Group 4 Technologies

Digital Tool: Animations and Simulations

I've had previous experiences with simulators as a student and when i used them, i didn't even realise i was learning which I'm not sure is a good or a bad thing. I think that if i can find suitable and professionally made simulators for students to use i will definitely utilise them for some lessons throughout the term, To keep the students engaged and interested in learning. The site provided about gizmos may prove useful when teaching biology.

Digital Tool: Google Earth

Google Earth was always a cool program i found quite useful. However I never imagined it as being an education tool though. From the looks of things, it is a fantastic resource for teachers and students as it enables students to see images from different parts of the earth with the ability to overlay streets/roads with latitude and longitude. One use for biology outlined was the ability to track routes of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe Forest. It is now possible to overlay what you see with different filters, such as the national geographic filter and geospatial filter.

Digital Tool: Google Maps

Google maps again was a tool i had experience with and never realised its potential as a learning tool for teachers to use. One use I found that would be useful if i were to teach Earth science is the ability to track and see where recent earthquakes have occurred. http://earthquakes.tafoni.net/

Digital Tool: Google Documents for Collaboration

"Google Docs is a free, web-based word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tool that allows you to create and edit documents from anywhere and collaborate with multiple people at the same time." Google Docs Tutorial https://docs.google.com/present/view?skipauth=true&id=ddnctvgt_170cbskvf68


The documents students create are saved and can be accessed online using a computer with an internet connection. It can be used as a collaborative tool perfect for group assignments. Students can work together on the same document, eliminating the need for back and forth emails, students can also work on their documents from both school and at home. Google docs would be a perfect way to assess students as there are no software version requirements and their work can be viewed at any time by the teacher, so the teacher will always know the progress of each student. After a student invites the teacher to their document, they can review, comment and grade their work.

Digital Tool: Online Concept Mapping

Concept mapping is a valuable tool that allows students to create an understanding of a topic themselves. I used bubble.us to create a brainstorming map on some of the uses of Google documents

Bubble.us was by far the easiest and quickest online tool i've ever used, this literally took me 2 minutes to sign up, create and export and upload this image !

Text 2 Mind Map was just a little bit slower then bubble.us however i think that it was more aesthetically pleasing. I find mind maps to be more useful then just normal brainstorming as they allow elaboartion. This was what i ended up with usieng Text 2 Mind Map

Digital Tool: Zooburst for interactive digital storybooks

I read the interactive Zooburst story book on the fortune telling dragon, i can see the benefit in using this at a primary school level, however it would not serve me much purpose as a high school teacher unless i had some students who found it hard to read or concentrate in a literacy class. however i would have to make sure the stories they read have the roper spelling of words, as the dragon story had some inherent spelling errors.

Group 3 Technologies

This week, we examined tools that can be used to present learning and information. They're all capable of interactivity and are multimodal sources. In today’s online world there are numerous tools, technologies and software packages available to present information. The three resources we will examine today are PowerPoint, Prezi, and Glogster.

PowerPoint

I remember when I first used PowerPoint in primary school, I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I loved playing with all the slide transitions and sound affects. Today, I believe PowerPoint is still regarded as the most user friendly presentation tool available to support oral presentations. The reason being that it is a platform that supports the embedding of text, linking and interactivity, audio, video and images.

In my teaching practice, PowerPoint can be used to create a narrated stand alone presentation. Allowing my students to easily record and listen to the information being conveyed. The recording of information by student would be much harder if it were just an oral presentation. Other uses of PowerPoint as a teacher include creating drag and drop activities, concept maps and brainstorming for students.

The activities this week were fairly simple and gave me some good ideas about how I could integrate PowerPoint into my assessment pieces and lessons. In conclusion, there are many multimedia authoring tools available that are complex and require significant learning to use. PowerPoint has a very short learning curve and if used effectively can create engaging and informative lessons for students.


Prezi

Unlike PowerPoint which mainly engages sequential learners through its linear presentation. Prezi also engages global learners by giving a global perspective on the materials as well as having the ability to add minute detail. Today’s generation of learners have proven that multimedia is important to learning outcomes. Prezi supports this by having the ability to embed audio, images and video. Through the use of previous activities like Picnik, I could create very engaging prezi's on the subject material for my learners.

