Reflections

It seems that previously working embedded materials from slideshare and youtube are currently down . . . any one know why?

UPDATE: Reposting the embed code seemed to work as the embedded content is now displaying again, but the html appeared identical, so I’m not entirely sure what the problem was.

Download 

Above is my vlog response to the BECTA Article that encourages the use of digital video in the classroom.  I most certainly agree with the suggestions raised especially in regards to student engagement and motivation.

PS: It would appear that you may need to click the download link to view my video as the integrated Quicktime player doesn’t appear to cope well with it.

PPS: It appears that in the upload process the syncing between my voice and the graphics was lost, but I suppose you get the idea!!  Technological issues even plague the natives . . . ;-P

Dalziel presents an article on the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) within which he suggests that “the main elements [of learning design] tend to include greater focus on “context” dimensions of e-learning (rather than simply “content”) and greater recognition of the role of “multi-learner” (rather than just single learner) environments”.

What I take from this is that the reason to be experimenting with learning design is to promote a constructivist (depending on the activities involved, perhaps also constructionist) and collaborative environment in which students may be engaged in their learning in the classroom.

This article opened my eyes a little to the intentions (the learning ”science”?) behind LAMS.  When I experimented with LAMS myself I perceived it as an interesting way of allowing students to explore and reflect upon an interesting aspect of learning, probably more from home.

I now see that the intention is probably not to relegate LAMS sequences to small and discrete homework tasks but to develop large sequences designed to be integrated within classrooms over larger lengths of time and dealing with broad concepts. 

My learning partner and I had designed a LAMS sequence to be completed in a short period of time, possibly as homework in the form of: Conundrum > Students Initial Ideas > Further Issues Raised > Mathematical Proof > Student Reflection.  Rather than limiting our task to this rather paradoxical point of interest (whether 0.99999 . . . = 1) we had the opportunity to take a more wholistic approach, as Madhu and Tania showed in their outstanding LAMS sequence demonstrated in the lecture.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed using the software, and found the drag and drop interface quite easy to use after some initial messing around!!

I read Warky’s blog posting on Gee’s article, Learning by Design: Good video games as learning machines, which I had also read.

I absolutely agree with the three points he raises on using gaming the classroom.  I’ll admit I’m also a nerd, I play World of Warcraft (WoW) and teach computers and I think that puts me up with Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates on the nerd factor.  However, my experience with gaming has led me to the same conclusions Chris arrives at.

• If gaming is forced upon you, it can become a chore and no longer fun.  If someone forced me to log into WoW when I didnt feel like it, I would certainly become bored and disenchanted.  I’d imagine moderators of the game would get to this stage eventually.
• Not everyone likes gaming, and whilst some people do, the like different games.  I have a friend who will happily play Lego Star Wars for hours, but would not get near a sport, role-playing game (RPG), first person shooter (FPS), or pretty much any other console/computer game.
• Gaming does involve rewards.  Perhaps this is the one aspect that learning with games can most easily address.  Suitable rewards may be included within the game, or if that is not achieveable then possibly an external reward tied to receiving a certain outcome in an educational game.

My major difficulty with seeing game use work in the classroom is that I can’t visualise how I could achieve this well in a Mathematics KLA (although obviously it would apply very easily to my IT/computing classes).  Maybe it’s time to do some more exploring!!!

PS: The picture included above isn’t really how I picture it, but I wanted to post a Warcraft related photo! ;-P

Well, I viewed my first slideshare example, and I was quite impressed.  It is a website that allows you to view, download and share presentations.  What a fabulous idea! 

It’s a really worthwhile idea to support, because when you think about it, all over the world, presentations are being written that have been written many times before.  Everyone thinks they are forced to invent their own version of the wheel, when really, one that is already made will do just fine (or better).

All you need to be careful to do is vet the content of the presentation you might wish to use, and there you have it!!  You need not use presentations verbatim of course.  Editting, improving and resharing presentations would be an excellent way of putting back into the SlideShare community.

The actual SlideShare I viewed would be a good example to use in a short presentation to introduce Scratch as a tool for the classroom during school personal development days or for ICT integrators who are inservicing teachers on technology integration.  Scratch is of course one of the more simple and user friendly ways to use game design in the classroom. Here is the example SlideShare I viewed:

Wow, a really interesting podcast got me thinking, but there are a few points I’d like to examine:

• Suggesting that 20th century literacy involved memorising facts from a textbook is to some degree true, at least for the first 75% of the century, but things were already changing before the 21st century rolled in.
• Comparing a Mario Bros game to climate change is a bit of a stretch to me. I see the point of the connectedness of the events, and yet, Mario Bros involves immediate direct feedback to the user. The climate change example involves indirect “Butterfly Effect” style flow of connectedness to some event which is hard to conceptualise for a student in a classroom. Mario is always easy to relate to, he’s blinking in front of you, the polar bears aren’t.
• In 1830, the farmer’s idea of literacy was how to read, and that is understandable. Now the idea of literacy has extended beyond reading, into other text types, and visual literacy, which does include computer games surely. But to put all your eggs into the the gaming basket seems a little odd to me. I’m sure to some extent the concluding statement of the podcast was an oversimplification of the idea, and yet, at it’s core, that is pretty much what it boils down to.

