Some Final Thoughts For Now

As I approach the end of my journey through the EDC3100 course, I find the need to reflect what I have learned about ICT's and pedagogy so far and I think that the picture above pretty much sums it up. Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach. Today’s students have not just changed incrementally from those of the past; a really big discontinuity has taken place. One might even call it a singularity – an event which changes things so fundamentally that there is absolutely no going back. This so-called singularity is the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology. For a 21st-century teacher, giving lecture-style monologues to students who merely act as receptacles for information is no longer acceptable, nor does it work. Instead, learning should be fostered through dialogue in the classroom with an interactive exchange of ideas that engages students and promotes independent, original thought all while using the available technology that today's students know and love in order to really get students interacting and sharing ideas to enrich their educational growth. Technology has revolutionized education, are you ready to change the way you teach?

Reflections on Professional Experience

In faith based education the ability to be able to teach students according to the principles set forth by Jesus makes for a more spiritually centering experience and it is for this reason that I had what could only be described as a beautiful and inspiring professional experience. Catholic education is something special, it is a high quality holistic education which nurtures students and educates them to become well informed, highly skilled members of the community with a commitment to social justice and social consciousness. It is also the foundation in which full development of the person is valued  - intellectually, spiritually physically, morally and emotionally. And that is what I saw which was emanated by the principal, teachers and students at St Francis de Sales Catholic Primary School this semester.

Being part of the staff at St Francis de Sales even for those three weeks was a enlightening and enriching experience for me. To start with my mentor Mrs D, has to be one of the most patient, knowledgeable and nurturing people that I know. It was an honour to be in her class and to watch her teach as well as receive a wealth of wonderful advice about pedagogy and the early years. She had a way and commitment to the children that you could only have if you truly loved your job and it wasn't uncommon for many of the children that she had taught in earlier grades to run up and give her a big hug or ask advice when they saw her. If that is not touching a life forever in the most wonderful way possible, I don't know what is. I would be honoured to be half the teacher that she is. Then there was Mr P, Mr P is the principal and he has the most hilarious sense of humour but beautiful relationship with his staff, that it was hard not to be envious. As I said to him on several occasions I just wanted to bottle up ambient mood at his school and take it with me. How lucky the school is to have him.

As far as the development of my ICT related skills at this prac, I was supported and had the opportunity to try out a number of different approaches in my own pedagogical practices, learning very quickly about what worked and what didn't and through reflective practice finding ways to improve from lesson to lesson. But I have to say, that the highlight of my professional experience apart from teaching the beautiful children was being able to set up and conduct a professional development afternoon on teaching the principal and teachers how to use iPads. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to share what I knew with people who I now consider are my peers - even though I was extremely nervous. So overall my professional experience was wonderful and I am thoroughly looking forward to returning to St Francis de Sales later in the year. How was your professional experience?

BrainPOP

An image from BrainPOP's Simple Machines Animation

BrainPOP is a educational website which creates animated, curricular content intended to engage students, support educators, and consequently increase student achievement. With its ability to be incorporated into traditional, blended, and "flipped" learning settings, BrainPOP supports individual, team, and whole-class learning by introduce new topics and complex concepts in language which students are easily able to understand.  At its most basic level, BrainPOP is a great educational resource for teachers which allows downloads of pre-determined free content however if you choose to subscribe be warned it is not cheap (making it out of reach for most pre-service educators). If you are like me and prefer access to the animations for without the cost then you can download BrainPOP or BrainPOPJr's movie of the week app via iTunes and watch some for free. I do love the content of this website, it is just a pity the cost makes it so far out of reach.

 

The Technology Integration Planning Model

The TIP Model

Over the duration of the EDC3100 course we have be introduced to a number of models to assist with planning and implementing ICT rich lessons within the classroom and the Technology Integration Planning Model (or TIP model) is one of these. The TIP model specifically addresses the planning behind integrating technology into the classroom through five phases, these phases are;

• Determine the relative advantage.
• Decide on objectives.
• Design integration strategies.
• Prepare the instructional environment.
• Evaluate and revise integration strategies.

As a teacher you need to decide the skills you want your students to learn from technology-integrated lessons and design a way to assess how well students retained the information and how effectively the activity was carried out and the TIP model provides a basis to reflect on this at each phase. As stated by educator Mike if the integration of ICT is not being used to enhance the learning experience in some way, but is merely a substitution for existing techniques, then opportunities to improve the learning experience are lost.
 