Here is a Prezi I created on Aspects of Fitness, which could be used for a Grade 9 or 10 HPE class

Fitness on Prezi

Create an interactive online scrapbook - Glogster

Glogster was an interesting tool I never knew existed until undertaking this weeks activities. It’s a program that allows you to build an interactive poster using text, images and video. I can definitely see the benefits in using glogster to develop students visual literacy skills as it encompasses all the aspects needed to do so. Here's what I ended up with after playing with it for about 5 minutes, it doesn't really give any information but it allowed me to see how and what I can use it for.

Group 2 Technologies

21st century learners have opened up a whole new world of visual and auditory literacy we are yet to have concrete concepts and theories for. It is critical that students today are visually literate. Multimedia has therefore become the most important tool, teachers can use to enhance students visual literacy skills. Students of today have grown up to become digital natives and so need to have multimedia integrated into their learning. Video uses both images and audio in many cases, and is considered to be a core focus of any eLearning course. The following tools should be used in conjunction with one another.

Tool 4: Digital Images

In a teaching context, the most valuable photographs are the student’s photographs. When using images for learning it is important that I don’t use them gratuitously although used properly they are useful for engaging students with the material. Images can be used on the school network, on the interactive whiteboard, using mobile phones and cameras, also iPods. “Teachers can present learning materials to the student with the purpose of engaging thinking, knowledge, understanding, analysis, evaluation, influencing feelings, or supporting skills development.” (ICT’s Week 4 Resources) The activities this week involved us getting an understanding of how images need to be resized and also how we can edit images to make them more appealing. To resize the images we were given a website called Softpedia. The main point was that images need to be resized in order to be used efficiently.

Activity with Flickr

The activity with flickr involved creating a free account, uploading and image and also displaying an image on this blog following the correct copyright guidelines. Using images is critical to developing a student’s visual literacy.

“Like traditional literacy, visual literacy encompasses more than one level of skill. The first level in reading is simply decoding words and sentences, but reading comprehension is equally (if not more) important. The first level of visual literacy, too, is simple knowledge: basic identification of the subject or elements in a photograph, work of art, or graphic. While accurate observation is important, understanding what we see and comprehending visual relationships are at least as important. These higher-level visual literacy skills require critical thinking, and they are essential to a student’s success in any content area in which information is conveyed through visual formats such as charts and maps.”

An activity I feel I could use before very class, is display a suitable image to the subject content and get students to use a See, Think, Wonder tool to evaluate and critically analyse the image, hopefully preparing them for the lesson ahead.

creative commons -Practice Yoga, Be Healthy! {EXPLORED} by VinothChandler
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinothchandar/4459777970/
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License
2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Image Manipulation Picnik

I found picnik to be the most enjoyable activity we’ve had to do yet! I could spend hours on picnik editing and manipulating images, and I think my students would too. I feel a great assessment piece I could use in HPE that would develop student’s visual literacy skills is to have them create a poster encouraging physical activity in obese individuals, without using text. This would require the students to choose and manipulate their images critically. I would then have the students submit a 500 word summary of why they chose and presented their images in the manner they did. Below is an image of myself playing football last year for Brothers against Boyne Island. I think it looks pretty engaging! :D

Tool 5: Podcasts

A podcast is a video or usually sound file created by someone shared online usually through subscription. They are usually part of a series. However this is not always the case. As a teacher, they can be accessed online as files created for your students. But more importantly, they are also files that your students create and share by uploading online.

As previously mentioned, aural and visual literacy is becoming very important in the 21st Century literacy set. As a teacher, I need to consider the implications of this era of mass communication, and develop new literacies for my students. This then, presents podcasting as not just recorded information. But a tool for developing an aural literacy set of skills needed to communicate effectively in the 21st century world.

Podcasts have become a very useful eLearning tools, so much so, that iTunes has created an application called iTunes U, the U standing for University. So while it would be great to create my own podcast for my students, ready-made podcasts for learning have already been created. However as a teacher it will be more beneficial for my students to have them create their own podcasts rather then just listening to ones I present, this will develop their aural literacy set to a higher level. I attempted to create my own podcast using Podomatic but everytime I tried to "allow" the use of my microphone, the program wouldn't respond when I clicked allow! However here's a podcast on education I found interesting on phonics, vocabulary and spelling instruction. http://theteacherslife.podomatic.com/player/web/2008-09-04T18_04_36-07_00


Tool 6: Digital Video

Digital video can be used in a range of ways for educational purposes in schools. Communication, observation and analysis, and reflection are beneficial outcomes of using digital video in education. As a communication tool, digital video can facilitate student’s communication of ideas and assessment. Digital video is also used as an observation and analysis tool, enhancing students' observations of phenomena, experiments or performances. Finally, it is used as a reflection tool to support student reflections on their own learning.

