Sunday, 17 April 2011

Assessment Item 2

Introduction

When choosing a tool to further examine, my main reckoning for my choices was their ability to be integrated easily into a learning context. I wanted to choose a tool that I believe I could not only become proficient in but also would engage my students. If these ICT tools are used well, my students will be more engaged, far less likely to be disruptive and achieve superior results in their studies

Group 1 Technologies – Wiki’s

How they differ?

I chose wiki’s from this group of technologies for two reasons. One, unlike a website which is static and prohibits student contribution, wiki’s are updated and transformed regularly. And two, unlike blogs, which have just one author, wiki’s allow contribution from multiple students, promoting collaborative learning, which is essential to developing their knowledge and learning potential.

How I would apply this ICT to my learning environment to enhance, support and transform students learning.


I can definitely see myself using wiki’s as a teacher. From my experience as a student, group work has always been one of my favourite ways of working. So using wikis as a group would appeal to a large cohort of my students. I would employ wikis at the beginning of a new topic to help students gain a better understanding of the new material. By using the various thinking tools available, the students would contribute their ideas to their assigned wiki and learn from their peers in a collaborative environment. This use of wiki’s will transform the way my students learn by taking the emphasis away from me, the teacher, and placing it on my student’s prior and collected knowledge. The students would feed off each other’s ideas to construct their own knowledge.

The legal, safe and ethical guidelines I would use myself and with my students?

Before my students participate in an online wiki, I would go through the copyright and plagiarism guidelines that they should follow. I would also outline some online etiquette for them as they may not have had a collaborative learning experience like this one before. My emphasis would be placed on making sure that all students received recognition for their work, that is, to not have students editing, deleting or plagiarising other student’s work. Also, placing the wiki in a secure private online environment like myschool, is crucial to the online safety of my students.

How does this ICT facilitate higher order and creative thinking? How would I create effective pedagogical strategies that engage and challenge my learners?


Wikis are owned by my students. This then, gives them and their group a sense of ownership for the content within the wiki. This alone will challenge my students by having them contribute their ideas as a group forcing them to use critical thinking when analysing a topic. The reason being that, if they were too for example, create a PMI analysis by themselves, all of the students may come up with the same ideas, but if they are in a group, if their idea was added by someone else, they would have to find another one. This promotes critical thinking and analysis and is a good example of how ICT’s can promote higher order thinking.

What are the skills associated with the meaningful use of this technology in classrooms?

Students would need a certain degree of digital literacy to participate and benefit from the use of wikis. Basic knowledge of logging in, editing and saving in an online environment is crucial. Most 21st century students would have no issues with this.

Group 2 Technologies - Digital Images

How they differ?

All forms of multimedia should be used to teach students in order to engage and develop their multimedia skills. From the group two technologies, I established that I could make the best use of digital images when teaching. For the reason that, they’re less complex then video and podcasts, and I feel using video and podcasts too much would begin to distract my learners rather then help them learn

How I would apply this ICT to my learning environment to enhance, support and transform students learning.


As a teacher, I feel I could use digital images as a tool to either begin each class, or begin each new topic. I would present an image that I have either found online through flickr, etc, or have manipulated using picnik, to help convey my intended message to the students. I would have the students use a see, think, wonder tool to analyse the image. The purpose of these activities is to engage critical thinking, knowledge, analysis, understanding, evaluation and visual literacy skills development.

The legal, safe and ethical guidelines I would use myself and with my students?

Using images found online means that the students and I would have to abide by the applicable copyright laws associated with those images to ensure that no breaches of copyright occur. I would ensure that the students follow the correct legal guidelines when displaying their images for assessment.

How does this ICT facilitate higher order and creative thinking? How would I create effective pedagogical strategies that engage and challenge my learners?

As read in my blog, digital images are critical to the development of a students visual literacy, and when used in conjunction with online tools and software like picnik, their digital literacy is being developed as well. As a communication tool, digital images can facilitate different ways for students to convey their ideas and assessment. Digital images as mentioned can also be used by the teacher as an observation and analysis tool, facilitating higher order and creative thinking. The pedagogical strategies I would employ to engage and challenge my students are;

• Display an appropriate image at the beginning of a new topic and have students use a see, think, wonder tool to analyse it
• Have students create and manipulate their own image using picnik to convey a message relating to the subject e.g. Community health awareness in HPE


What are the skills associated with the meaningful use of this technology in classrooms?


Students would need a fair level of visual literacy to convey their messages through imagery effectively for assessment. A background in art would help by having the knowledge of what colours convey what moods etc.

Group 3 Technologies - Prezi


How they differ?


