Images & Podcasts

The saying is "a picture says a thousand words" and I have always found this to be very true. This image is of my son, Thomas, on his 1st birthday. I feel it says many things..... even if you don't know him, or the situation :)

Images are wonderful to include into your teaching, especially for any visual learners, and even for those learners who may not be visually inclined. If there is a picture to accompany your teaching, it can act as a model for your students, a stimulant for class discussion or evaluative thinking, or it could simply be there to break up a lot of information and regain student attention. There are many sites to look up for images or you could always take your own. If you are looking for images, try Google Images (www.google.com.au/imghp) or the microsoft office website (http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/images/). They are good places to start.

As a Film and TV teacher, images are the basis of the subject. Images are viewed and analysed or deconstructed; they are created and turned into productions; images are also used for demonstration of skills, equipment and programming instructions.

Much like with Powerpoint, I felt the tools online for resizing images did not have the same capabilities as software such as Photoshop which is available in Film and TV classrooms. With Photoshop you can also digitally manipulate images to suit your needs and then resize them. Resizing images can be very tricky also because once you lower the resolution of an image, you can not raise it without distorting or pixelating the image.

Podcasts are another tool which greatly benefits the classroom. In English, the biggest issue faced when studying a novel is trying to get students to read the book! With podcasts, the novel could be read in sections, uploaded to an LMS, website or wiki, then students would be expected to download and listen to the podcast before the next lesson. This would also benefit students with Learning Disabilities such as a Speech Language Impairment, or students with visual Impairments. Just about every student out there has an mp3 or mp4 player in some form or another (e.g. in their mobile phone, Ipods, etc) which would make podcasts extremely portable. This would help in field trip scenarios. Students would be expected to download the podcast before the field trip, then during the podcast would guide their learning. Within my unit of work for Assignment 3 students are expected to read the book Great Expectations. This can be a struggle for a lot of students so I have found a podcast they can download and listen to if they prefer that to reading (http://www.podcastdirectory.com/podshows/3235752).

I also looked at Voicethread and it looks to me like it is a similar concept to blogs, only you make your comments in voice rather then typing them. This would bring back the "human" element to blogging because you can tell a great deal from a person's voice in their tone and language choices, pace, etc. The downside to this would be that a lot of people are intimidated by leaving voice messages. It is a lot easier to type what you really think/feel then it is to record it. I feel that you would either get less comments or not as many due to the nature of having to record yourself to post your comment. If anyone has any further comments on this I would love to hear them as I fear my own personal feelings may be clouding my judgement with this tool.

Thanks,
April :)

Read Write Think

Hello all,

Here is a website which I have found that has a LOT of different interactive tools designed to get kids engaged in learning. There are different categories and are suitable for grades 3 - 12. Take a look. There's lots there which can be adapted to many different subject areas.

http://www.readwritethink.org/classroom-resources/student-interactives/

Thanks,
April :)

Andrew Churches

Andrew is a teacher who believes that in order to “prepare students for the future, we must prepare them for change, teach them to question and think, to adapt and modify, to sift and sort.” (Churches, A n.d.) On his website, he also states “Bloom’s Taxonomy is about using technologies to facilitate learning.”

Andrew has done extensive work with Bloom’s Taxonomy in relation to ICT’s and there are some extremely useful PDF’s on all 6 levels of thinking on his website, which would be very beneficial, not just in the context of this course, but in an further learning design. The PDFs include definitions, key verbs and possible activities. There are also countless other resources on the website in relation to Bloom's Taxonomy. I highly encourage you all to take a look and see what is there.

http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/About+Me

Powerpoint and Prezi.com

In the past I have had very little to do with Powerpoint or presentations so it is not a tool that I am very familiar with. I have heard of some schools requiring you to “present” your class using Powerpoint, the thought of which made me a little nervous. Thankfully I was never asked to do this.

I have made a Powerpoint presentation and uploaded it to my website www.aprilljames.weebly.com It is very basic as my skills using Powerpoint are very limited, but I did try to play around a bit and add a few different things. Prezi.com gave me a similar impression of its capabilities. There were just a few different effects in the way it was presented.

Both these tools would benefit visual and linguistic learners who like to see pictures and words to accommodate their learning. It would also help in a situation where there is a lot of information and students could print out a copy of the slides and add their own notes. Students could also work independently and at their own pace.

I can see how Powerpoint and Prezi.com would be effective in some classrooms, but as a Film and TV teacher, I feel there are so many more appropriate tools available for this subject. The whole idea of Film and TV is to encourage students to get involved in production and apply their learning of film as an art form to their own productions. I do not feel that Powerpoint or Prezi.com have the capabilities of doing this. Film and TV students have access to cameras, sound equipment and editing software, the use of which is a requirement of the subject, therefore I feel it would be more appropriate to encourage them to use that technology rather than Powerpoint or Prezi.com.