From the provided readings this week, it was discovered that outcomes of student video production include affective, Meta cognitive, higher order thinking, communication and presentation, literacy, organisational and teamwork and moviemaking skill development. This presents moviemaking as a great tool to enhance multimedia literacy. The activity for this week was to create our own video, I used iMovie as I have the most experience using it. I created a video using still images of a trip my girlfriend Natalie and I went on to Emerald. I then uploaded it to YouTube and set the privacy settings to private so it can only be viewed here ;)

Michael

Group 1 Technologies

This week we explored the uses of more online technologies and tools, in particular Blogs, Websites and Wiki spaces. These will be known as our group 1 technology tools, and have been grouped as you are able to populate them with your own content.



Blogs


Having used blogs for a few weeks now, we were asked to reflect on the uses of blogs in our teaching context.

Using blogs to write up my reflections of each week’s activities has proven to be a very useful tool. By reflecting on the activities in a blog, I have been encouraged to use higher order thinking. As reflecting is a complex process requiring significant skill in analysis, evaluation and synthesis, my learning has extrapolated over the previous 5 weeks! As a teacher I know blogs could become very useful to use not only for myself but also for my students to reflect on their own learning. However for me to ask students to journal in a blog I need to consider ways to scaffold their thinking to reflect the learning they are required to demonstrate. From the way ICT's is constructed, I've discovered that this can be achieved through thinking tools (PMI's, DeBono's etc) and also carefully constructed question sequences.


"By using a thinking routine, you are not only supporting your students in developing the kinds of thinking you are expecting, and scaffolding it for them, but you are providing them with tools that should become second-nature, and therefore genuinely routines for thinking for life." (ICT's reading; Group 1 Technologies, 2011)

Another use for blogs in my teaching is that students could post their assignments on blogs, which would allow their peers to comment and analyse their assignments. A SWOT analysis on the use of blogs I participated in can be found here. SWOT analysis of BLOGS in Teaching




Wiki's


Over the past 3 weeks, I've become more familiar with the concept of the wiki. I can see the potential for them to be used as a learning tool as it promotes collaboration and constructivism. I participated in a SWOT analysis regarding the use of wiki's on Jullienne Morrison's wiki page.

"Key features of a wiki have been identified by wiki.org: (from http://wiki.org )

Open - Should a page be found to be incomplete or poorly organized, any reader can edit it as they see fit.

Incremental - Pages can cite other pages, including pages that have not been written yet.

Organic - The structure and text content of the site are open to editing and evolution.

Universal - The mechanisms of editing and organizing are the same as those of writing so that any writer is automatically an editor and organizer.

Observable - Activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any other visitor to the site.

Convergent - Duplication can be discouraged or removed by finding and citing similar or related content.

Trust - This is the most important thing in a wiki. Trust the people, trust the process, and enable trust-building. Everyone controls and checks the content. Wiki relies on the assumption that most readers have good intentions.

Fun - Everybody can contribute; nobody has to.

Sharing - of information, knowledge, experience, ideas, views...

Interaction - This enables guest interaction.

Collaboration - A good collaboration tool, both synchronously and asynchronously.

Social Networks - Its power for supporting collaboration is great."
(ICT's reading; Group 1 Technologies, 2011)

I believe that a wiki would be a great eLearning tool in my classroom, especially for Biology. A well constructed wiki space would benefit my students greatly as they could log on and collaborate ideas on a given topic, the wiki could have different pages for different topics and throughout the term, the students will create a great online resource for themselves to utilise for assignments and exam preparation. By using a suitable thinking tool I will promote higher order thinking as well as a broad, collaborative and in depth view of a given topic.

