Learning e.Journal reflective Synopsis

During this course I have engaged in many different types of technologies that can be used within the classroom environment, some of these I was aware of and already using and others are new to me. I have already been using PowerPoint presentations within my classes to help engage the students in the class work. PowerPoint has helped because I am able to incorporate pictures and videos that are relevant to what the students are learning. PowerPoint is also a very effective way to get students to be creative in donating relevant information back to their class as well as the community in general by the use of SlideBoom.

After seeing the interactive white board in use for a year 11 Maths B class I can see how this technology will be a great asset in the classroom. I would like to be able to use this technology within my classroom. My mentor teacher confidently demonstrates the interactive white board, and how it could be used to allow students to get more involved in classroom activities and take ownership of their own learning. By allowing the students to write up their own data on the board, this data was then used to create different types of graphs, with a higher order of interaction and student engagement. One of the key ideas that I gained from this is that whatever is done during class on the interactive whiteboard can be saved as a separate file and can be printed out to give to students who where away. While working at a school I had a conversation with a fellow teacher about the use of interactive whiteboards and how they have had one at the school for some time but no one really has been shown how to use it properly, I commented on that I would love to have the opportunity to be able to use that sort of technology in a classroom. One aspect of the interactive whiteboard that I have yet to see in use is the question remotes, which allow students to answer multi-choice questions from their seats. I observed this on a website that was advertising interactive whiteboards and I could see this as a great tool to use with the interactive whiteboard for checking the students understanding of concepts.

Wikis, PowerPoint and Youtube can be used to enhance student’s creativity and stimulate higher order thinking when they are completing assignment work. On Sunday March 28 I commented on my blog about the conceptual learning framework of the relate, create and donate, I included an example of how I would use this to help the students to gain a real world application of what they were learning and allowed them to "think outside the box" to create an interesting way to teach this knowledge to others in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, wiki or a Youtube video.

Through the Graduate Diploma of Learning and Teaching (GDLT) program I discovered how to make a voki avatar, I can see that this could be quite useful and as a fun introduction to a new topic of study, however I can also see this as a means to help engage students where English is their second language, by having the voki avatar talk in their language. After reading fellow student Anjali Datar's reply to my Blog post on Sunday the 11th of April I considered that although this is a good idea there has to be caution taken to make sure that the translation is actually saying what you want it to say. This reinforced the need to check with a colleague who speaks the chosen language to check the accuracy of the avatar translation.

The use of voki avatars, videos, PowerPoint presentation and interactive whiteboards helps the learning manager to be able to cater lessons to have aspects of the three types of learning Visual, kinaesthetic and audio. This is important as it enables the learning manager to remove possible barriers to students being engaged in the lesson. I mentioned this in my blog post regarding learning styles on the 6th of April where I pointed out that it is important to try and include all of the styles of learning as to not single out one particular style of learning, thus lessening a student’s chances of becoming disinterested and disengaged with the activities will help with classroom management.

I included in my blog on the 19th of April a PowerPoint presentation that I made for a year 8-9 HPE class on cardio pulmonary resuscitation, this presentation included pictures and video and was used to engage students in the learning activities. Katrina Knight commented via my blog, saying that it was a “funny and enjoyable presentation”. PowerPoint presentations are a quick and easy way to have information displayed for students.

I find flicker to be extremely useful to find pictures and funny images that are relative to the topic of study to help in engaging and maintaining students interest.

A few of the key areas mentioned in Kearsley and Shneiderman engagement theory are the idea that assessment should be a collaborative project based authentic task. Wherever possible when I am making assessment for students I will aim to make the assessment authentic and real world based to help in the engagement of the students.

Although I personally would be tentative about using blogs and wikis within a classroom setting they have the potential to be a useful tool for students to work on a real world problem in small groups, this gets the students to create a wiki to demonstrate and donate what they have learned back into the world. The reasons I would be tentative in using this especially with younger students is privacy and safety issues that are present with using publically accessible web sites.

So far I am finding during my Embbeded Proffesional Learning, my mentor teachers in the most part are willing to look at and try new technologies in their classrooms. However they see it as being too much of a hassle to set it up, or they are lacking the skills to use the technology confidently and to its full potential. I think as technology becomes more readily available and teachers become aware of its' ease of use, there will be a greater number of teachers engaging in the use of different technologies within the classroom.