An interesting video shared on YouTube provides insight and encouragement for teachers that wish to experiment with pdocasting in the classroom.  The point I wish to comment on is raised at about 1:23 in the video.   The author states “today’s students are already publishing material on the Web”.  I absolutely agree, and this is a motivating factor for teachers to incorporate ideas such as podcasting into their classrooms.

However, the other side of the coin is that I believe whilst exploring with podcasting in the classroom we as teachers should be taking this opportunity to teach some netiquette and Internet safety.  Publishing information on the web can give the false impression of anonymity and security.  Students need to be taught to be careful what they publish on the Internet, and not just on social networking sites, but on homepages, blogs, forums, and any other of a variety of sources.

There are also issues with cyber bullying that could be dealt with too, although it would appear from my experiences on practicum that some schools are already addressing the cyber bullying problem arising from material published using technology.  So perhaps in the classroom it may be legitimate to not comment to a great deal on cyber bullying, but focus on the safety aspects of making personal information available on the Internet.

That said, podcasted classroom material should provide no reason for safety concerns, so lets get recording!!

I was experimenting with GeoGebra for a mathematics teaching methods assessment when I recalled Nico’s post on the subject.  It really is quite useful software (and free, which is its major advantage over the more popular commercial software Geometer’s Sketch Pad).

The potential benefits have already been discussed by Nico in his post.  What I wished to add was that there are quite a number of resources available for use for GeoGebra, including worksheets and lessons.  I was reviewing the available submitted resources for “Inverse Functions” in particular, and was surprised to see quite a few examples of submitted work which allow students to discover or explore relationships between a function and its inverse.

But the software is not limited to functions and co-ordinate geometry, as Matthew points out in his blog it could be particularly useful for circle geometry, and I would suggest also some trigonometry, properties of polygons, and curve sketching.

 Even this software which holds potential for engaging students and allowing them to be active learners could be turned into a very teacher-centred tool.  Caveat Magister (maybe someone with some actual Latin knowledge can correct me . . .)

The graph of y = x squared, and its relection in the line y = x, (x = y squared) as graphed in GeoGebra.

There seems to have been some hype surrouding Fisch’s post being voted the most influential on Edublogs in 2007.  There are some controversial things in this post, and after reading Matthew K’s thoughtful take on it and Chris’ enjoyable rant, I feel compelled to comment also.

I absolutely enjoyed reading Chris’ three reasons why Fisch’s statement (about not being computer literate today is the equivalent of not being able to read and write 30 years ago) is not helpful.  I’d like to put the challenge out for someone to play devil’s advocate perhaps and come up with three reasons why the statement might be true.  I must admit I am currently unable to do so.

On the other side of the coin, I agree with Fisch that the distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants is unnecessary, and I also agree (as does Chris) that being proud of being technologically illiterate is ridiculous. 

Certainly, ideas of modelling our digital literacy to students are worthwhile but I don’t see any problem with admitting that a student might know how to use technology better ourselves, if that student can share that knowledge with the whole class, doesn’t everybody win?  I think this is where Matthew’s idea of the relevant question not being the digital literacy of the teacher but the knowledge of how technology can improve the learning experiences for the students, is spot on.

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After briefly summarizing educational research and the potential for the integration of ICTs into the classroom Romeo goes on in his discussion to give two visions for the future of education.  Both are extreme examples of in which direction technology could head.

Scenario 1 seems to involve a school comprehensively run almost solely by technology, and comparisons to Orwell’s 1984 would certainly not be far adrift.  Social interaction has given way to solo learning monitored electronically.

Whilst both scenarios involve extensive use of technology, the somewhat romanticized notion of Scenario 2 is presented as a desirable future outcome.  Granted, the author does point out that Scenario 2 is idealistic, involving totally transformed workspaces integrating technology seamlessly into the classroom.  Technology is used to enrich the tasks and not replace human interaction.  The setting is not the typical setting seen in schools today, and given the description of learning space the classroom would have to be enormous.

The major point of the discussion is to analyse how students learn and how ICT can be used to assist student learning and begin to plan for a future where the goal is to combine technology so as to maximise student learning.

I suppose the article does raise the interesting point of the potential future uses of technology not only as an education tool, but as a behavior management/monitoring assistant.  Questions of surveillance and privacy are always sensitive issues and I could imagine vocal opposition to uses of technology in this fashion.

Despite the idealism involved I like the picture painted by the author.  In a period in time where public schools sometimes don’t get adequate funding to even provide for rare computer access, the classroom utopia presented above feels very distant, but I suppose it is worthwhile having something to aim at.

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