Below is a SWOT analysis found on Juliennes page linked above, and a PMI analsysis on wiki's

Website


Unlike wikis and blogs that are owned by students who can add content and ideas, content on a website is exclusive to the creator. For that reason, the students can be assured that the content is from a reliable source and suitable for use in assignment work, as it has been added by me, the teacher. It was asked that we reflect on using website creation in our own teaching context as well. We used a website called Weebly to create our own educational website and get a feel for how we could use it in our own teaching context. As with the blog and wiki, I participated in a SWOT analysis of using websites in education as a teacher. Found at the bottom of this page. SWOT Analysis of Websites in Education

After participating in the SWOT I believe that as a teacher, creating a website dedicated to my students and my subject would be of great benefit. I could provide links to all the expert knowledge I know, and make it readily available to my students. I could also put up interactive games for students to play to increase their knowledge of the subject matter. I had a play with weebly and created a very basic web page I called Rosey's Corner;
">

As you can see it is very basic but it gave me an idea of how I could present activities for my students, I feel if I dedicated time to creating a fully operational and in depth website, I could transform the way my students learn. However I would not use weebly as a problem I encountered was that I couldn't log back in to edit my website after I logged off. I even tried having my user name and password sent to me and it failed everytime! I've used iWeb for Macintosh before and it is a great way to create very engaging and good looking websites. When I become a teacher I would definitely consider buying a domain name and creating my own website in iWeb for my students to access and gather knowledge and resources from.

Michael

Week 4 Activities

Digital Images


It's been a slow start to these activities, I'm already a week behind and there seems to be a lot to do in week 4. I didn't have any trouble creating a flickr account and and image in picnik as i had previously used them before. Finding an image and checking the copyright laws associated with it was a different story. I found a link posted by Julienne Morrison about how to find and interpret the copyright regulations associated with an image at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ahrc/resources/ccattribute.html useful.

http://flic.kr/p/51Rk93
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28229962@N02/2635051942/

I had a lot of fun creating an image in picnik and reckon it turned out pretty cool. I can't see exactly how i could use picnik in an educational way yet, but I'm sure I'll realise some uses soon. Maybe it could be used by students to enhance oral presentations?

Assessment Task 1: Learning Design Brief

Profile wiki

This task consisted of creating a personal profile and then uploading it into a wiki. The task itself was scaffolded, in that there was a template to follow (Black, 2011) to fill out our profile and a video as to how to upload it to the wiki was made available through moodle (Black, 2011). As this task was our first piece of scaffold for our first assignment it had several learning theories deliberately involved.

The activity had elements of constructivism (Atherton, 2011), in that students knew how to fill out a table but then had to construct the knowledge to be able to upload it to the wiki page. Behaviourism (Atherton, 2011) was inherent in that in order to pass the assignment this activity needed to be completed. In the past when activities were not completed the student would not have passed that course and so through behaviourism, students knew they had to fulfil this activity. This idea will be the same for all three of the wiki postings. Connectivism (Siemens, 2004) was very much evident by the fact that students had to connect with another student to complete the activity.

As a learner I found this activity a decent starting point to ICT’s. However, a few errors were involved in the activity. When choosing a partner for the activity I was only given a group of 6 people. Lucky for me though, one person from the six in my group was sitting right in front of me during the tute and so we partnered up that way. In my undergraduate degree I had several online assignments that involved collaborating with students from all over Australia. Those assignments I found to be very frustrating as there was no face-to-face contact. So through this experience I learned that it is easier to work effectively with someone face to face, as well as through online means. To make this activity more accessible to my students I would modify the group system and have everyone be able to choose someone from the whole class. I would also have the students work with someone they know little about, as it will give them a new perspective.


Learning Theories Wiki

This activity involved creating a Plus, Minus, Interesting (PMI) (MindTools, n.d) analysis collaboratively with our partner from the profile wiki. A learning theory was chosen and a PMI analysis was performed. Dave and I worked on constructivism, as we figured this would be the most use to us in our first assignment. There were many technical issue involved in this activity, and as a computer subject this made it very frustrating for myself as well as all the other students. The main issue was that the wiki page where our PMI was to be uploaded would keep disappearing and reappearing with deleted and missing content. I didn’t have any trouble uploading my analysis to the wiki, but when it came to Dave adding his ideas he was unable to access the wiki for a few days. Not only that, but what Dave uploaded to our wiki disappeared after a day or two. I only had the chance to read Dave’s points once, as they were gone the next day.