Learning Management Systems

I completed high school over a decade ago when assignments were submitted hand written and in order to complete research for that assignment you had to physically go to the library, open a book and hand write notes! Something that is virtually unheard of these days.

One of the main reasons I never continued on to university after I completed high school was that the idea of going to a huge university campus and orientating my way around to find lecture rooms and the library, etc simply intimidated me. Another was that I wanted to be working and making money, not spending all my time in lectures and tutorials. When I began university last year I was amazed and delighted to see how much things had changed. All my class information was available for me through Blackboard (which is now Moodle) and I could access it whenever and wherever was convenient for me. These types of systems are invaluable to students like myself. At the beginning of last year I unexpectedly fell pregnant with my second child and I was afraid that I would not be able to continue studying this year with a new born baby.

Through the use of the LMS (Moodle) this has not been the case. I have managed to fit in studying full time, and keeping track of my family. If there were no LMS there is no way I could have continued studying , spending the majority of my week in a lecture room, expecting my baby to either fend for himself or to keep quiet in the corner.

There are more and more young people out there who, for one reason or another, simply cannot physically be present in class every day. For some it may be a simple as they live too far away from the closest school. Others may need to support themselves or their families through working, and others may not be well enough to attend class every day. For these students an LMS would be invaluable. They could keep up to date with the work that was needed, keep in contact with their peers and teachers, even work collaboratively through links to wikis and blogs. This type of system also encourages students to take responsibility for their learning as they are the ones who decide when, where and what they want to study, and this in turn encourages life-long-learning. I believe that Learning Management Systems are the classrooms of the future. Within my subject areas, Learning Management Systems would be extremely useful, especially within Film and Television. As this is a subject which requires a great amount of personal time to create and produce productions, watch and analyse films, and learn the content in order to complete tasks. An LMS would allow students to access information and collaborate about productions at convenient times to themselves. Trying to achieve continuity between classes when you are trying to analyse a film can be especially challenging. With an LMS, the film could be uploaded for students’ to access at home and they could watch it all in one go. There could be review questions to get students to think about the film while it was fresh in their minds, and a discussion board or wiki where students could add their thoughts or analysis of the film. The LMS could also contain all sorts of technical information about the film which students cold refer to throughout their analysis.

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom’s Taxonomy is about “levels of thinking and the processing of learning experiences” (Frangenheim, E 2006 p. 22). Learning is divided into six processes; Create, Evaluate, Analyse, Apply, Understand and Remember. These six processes are then divided into two groups; lower order thinking (Remember, Understand and Apply), and higher order thinking (Create, Evaluate and Analyse). (Frangenheim, E 2006). Although lower order thinking does have a place in the classroom, if the focus is on higher order thinking, learning experiences will be more authentic and engaging for learners.


Within the Essential Learnings by the end of Year 9 for English (Queensland Studies Authority, 2009), there is a clear focus on higher order thinking within the Ways of Working. Seven out of the nine Ways of Working require students to analyse, construct, justify and reflect, which are all higher order thinking processes (Queensland Studies Authority, 2009).


The table below is Blooms Digital Taxonomy (Churches, A 2008) and helps identify verbs associated with each level of thinking. It also gives some great digital examples of activities for each level of thinking.






References
Churches, A 2008, Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy. Viewed 15.11.2010 from
http://pkab.wordpress.com/2008/11/26/peta-konsep-ranah-belajar-bloom-taxonomy/

Frangenheim, E 2006, Reflections on Classroom Thinking Strategies. Loganholme: Rodin Educational Publishing.

Queensland Studies Authority 2009, Essential Learnings by the end of Year 9. Viewed 01.07.2010 from http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/7284.html

Hello all,

I have just set up my wiki with an exercise attached. Please feel free to contribute. It is however a fictitious situation so feel free to be as creative as you like. In my mind I have every resource available to me :)

http://aprilswiki.wikispaces.com/

Thanks,
April

Websites and Wikis

I have always thought that the idea of incorporating a class website with links to class notes, activities, discussion boards, etc would be a fantastic tool for learning; however, I also always thought that it would require a specialised IT expert who knew coding not only to set it up but to maintain it. These skills I have never possessed and therefore my idea was hidden in the back of my brain and never executed.

When I read that we would be setting up a webpage this week, I was very apprehensive. I really did not feel that I had the skills needed to create one, but I was pleasantly surprised by how simple it was. Basically all you did was type in your details, decide on a name, and then drag and drop formatting options according to how you want your webpage to look and then you start adding your personal touches like text and photos, etc.

A classroom website would be such as effective tool for any subject. Teachers would be able to keep absent students up to date with class information, parents and support staff could be kept informed on class and student progress, and students could have access to assignment task sheets and class activity sheets, eliminating the excuse of students losing important information and not knowing what to do.