Sydney Centre For Innovation In Learning

 

The Sydney Centre For Innovation In Learning promotes excellence in education by providing new learning opportunities for students and future-focused professional development for teachers that seeks to transform educational thinking and practice in the wider educational community. Operating from the philosophy that students should be prepared to become problem solvers and team players - in preparation for an ever-changing workplace and lifelong learning, the Sydney Centre For Innovation In Learning is leading the way in pedagogical change by committing to effectively using a range of ICTs every day in every classroom. Given that students today are all native speakers of  the digital language of computers, video games and the internet, The Sydney Learning Centre For Innovation In Learning seeks to empower teachers to lose their tentative digital accent and become native speakers themselves through facilitating systematic exploration of the application of new technologies and e-learning to any classroom situation. Having had the opportunity to be able to read some of their research papers recently, I would recommend visiting the website to read these papers and for ideas which you may like to incorporate into your own school, pedagogical practices or classroom.
 

Google Docs

Today’s young people are using a range of digital tools to compose and create in new and exciting ways and it is a game-changing moment for teachers of writing. The very notion of what it means to write is shifting, and educators are faced with adapting their teaching practices to integrate new technologies while redefining writing and learning for the 21st century. That is where Google Docs comes into play, Google Docs is a wonderful free tool for teachers and students alike which allows for the creation of a variety of different text documents, spread sheets, and presentations as well as surveys. The ability to be able to share and comment for collaboration and immediate feedback, for its use as a research tool and the integration of spell checking and reference software makes it a fantastic tool for student productivity.

 Some of the best features of Google Docs that teachers need to know about are that :

• It is free and very easy to use.
• It has a user-friendly interface.
• It lets you create Google documents, spread sheets, and other file types and collections.
• It lets you upload, manage and store files and folders.
• It allows you to share Google Docs, files and collections.
• You can preview your docs and files before you open or share them.
• You can also view images and videos that you have uploaded to your document list.
• It lets you search for items by name, type and visibility setting.
• It allows users to collaborate on documents in real time.
• It also offers a chat functionality for collaborators to use while working on docs. 

Some uses for Google Forms and its applicability in collecting data within the classroom include:

• Having students conduct experiment in classroom and one member goes to teacher's computer to enter data for that group.
• Having students create surveys using Google forms and display on own computer; students travel from machine to machine to fill out the survey.
• Emailing forms to participants to collect data (can embed the form in the email); must know all members email addresses.
• The ability to embed the form in a Google Site, wiki, class blog or Moodle.

Google Docs has tremendous potential for use in the classroom and used in innovative ways is a wonderful tool for learning. For more information have a look at these fantastic posts by fellow pre-service educators Jennifer Walsh and Kelly Frintzilas who examine Google Docs in more detail and a great blog by UK educator Tom Barrett who reports on ten uses for Google Docs in the classroom.

QR Codes In The Classroom

 

I have always been curious about using QR Codes in education, so I decided to have a little search on the internet and came up with a wealth of information. To provide a quick explanation quick response (QR) codes are visually scannable data matrices that can store up to 7,089 numeric characters or 4,296 alpha-numeric characters – up to 590 times the information possible in a standard 12 line UPC barcode. This data capacity means that QR codes can store almost anything – URLs, text, math problems, etc. While examining the versatility of QR codes I discovered that there are many creative ways to use QR codes in the K-12 classroom. These include creating interactive scavenger hunts, serving as writing prompts, and guiding student learning to online resources. In a library they can be used on the inside cover of books directing you to other works by the author and similar books on the subject. Two fantastic articles about how QR codes can be incorporated into the classroom can be found here and here and are certainly worth reading - enjoy!

Air Server

I was wanting to show the content of  my iPad to the children I was teaching on prac and I was lucky enough to be told about Air Server by my brilliant husband. Air Server for those who are not familiar with this nifty tool is a AirPlay receiver for Mac/Pc which allows you to receive AirPlay feeds similar to an Apple TV, so that you can stream content or Mirror your display from your iOS devices. In education the benefit of Air Server is that it allows you to show content to your class to provide a highly engaging experience using an iPad. It also allows you to wirelessly beam content to SMARTBoard - which is one of my favourite features. Having the ability to not only be able to move around the classroom with an iPad in hand as well as display multiple iPads on one screen means that the applicability of Air Server for education endless. I have a love affair with Air Server and would highly recommend it being part of any teachers toolkit.