This activity had various elements from different learning theories underpinning its design. Connectivism and constructivism were the main underpinning learning theories. Connectivism was innate as research into a particular learning theory had to be undertaken as well as connection with your partner to collaborate on the topic. Students used constructivism to determine what they believed are the positives and negatives on their chosen theory, this theory underpinned the whole PMI analysis. Behaviourism as mentioned before was inherent in the fact the activity had to be completed in order to pass the assessment.

The positives with this activity were that Dave gave a different perspective to mine. This was very valuable as it gave me a fresh perspective on the constructivist theory which I would not have had, had I worked alone on this activity. I also discovered the value in creating a PMI analysis. From this experience I learned that PMI’s are an effective eLearning tool when used collaboratively. However, given the inherent errors in technology if I am to use this sort of activity in my own classroom, I will have to become very familiar with the networking capabilities of my particular school. I could see the value in creating an online wiki like this one in a Biology class where some topics have a lot of material to cover. Through the use of an online wiki, students could pair up and create a discussion on just one topic, add it to a wiki, which would then have a discussion on each of the topics needing to be covered.

Mobile phones wiki

The activity for the mobile phones wiki was to watch a video (Pearson Foundation, 2009) as well as read an article (Hartnell-Young, Heym, 2009) on the use of mobile phones as an eLearning device. This activity at first seemed to be a fairly one-sided argument, that phones should not be used in schools, however after reading the article and watching the video many different perceptions and uses came to light. I believe that as everyone enrolled in this course grew up with mobile phones being seen as a distraction in school, the idea of using them for education just didn’t make sense to us. I would be at 20, the youngest person enrolled in this course and I even had that same opinion. That was until I looked and thought about it further. What lead me to my final view that mobile phones could and should be used as a learning device is surely attributed to the use of DeBono’s six thinking hats (Gallup, 1992).

This activity used various elements from each of the four main learning theories. Through the use of DeBono’s six hats, students constructed their knowledge from previous knowledge but also gathered, processed and formulated new knowledge into useful ideas, giving this activity an underpinning theory of not only constructivism but cognitivism (Culatta, 2011) as well. Connectivism was used as students connected with other students to argue the point as well as searched various other sites for information.

There is no doubt that the use of DeBonos hats is a great resource for teachers to use. This would be a great strategy to use in my classroom when discussing contentious topics between students, as it would create a well-rounded and diverse argument. I know I will be using it during my career, however the problem which arose for this particular activity was missing data. I added my ideas to the wiki after doing all the reading and thinking, only to find that the next day, my name as well as all of my ideas had been taken off the wiki. This didn’t only happen to me but another two colleagues that I know of. If I were to use this strategy in my own practice I would have students back their work up onto a word document before adding it to the wiki.

Conclusion

When using technology for learning, I will make sure that I know the capabilities of my schools network so as to not have students get frustrated when they can’t access a particular resource because too many students are trying at the same time. I’ve learnt that when technology works its great, but when it doesn’t it just causes frustration among students. From my own experience so far I feel that if I can use eLearning as a tool rather then the be all and end all of my teaching practice, it will serve me greater. Issues that face me in the workplace are networking capabilities as well as availability of eLearning resources. Ways to overcome these would be different for each case, but in the event of too many people online at once, I would split my class into groups, and if there were only enough eLearning tools for half the class, then a rotational group activities class would be the best way to teach.

From this experience it is clear to me that eLearning is a powerful tool especially in 21st century classrooms and should be embraced rather then ignored, the more I know about the technology the less likely I am to encounter problems using it. Therefore in my career I will endeavour to learn and gain as much understanding of various eLearning tools as I can.

