinking hat even though each participant is answering the same questions to guide their thinking they will still have a different answer to each other participant.

TPACK
Teaching Pedagogical and Content Knowledge
Content: Actual subject matter that is to be taught.
Pedagody: The process and practice or methods of teaching and learning
Technology: Chalkboards, books, computers, video.

What is TPACK?

• A framework
• Teacher knowledge is required to integrate technology into teaching, simply adding technology to teaching is not enough, teachers need technological knowledge to incorporate technology effectively.
• Teaching is a complex activity and cognitive skill that is dependent on access to highly organised systems of knowledge including knowledge of student thinking and learning and knowledge of the subject matter being taught.
• Recognises that pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge need to be known and work together to make an effective teacher, TPACK provides the framework for combining these two elements, it blends pedagogical and content knowledge.
• The teacher takes the knowledge of subject matter then using their pedagogical knowledge organises, adapts and presents the content knowledge in an accessible way for learners to achieve learning.
• Technologies have now come to the forefront of education and are changing the nature of the traditional classroom.
• Technologies can be used to represent and formulate subject matter and make if morea ccissible to learners.
• Representations, analogies, examples, explanations and demonstrations all make content more accessible to the learner and can all incorporated into learning through the use of technologies.
• Teachers can often be reluctant to embrace the change of technology for many reasons including but not limited to: fear of technology or fear of change, lack or time, lack of support, lack of access, lack of knowledge. However teachers not only need to know how to use today's technology but they also need the skills to embrace future technology.
• In the past teachers could focus on content and pedgogy in their teaching as technology moved slowly and did not change much in their career, this is no longer the case. Now teachers must have up to date knowledge not only of technology but also how to incorporate this into their teaching successfully.
• Technology has often been considered separate to content and pedagogy but the TPACK framework states that this is not so, all three areas must be blended and thoughtfully interwoven for successful teaching today. Technology must not be taught in isolation to pedagogy and content, it must be used in relation to the content or subject matter in a meaningful and authentic context.
• PCK - Pedagogical content knowledge.
• TCK - Technological content knowledge.
• TPK - Technological pedagogical knowledge.
• TPCK - Technological pedagodical content knowledge.
• The complexity of teacher knowledge makes it difficult to represent it in one overarching framework, but TPCK provides a framework for teachers to tease apart some of the key issues and consider how content, pedagogy and technically work together to create a richer learning experience for today's learner.

Week 1

Learning Styles

WOW, a new skill learnt, inserting an image into my blog.

I have just taken a learning style quiz and the results are quite interesting. It has revealed that the best way I learn is Intrapersonal (by myself) I would disagree with this, as I feel I learn more during a lecture or a group study session and certainly not by myself. Although I do need some time by myself to digest what I have heard and read. The next learning style on my chart is logical (number smart), hmmm well I wouldn't consider myself number smart, but I do like things to be in a logical order and organised, so this fits well. This is followed closely by linguistic (word smart), once again I wouldn't consider myself word smart, although upon reflection I agree that you do need strong word knowledge in order to write university assignments. I do enjoy writing and in the past have enjoyed constructing short stories. I have realised through this activity that I do not recognise my strengths enough.

My thoughts
Learning styles within a classrom could contain both advantages and disadvantages depending how they are used and catered for by the learning manager.
An advantage would be that you can connect with the learner and ensure that the content you are teaching reaches the students long term memory by delivering it in their preferred learning style.
A disadvantage is that if the learning manager is focussing their on teaching methods one or two specific learning styles then the other learning styles are neglected. If content is only delivered in a student's preferred learning style then the student misses opportunities to develop the other learning styles.

Mind Maps
We were also asked to look at mind maps and to create a mind map and reflect on it. I have created a mind map about myself. I have learnt how to create the mind map and to save it as a JPG image. Now to learn how to embed it into here.....
(OK so first I have to find where it saved on my computer??)

Bubbl.us:
I found this site very useful and interesting, it is simple to use, so would be a great tool in the classroom for students to create their own mind maps about their projects, thoughts or to reflect on their learning. It allows the user to create colourful mind maps with single or multiple words in each bubble. The mind map can be moved around and edited easily.
I did find it limiting after listening to Tony Buzan discuss mind maps. Bubbl.us did not allow me to put in curved lines to link ideas (well I was unable to accomplish this, I am willing to be proven wrong if anyone would like to show me how). The key words also were in bubbles as opposed to being written on the branches as Buzan suggests.

My thoughts:

Buzan believes that mind maps are an effective and efficient tool for learning and storing knowledge. Mind maps should be colourful, as the brain loves colour and this makes the information easier to remember, have curved lines as opposed to straight lines, as the brain is more intrigued with curved lines and becomes easily bored with straight lines and does not take in the information. Each branch of the mind map should only contain one key word, this gives the creator more freedom when adding sub lines off the main lines and headings, a single word leaves more room to add information. Buzan states that mind maps allow links to be made between information and ideas this is a very effective way to store information in the long term memory of the brain, as the brain thinks by imagination and association.