Talia’s Blog

I have just read Allanah King’s post on Involving parents in the ICT happening at the school. This was a day organised for parents to see the ICT projects students have created recently at their school, these including blogs, flickr and delicious accounts. Allanah also offered parents advice on how to help their children participate responsibly on the internet. 

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I think this is a fabulous idea on a number of levels. Firstly, it gives parents a chance to become involved with their child’s learning, maintain good communication and have an active interest in their lives. This type of exposure will enable parents to encourage a positive approach to technology through asking their children to show the new skills they have learnt. On another level, the benefit for children is invaluable because they are made to feel like the experts. Allowing children to exhibit their work to a broader audience, especially their own parents will give them the sense of pride and achievement that will create their love for learning.

Parents may not be aware of the possible dangers of surfing the internet so days like these are necessary to create exposure- schools must offer advice and share knowledge because it is unlikely that parents will go out and seek this information themselves.

To see the image clearly, please click on it.

This mind map created on Inspiration summarises all the things I have learnt during my e-learning course. Creating this mindmap, I was amazed at how much I have actually learnt simply by being exposed to these programs and ICT software. I have realised how important it is to keep updated with the ever-changing technologies that present themselves in today’s society and more importantly expose students to them and give them time to interact, reflect and engage.

Kidspiration is a child- friendly program which I would recommend for use in a classroom. This program  promotes organisational skills and is visually stimulating.

Sean posted this video on his blog where comedian Don McMillan presents his thoughts on how NOT to use Powerpoints. Its very true and very funny- teachers take note!

I agree with Sean that we should not use technology for the sake of it if we can use blackboards to display the same information. This is not using technology to an advantage for students. They are going to be as bored copying or reading from a powerpoint as they are from reading from a blackboard or sheet of paper. Powerpoints are such a valuable tool if used in the right way. If students are going to be experiencing those kinds of powerpoints in the videos above they’re going to develop negative opinions of them which may lead to other technologies copping the same bad reputation.

I have just read a great article where two English teachers have shared their success stories using the Inspiration program in their classrooms. This program is a user- friendly mind mapping program on the computer which allows users to not only brainstorm ideas but analyze and organise their data in a clear, logical way using attractive diagrams.

The pen and paper method is just as good, don’t get me wrong! However, with the push for teachers to incorporate technology into students learning, Inspiration is the missing link between the two and it does allow you to change, modify and extend it where possible. What more would you need when trying to organise a science or history poject??

Through my experiences I have encountered problems evaluating success because I didn’t have a clear expectation of what was going to happen throughout the project. Reading this article and having used Inpiration I can see how valuable it is to having a logic model which organises the data for you. Inspiration can be used to plan lessons, mind map and even organise your data in a logical way graphical visual manner. It even has a built in dictionary and thesauras to help with vocabulary!

Image: Attributed to Creative Commons Licence 2.0

Have you ever watched videos from Teachertube or Youtube and wondered how on earth people make them? How they connect music? And audio of their voices?  I’m here to tell you it’s actually quite straightforward and you can probably do it! All you need is a program like imovie (mac’s) or you can download Photostory for free, a microphone if you would like to record your voice and a little spare time to fiddle around with the media!

All the videos really consist of are a slide show of images placed next to each other so when you press the magic “play” button it turns into a mini movie! Then you can add your voice and your favourite song and bob’s your uncle!

How great would this be to do with a group of children, let’s say, telling a story of something they did in their holidays then posting it onto their school website or play it as part of a school film festival?

This kind of learning, where students know their work will be viewed by members from the public is extremely valuable as they will be motivated right from the get go and more likely to produce something of higher quality. This is known as constructionist learning which Papert (1991) states that “the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity” (Papert, 1991) therefore will be more engaged in the process as they know they have an audience eagerly waiting. This creates a more student-centred environment therefore leads to students becoming ‘drivers’ of their own learning.

You can view my digital story in the next post!

Answer: Digital story telling

With this technologically-driven world taking over pencil and paper in classroom’s, we’re going to have to engage our students with the world around them in order to maintain interest and put them in good stead for their future. After all, children “learn by doing, planning, making and constructing projects of interest to them” (Hopkins & McDougall, 2003).

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In accordance with my own learning and upon reading an article by Shewbridge and Berge, 2004, here are some reasons why digital stories are such a valuable project to do with children-

• video production encompasses a broad range of computer skills and techniques
• Blends theoretical content with practical job skills
• Helps children learn, evaluate and communicate.
• “Provides analytical basis necessary to be informed consumers”. This was a significant learning concept for me. I look at T.V, videos, ads- all media production differently now after making my digital story. You start to notice the connection of music or lack of and how it makes such a difference, you notice panning and zooming and why the producers choose to do this.
• Children become more creative with their own digital stories upon viewing videos or tv that has “bad audio” or “bad focus”.

This is my digital story below which I made as part of my e-learning class. I would highly recommend making one with your class- it will take time at the beginning but the more practice you and your students have the easier it will become and hopefully one day they will all be able to make their very own personal digital story!

This video presents a debate between Edtech experts on whether smartboards (IWB’s) are truly worth the investment in classrooms. Below is my podcasts reacting to their comments and my own experiences with smartboards in classrooms. Enjoy!

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I’m reacting to Emily’s post on an article called “Could computer games help transform the way we learn?” The basis of this article outlines that games are the most powerful learning technology for children (Henry Jenkin’s: Professor of Education at MIT) and unless formal education catches up we will miss out on exploiting this most powerful tool.

One such example shocked me- this is what the article said about an educational game DoomEd which is based around specific educational goals:

One example is DoomEd which has modified an existing game to create a “first person shooter” in which the player navigates around the London underground during the second world war killing aliens, the twist being that they need to understand radiation and chemistry in order to overcome dangerous obstacles.

I don’t think so! Surely these people aren’t serious! Can you imagine walking into a classroom where boys and girls are busy shooting aliens in order to meet specific educational outcomes?? Pleeaase! Yes they may be learning about radiation and chemistry but they are also learning bigger covert issues such as less than socially constructive skills, attack strategies and ways to act violently. The next thing these people will argue is that children are learning road rules by playing Grand Theft Auto… 

Educational games used in schools without violence on an infrequent basis- maybe. DoomEd used in a home environment with parent supervision- maybe. But for use in schools? Definatley a no. I do believe violent games are a major cause of socially inappropriate behaviour today. They usually involve swearing, stalking, shooting and killing with a quick death and no feeling of remorse. If we as educators are allowing children to play games with any violence in them at all we are the biggest hypocrits on the earth.

In reaction to Matthew Kearney’s posting on Fisch’s ”It Is Ok To Be An Technologically Illiterate teacher”, I have to say I totally disagree with that statement! Any teacher who is not open to change and prepared to move forward with society is NOT going to give their students the best education possible.

Made available under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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Every teacher should be willing to try to nurture and support students’ learning to their maximum potential in all areas of development- and the way to do this is to keep up with the latest information.

Fisch stated that “If a teacher today is not technologically literate – and is unwilling to make the effort to learn more – it’s equivalent to a teacher 30 years ago who didn’t know how to read and write.” That’s a fair enough argument… I think the operative word in that sentence is “unwilling”- That’s a very poor attitude to possess as a teacher/rolemodel because children can easily pick up on teachers feelings and what kind of attitude is that passing on??

It’s a healthy attitude to teaching if we see ourselves as learners like the children- thereupon, our teaching becomes much more effective as we become curious seekers of knowledge rather than transmitting it in a heirarchical way.

Andrew Robertson created this video after coming across Andrew Field’s online forum on “Effective ICT in a classroom” (log in required)