Michael Rose
GDLT Secondary HPE/Biology


References:

Gallup, G. (1992) Teach your child how to think. Retrieved 8 March, 2011, from http://www.kurwongbss.eq.edu.au/thinking/Hats/hats.htm

Hartnell-Young, E & Heym, N. (2009). Mobile phones and student learning in secondary schools: Curriculum Leadership, an electronic journal for leaders in education, 7 (26). Retrieved March 8, 2011, from http://cmslive.curriculum.edu.au/leader/default.asp?id=28526&issueID=11897

MindTools, Essential skills for an excellent career. (n.d) Plus, Minus, Interesting: Weighing the Pros and Cons of a Decision. Retrieved March 3, 2011, from
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_05.htm

Pearson Foundation. (2009, Apr 21). Text2teach: The Bridgeit Solution in the Philippines [Video file]. Retrieved March 8, 2011, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQGXR16dZic

Black, A. (2011). Week 0 Activities, My Profile. Rockhampton, QLD, Australia: Retrieved March 1, 2011, from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for learning design

Atherton, J. (2011) Learning and Teaching; Behaviourism. Retrieved March 18, 2011, from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/behaviour.htm

Siemens, G. (2004) Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age: Elearn Space. Retrieved March 7, 2011, from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

Atherton, S. (2011) Learning and Teaching; Constructivism in learning. Retrieved March 18, 2011, from http://www.learningandteaching.info/learning/constructivism.htm

Culatta, R. (2011) Innovative Learning: Cognitivism. Retrieved March 9, 2011, from http://www.innovativelearning.com/educational_psychology/cognitivism/index.htm

Mobile Phones Wiki

Using DeBono's Six thinking hats to create a wiki on the use of mobile phones in schools was very productive. Had we of just used a PMI like we did for our learning theory there would have been no where near as much creativity and constructive thinking done on the matter. The six hats ensures you look at the issue of mobile phones in school from unique angles. I found that some students had better contribution then others under one hat and then less under another. This would be attributed to the fact that each students has a different learning style and so a different way of thinking as well. I found i contributed greatest towards the Green, yellow and red hats. Creativity, Benefits and feelings respectively. However being a wiki i think someone went in and deleted my name from everything which i was fairly upset about :/ might have been an accident though, but it does show one downfall of using a wiki, you don't get recognition for your ideas!

This would be a great strategy to use in my classroom when discussing contentious topics between students as it would create a well rounded and diverse argument. Students could be divided into six groups of there choice depending on which hat appeals to them in the hope that all six hats would be filled.

The learning theory of constructivism was very apparent during this activity. Each students constructed there thoughts from there own knowledge and experiences which is why the wiki ended up being such an extensive collaboration. Cognitivism was evident in that information was taken in through the particular resources we were given, processed and then our ideas were formulated. Behaviourism did not play a key role for this activity however connectivism did. Connectivism would have been used by many students in that they would have searched for more information then what was given.

The design of this activity through the use of DeBono's six thinking hats supported a diverse range of students, it catered for many different thinking preferences and learning preferences, as a video link as well as an article was made available. From this both visual and audible learners were catered for. The kinesthetic learners would have actually constructed their own knowledge from their experiences using mobile phones, and would have related their experiences with what they thought could used in a classroom environment. (bit abstract, finding it hard to convey my thoughts on this one). The design of this activity can supports elearning through the combination of DeBono's hats and a wiki. It supports learning through the use of different critical thinking styles and promotes the student to use higher order thinking.

Michael

Reflection on learning theories wiki

I found the learning theories activity very helpful as it gave me different perspectives on each of the theories. Also as other students had written there explanation in their own words it made it easier for me to understand them. I think this strategy of having several subjects which need to be covered and having them covered by the students working in pairs and collaborating at the end could be a very useful tool for me to use in teaching. Especially in biology where there is a lot of material to cover. This activity had elements of constructivism and connectivism throughout. Constructivism was evident in that our PMI was written by comparing our prior knowledge with the new knowledge we were acquiring and deciding whether it was a plus or minus. As we had to research other materials in order to gain a better understanding of our selected learning theory we were using the connectivism theory of learning.

This activity again supports a diverse range of students geographically, but maybe not technologically as a lot of our digital immigrants may have had trouble navigating web pages and uploading their findings to the wiki correctly. This strategy supports learning through connectivism and would be a good strategy to use in our 21st century secondary schools as most students are familiar with the internet and the use of this technology.

Learning Theories Wiki- Constructivism

Dave and I chose to perform a PMI analysis on constructivism, these were my personal findings:

Plus (all the positives)

* Each student has a unique perspective when learning a new concept.
* Students can expand on knowledge already possessed.
* Constructivism causes students to question themselves and their strategies.
* Students ideas gain in complexity as they will continuously reflect on their learning.
* Students construct their own knowledge on what appeals to them and their career choice.
* The pursuit of students questions and interests is valued
* Learning is interactive and relies heavily on elearning.
* Technology can become very handy for the constructivist teacher, students will use it to find their own answers (as technology is the way of the future this is a very significant positive).