Week 7

I was just looking over this weeks class work for university and I think that the technical programs to limit the size of pictures and files is very applicable to me at the moment with the problems that I had uploading my PowerPoint due to it's size. I also find Flickr to be such a great resource for images to use within PowerPoint and other written presentation, I used Flickr for some of the pictures in different PowerPoint presentations that I have created for various classes.

PowerPoint presentation

Hope this works, this is a PowerPoint I used as a to go through CPR.

CPR

View more presentations or Upload your own.

I found that at my current EPL site they have an electronic database of video files on lots of different topics. It is called clickview. It has a lot of different types of videos from all different subject areas and topics but apparently it costs a lot each year for the rights to it. It is a good tool to have access to and if all goes well I might be able to implement some of it into my lessons.

EPL update

My Embedded professional learning is going ok, I am going to have troubles with implementing much ICT unfortunately, the school have a few projectors and a few computer labs however it is very hard to get a booking to be able to use these. I have managed to have the use of a projector for a lesson this week which should be good.
I hope to see if it is able to be booked more often or if other teachers are going to be using them.

Use for Voki

I just though of an interesting use for Voki's, I currently work with some English as a second language students, and thought that a voki could be used to get the key points of the lesson across to them in their own language. As the voki's have the options to change the language to many different types of languages. The only problem is that there is that it would be hard to know for sure that the voki is saying the right thing all the time.
It was just a thought not sure how good it would work though.

Get a Voki now!

I see now that blogs can be very simple or quite complex like the Beyond school blog. I think that there is a place for blogs in schools but I would more lean to it as being a personal reflection task that students can shared but do not have to if they does not wish to. Students could then submit a summary report for assessment later from their blogs if assessment was needed.

Week 4 learning activity

Looking at Dale's cone I would say that in the most part my learning would be an upside down version of his cone where verbal and visual were the most common and direct and purposeful being the least common. Technologies allow students to explore concepts and information by themselves through eh use of the internet, forums, discussion boards and websites. However it is not just limited to internet activities, there are now computer programs and software that can enhance a students learning and make it more student center learning rather than teacher centered. Computers and today's technology allows students to have access to a wider variety of sources of information than ever before.

Week 3 DOL and 8LMQ

Just looked over the DOL and the 8LMQ and think that the the DOL has a great way of representing the learning process and stages. From basic knowledge right up to the extending refining and using knowledge in a meaningful way. Although the DOL give a good overview of the connections and strategies, I find the 8LMQ's to be an easier method to use in a school environment. The 8LMQ are broken down in to three simple phases of profiling, strategizing and ascertaining. some of these areas relate and cross over to the DOL, DOL 1 is sort of profiling the students however it also goes into assessing the attitudes and perceptions in the classroom and making sure that there is a happy supportive environment for students to learn in.


In the similarities and differences between the two types of habits of mind, I find that although Costa's view is quite detailed on each habit of mind it is written in regards to the general population rather than for the purpose of teaching like Marzano and Pickering's habits of mind. Marzano and Pickering seem to me to point out applications and uses of the habits of mind in context of the way we will be using them in a classroom which I find to be much more helpful than Costa's view.

Looking over the DOL 1 and 5 I find that in DOL 1 I will need to keep check of my own attitudes as these will have a impact on the attitudes of the students when I am teaching. Quite often the attitudes of others will affect my attitude and I need to be aware of this so that I don't start a downward spiral of attitudes in the classroom.

Maslows Hierarchy of needs

I agree in part with Maslows Hierarchy of needs, as a student in schools I found it hard to concentrate in class if it was too hot or too cold, also as a victim of bullying for most of my schooling I was unwilling to share comments in class discussions and still have trouble making suggestions in in University classes.

If these basic needs are meet first is would allow for a safer and happier environment for students to learn in. Having said this there is still the issue of engaging students, even if students are feed happy and safe they are still not likely to learn or engage in the class work if they do not find it interesting to them or relevant to their life style.

Therefore i would suggest that there still needs to be a balanced approach of a few aspects of these different points of view to allow for a more rounded affective teaching of the students.

Week 2 learning activity

In regards to learning styles it would be good to be able to include as many of the different styles as possible within your lessons to maximize the amount of students that you are reaching. An example of this would be instead of talk teaching, you could use visual auditory and practical components to aid the different learning styles within your class.

These tests are useful in profiling your students and helping ascertain the diversity of learning styles, personalities and intelligence types within the class. They would enable you as a teacher to see if there are more visual learners than auditory.

These tests would help in the third Learning Management Question mostly where you are analysing the students preferred learning style so that you as a teacher can cater your lessons to your students to best help them learn.