The wiki was even simpler to create, and would be extremely useful in any context involving the need for students to liaise with one another, across all subjects. Students could contribute their own part of the activity on the wiki whenever was convenient for them, and then remainder of the group could do the same. Wikis would also be beneficial used for rough draft work and peer reviews. The student could upload their assessment rough draft on the wiki, and the teacher, or peers could comment or make changes where needed. This process could continue until the assessment was completed.

Within my teaching context, I would use the website and wiki as an assessment piece for a novel. In groups, Students would need to create an overview of the novel for the homepage then link it to pages containing character profiles, a plot synopsis, word definitions, and a summary of themes and historical context of the novel. These pages would be incorporated as exercises throughout the unit of work so that the workload was distributed throughout rather than the task being too overwhelming to be completed at the end of the unit. The wiki would serve as a means of communication between groups in relation to both the planning and completion phases of the assessment.

Learning Theory

Learning Theories are a very interesting topic for me. I find myself testing them out and analysing people's behavior around me, especially that of my 4 year old. Behaviourism is one which has worked very well in my house, particularly when we were going through potty training. Every time he went to the potty he was praised and given a treat. Within 2 weeks he had mastered it, during which time we had slowly stopped praising him everytime.

Further to this it is very interesting to observe the students at high school and their behaviours and how they learn. A lot of which mirror those of my 4 year old! However, whenever looking at learning theories it is important not to get too caught up with just one theory and expect it will suit all students all the time. Every student is different and will learn in a different way. And a student's learning style may change over time, or be dependent on the task, the other students in the class, or even what mood that student is in at the time. No matter what framework, theories, content or delivery method is looked at, knowing your learner is the single most important aspect of teaching.

Here are a few points on the 4 theories looked at this week:

Behaviourism
- Positive reinforcement encourages desired behaviours
- Over time, reduce reinforcement
- Completely withdraw reinforcement when behaviour is internalised

Cognitivism
- Sensory Memory (Visual/ Auditory) – used to perceive incoming information
- Working Memory – used to attend to information
- Long Term Memory – Permanently stores all knowledge and skills in an hierarchical network

Connectivism
- Knowledge exists in the world and is accessed through networks
- Learning is the process of creating connections and developing a network
- Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning

Constuctivism
- Knowledge and meaning come from an interaction between experiences and ideas

Learning Styles

I was not surprised to find out that I am a Musical/ Linguistic learner. I am studying to be an English teacher and music has always been a passion of mine. I was surprised though to see that I was not very Visual/ Spatial smart. My other subject area is Film and TV and therefore I felt that I would have been visual smart as this is the foundation for Film and TV.

Lessons centred around music, or the use of music to demonstrate or accompany learning would suite my learning style. Anything involving writing or reading would also suit my style, and if the two could be combined it would be even better. An example of this would be to write a list of facts and then make them into a song or rhyme in order to remember them.

The best way to cater for all learning styles is to know your learners well, and their learning styles. Vary class activities and teaching methods to suit each style, and create an environment of acceptance and support within the classroom where diversity in learners is celebrated. Also draw on the skills of students to help cater for the needs of each group.

Digital Pedagogy enables teachers to bring new technologies into the classroom which help all learners from all learner groups, no matter what their learning style. Delivery of class content can be varied according to each students' preferred learning style, increasing learning outcomes in all students.

Mind Maps

Text2mindmaps
These mind maps were not as visually appealing as Bubl.us, but it was a lot easier to keep track of the information. You simply wrote a list, and the site created the map. It was very basic and you were left with the one starting point, which made it a lot more complicated if you needed to start adding new tangents.

Bubl.us
This site was very easy to use, although once there were a few strands it became a little harder to keep track of all the information. Once colours were introduced, it made it a little easier to distinguish between groups of information. Visually, this mind map looked more interesting than Text2mindmaps. It was a little hard to move things around when creating it through the webpage.

Either of these sites would be useful within the English classroom, especially in situations where you were analysing characters, settings or situations from a novel. The character, setting or situation could be in the middle of the mind map, then the characteristics would run from this middle tangent. This could lead into feelings about themes, relationships between characters and even It would also be useful for Vocabulary. A word would be the starting point and then words with the same meaning or different ways of using that word could go around it.

Blogs in the classroom

If closely monitored and used in an appropriate way, blogs can be an effective tool within the classroom.

An online blog can enable students to acquire and maintain a bank of information where they can not only store information, but reflect on their learning. These blogs can also act as a tool for teachers to check for learning, and inform further lessons.

Peer assessment is also possibly through the use of a blog. Students would upload their work, and their peers could comment on this work. However, very clear rules and regulations would need to be established prior to this happening. Teachers would need to monitor this closely to avoid issues such as plagiarism and cyber-bullying. Collaborative learning between students is also possible through blogs as each student will be able to read each other’s blogs then reflect on their own, making changes where they feel appropriate.

Blogs could also help teachers keep in contact with absent students and be used as a tool to keep parents, care-givers and support staff up to date with class information.