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.