I chose Prezi over PowerPoint and glogster for the simple reason that I personally found it the most engaging of the three, and so I feel so would my students. As i mentioned in my blog PowerPoint is a great presentation tool, but I feel its time to move away from this linear sequential model and use a platform that supports our global learners. Glogster is similar to prezi in a lot of ways but I found the learning curve for prezi to be much shorter then glogster.

How I would apply this ICT to my learning environment to enhance, support and transform students learning.

I would use Prezi in the place of PowerPoint to explore topics, I found it much more engaging then PowerPoint and my students would appeal to it more as they have probably only been exposed to PowerPoint in their learning past. As mentioned in my blog, Prezi would appeal to my global learners, thus transforming the way my students learn.

The legal, safe and ethical guidelines I would use myself and with my students?

As prezi uses online resources, copyright and plagiarism guidelines must be followed. In order to not take away the effect of the presentation I would reference all the material at the end of the prezi in a separate box. As displayed below


This is a sample prezi I created in the context of the teacher explaining each term as it came on screen


How does this ICT facilitate higher order and creative thinking? How would I create effective pedagogical strategies that engage and challenge my learners?

Prezi supports the development of visual literacy skills through its ability to embed audio, images and video. As images and video are integrated into the prezi, students would use higher order and creative thinking to analyse the prezi as it progressed. Having students create their own Prezi as an assessment piece would greatly facilitate higher order and creative thinking.

What are the skills associated with the meaningful use of this technology in classrooms?

Anyone can create a prezi, but in order to create a prezi that will engage and support a students learning, the teacher needs to not only have a high level of visual and digital literacy, but most importantly, a very creative mind. I feel as a teacher I will definitely be using Prezi’s to support my students learning.

Group 4 Technologies - Google Documents


How they differ?

From the group four technologies, Google documents stood out to me as the most useful tool for a teacher to have their students use. What separated it from Animations and Simulations, Google Earth, Google Maps, Online Concept Mapping and Zooburst was its usefulness as an assessment tool for students.


How I would apply this ICT to my learning environment to enhance, support and transform students learning.


The biggest use I could see for Google documents was for assessing students. "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, 2010). As a teacher I can access each individual student or groups document and see where they are up to with their assessment. More information on Google documents can be found on my blog. The main reason I like the idea of checking up on students work is that it makes sure that when the due date comes, there should be no student who hasn’t completed their assessment as I will have kept tabs on all their work from day one. In my orientation day for my prac, one teacher was talking about how one of his students hadn’t done anything on his assessment for the whole term and he never realised until after the due date. I feel that if the teacher utilised Google documents effectively he would have been able to see that student was struggling and taken appropriate action.

The legal, safe and ethical guidelines I would use myself and with my students?

As Google documents is also a collaborative learning tool where multiple students can go online and access the same document and make changes, students will need to follow the correct plagiarism and copyright guidelines to ensure their group doesn’t fail for plagiarism. Also being a collaborative document, simple online etiquette as mentioned in wiki’s should be adhered to.

How does this ICT facilitate higher order and creative thinking? How would I create effective pedagogical strategies that engage and challenge my learners?

Google documents facilitates higher order and creative thinking in two ways. One, it is a collaborative group learning environment which inadvertently challenges students to achieve a high grade and come up with different ideas for the group, also promoting creative thinking. And two, as with wiki’s Google documents allows the teacher to apply various thinking tools for the students to use collaboratively to construct their own knowledge, through constructivism.

What are the skills associated with the meaningful use of this technology in classrooms?

Students will need a moderate understanding of online group environments and how they can apply their skills and ideas to assist the group. Basic knowledge of log in, edit, save is essential, but 21st century learners already have a decent knowledge in this area.

References:

Global Education. (2008) PMI Chart. Retrieved April 15, 2011, from
http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go/pid/1825

Google. (2010) Google for educators, Google Docs. Retrieved April 17, 2011, from
http://www.google.com/educators/p_docs.html

Hill, P. (2010) Thoughts on using Prezi as a teaching tool. Retrieved April 17, 2011, from http://prezi.com/rfsnedhqmhqa/thoughts-on-using-prezi-as-a-teaching-tool/

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

Smart Teaching. (2011) 50 Ways to Use Wikis for a More Collaborative and Interactive Classroom. Retrieved April 17, 2011, from
http://www.smartteaching.org/blog/2008/08/50-ways-to-use-wikis-for-a-more-collaborative-and-interactive-classroom/

TeachersFirst. (2010) Wiki- Walkthrough. Retrieved April 15, 2011, from http://www.teachersfirst.com/content/wiki/

Thibault, M., Walbert, D. (2003) Reading images: an introduction to visual literacy
Retrieved April 17, 2011, from http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/675