Minus (all the negatives)

* Some students will learn a particular concept better then others because they already have relevant thoughts to construct their ideas from.
* Students may just disregard new ideas and concepts because they disagree with what they already know.
* Some students may rather be told what needs to be learnt rather than construct it themselves.
* Not all students have the capacity to learn this way.
* Teachers need to come up with new ways of assessing students.
* As constructivism relies heavily on group involvement, a few students interpretations may dominate, meaning disserting students must conform to their opinions.

Interesting

* A students understanding can change when using active learning techniques.
* A students current knowledge can help them gain new knowledge.
* The teacher becomes a facilitator of learning.
* Biggest job for teachers is to ASK GOOD QUESTIONS.
* The teachers role is interactive and they are there to negotiate.
* It’s a life view.

Elearning compliments constructivism very well, as elearning is the way of the future, maybe a connectivism/constructivist approach will be primarily used.

Michael Rose

GDLT

Profile Wiki

Thankfully i had no trouble uploading my profile to the wiki compared to many others. I did this fairly early on and then buddied up with David Jones who was sitting right in front of me when i yelled out his name in our ICT tute to see if he was in the room! David an I agreed to complete a PMI on constructivism since this would help us most with our first assessment. I had mine uploaded Tuesday afternoon and Dave put his up Wednesday.

I think the value in this activity to me as a learner is that it is god to work with someone whom you didn't know before starting, and by doing so you can gain some valuable knowledge and different perspective on a given topic. This sort of activity could be used on my "future" students by setting them up with paired or group activities where their groups/pairs will be assigned and deliberately different to who they would usually work with. Hopefully my students will see the benefit in learning with someone who they don't know very well.

This activity has some small elements of constructivism in that i knew how to fill out a table on my own life and so i had to construct the knowledge as to how to upload and implement that table into a wiki. This activity didn't have many elements of behaviorism and cognitivism but it did have elements of connectivism through searching for other students who would be compatible with my own learning style. This activity supports a diverse range of students as its available to flex as well as internal students, however not all students especially digital immigrants may find it appealing. The design of this activity as an elearning strategy can support learning by allowing students the freedom to choose a partner of their own choice, and it was also a good introduction to how to use a wiki.

Multiple Intelligences Test

Well i've finally gotten round to doing the Birmingham Grid for Learning Multiple Intelligences test. and i must say that i agree with my results. As a lot of others have said the test results rely heavily on the day you do the test but i have to disagree, unless your bipolar your outlook on life and how you do things shouldn't change dramatically day after day :P Don't worry, i'm only joking.... But i feel that my results would be pretty much the same no matter what day i took the test.

Strengths

My results showed that i am heavily body and people smart which i definitely agree with. I've played sport all my life and work as a Personal Trainer and so i know my own body pretty well. I also watch a lot of the mentalist and tend to not look at what poeple are doing but why they are doing it and i pay attention to the small details. This i feel will help me when I'm working as a teacher to find students motives for learning and also why/if they are disrupting the class. The test also found that i am Musical, Visual and Nature smart. I play the drums and guitar and my father was a renowned song writer for Slim Dusty so this is particularly true for me. The nature smart part came as a bit of a surprise but considering i majored in biology and about 90% of the material was on plants, its not really a surprise. I am a visual learner and so it was no surprise that i am visually smart.

Weaknesses

My weaknesses were Intrapersonal, Linguistic and Logical smarts. I would have to say that i disagree with not being intrapersonal smart even though my score was still above 15. Depending on the definition of intrapersonal smart that is, i feel that i am self motivated and know what and have good control over my own mind. I agree with not being logical/Math smart as math was never a strong point for me, especially Long division, i never understood it all through primary school! My linguistic smarts was low compared to Visual, body, music and nature but not low enough to be considered a real weakness. I've always prided myself on my spelling ability (hope there's no mistakes in this :/) and so i do agree with my result in that intelligence.

I think this intelligence test is the best one I've done in terms of visual demonstration and accuracy. i will definitely be using it at some point on my students during my teaching career, to help them reailse their own strengths and weaknesses, and in turn aid there learning ability.

Michael Rose