Augmented Reality In The Early Childhood Classroom

If you read my blog then you will know that I recently posted about a iPad App called ZooBurst(which is augmented reality tool that can be used within the classroom to create 3D pop up books). Well this got me to thinking about what other augmented reality tools were out there to use in the early childhood classroom and I was pleasantly surprised. One of the first augmented reality tools I came across was a program called "Letters Alive", letters alive is a augmented reality based reading curriculum which was designed not only to create a engaging learning environment but to assist students with learning and intellectual disabilities to learn about letters and their sounds, sight words and respond to statements and questions.  At a not so cheap price of $795 the developers state that Letters Alive helps students to make deeper connections with their learning by grabbing their attention visually with 3D graphics and then reinforces letter sounds and words through animated animals.  Not being able to trial this myself I would have to see it in action first to decide if it was worth purchasing.

 

The other augmented reality platform which I examined and is worth  exploring is called Aurasma. Aurasma works in a similar manner to Letters Alive however instead of having markers on cards, the markers can be images, objects or places. Aurasma's functionality in education is becoming well documented and their are various videos on YouTube which demonstrate this, however I thought for the purpose of examining its applicability in the primary classroom I would include the YouTube clip above to my blog post. As a pre-service teacher I can see unlimited potential with this app and I personally cannot wait to try it out myself.

 

Flip The Classroom

 

I am fortunate to have a fairly IT savvy husband who not only teaches but also manages the IT system at a local high school. I was therefor very grateful to him for passing on a magazine titled Education Technology Solutions. One of the articles that caught my attention in this magazine is "Flip The Classroom And Deliver Gold Learning Nuggets To Students" by Dinesh Poorun and Dr Greg Whateley. The flipped classroom model (or blended learning model) is based on the premise that the students that we teach in todays classrooms are good at decoding information via media. It therefor should come as no surprise that one of the main ideas behind a flipped classroom is to provide short instructive videos which can be watched at home in lieu of a "lecture" (for lack of a better term) in the classroom. The benefit of doing this is it allows teachers to spend more 1:1 time with each student and students have the opportunity to ask questions and work through problems with the guidance of their teachers and the support of their peers – creating a collaborative learning environment. With the potential to personalize learning for students, the flipped classroom model certainly has its place in the future of primary and secondary education but what happens for those who don't have access to appropriate technology at home? Another educator who is also exploring this question can be found here.

Teaching and Social Media

 

"Your a teacher, you shouldn't blog"

Hmm these are the opening lines of a thought provoking article about teachers using social media particularly blogging. Well if you are reading this, then it is obvious to me that you know that I blog. Yes I put my thought out there for the world to read and react in whatever way they choose. My experience of blogging so far has been overall quite positive but I have to admit there have been days when people have decided to target my blog and have left me in tears. So why do it? Well (a) because if I don't I will fail my ICT course ;) and (b) because used in the appropriate manner blogs can be a fantastic part of a teachers toolkit. Personally, social media has led to allowed me to maintain some of the best professional relationships I have had, allowing me to link with visionaries, crowdsourcing information, and discuss the best education practices. Social media is certainly a popular topic amongst my fellow educators and I found a wonderful post about the role of social media in our lives at Kinder Bytes by Janine Allman who has reflected on the roll it has played in her life. What has your social media/blogging experience been like?

ePortfolios

After needing to have a quick look at my ePortfolio via Mahara I was thinking of some of the ways in which teachers could use ePortfolios to enhance student learning (for those who are unfamiliar with what an ePortfolio is it can be explained as being a portfolio which is largely electronic that demonstrates a person's best talents and mediums). In education a ePortfolio could be used in a variety of ways across a variety of subjects but most commonly for organising a collection of in-progress or completed assignments, projects or certificates and accomplishments. When examining the benefits of ePortfolios in education Kinash, McLean & Wood (2013) state that "studies have identified ePortfolios as an important learning and assessment tool because they encourage students to create individualised understandings, rather than demonstrate knowledge through teacher-defined exams, essay and research projects". And this is a key point, students should be able to demonstrate how they learn in a variety of ways otherwise we disadvantage them. For more about this subject and an interesting read explaining the benefits and pitfalls of ePortfolios have a look at this link

 

References

 

Kinash, S., Wood, K., & McLean, M. (2013). The Whys and Why Nots of ePortfolios. Retrieved from http://educationtechnologysolutions.com.au/2013/04/22/the-whys-and-why-nots-of-eportfolios/