Week 4

From the lecture this week there were a number of interesting ideas that Greg spoke of. The first idea was about why we should integrate ICT into the classroom. It can encourage problem solving and creative thinking, can cater for multiple intelligences, generates motivation for students to learn (they lvoe technology), and can help to develop information and visual literacies.

A key element Greg spoke of was about encouraging students to adopt critical thinking (thinking about your thinking). This skill is one that can help with creativity and self-reflection. To really get students to think like this, there needs to be a complex question for investigation, make students aware of their assumptions, then reflect and evaluate.

This idea of creativity and catering for differing intelligences was explored in one of the video links provided in the lecture. After watching this video, there were a few things I thought were worth mentioning. It can be found at http://www.edutopia.org/key-learning-community, and my thoughts on it can be found below.

The video The Key Learning Community: Cultivating Multiple Intelligences was very interesting to see the perspectives of the teachers and students at the school. It was encouraging to see that a school has made the attempt to teach directly related to Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. While this is something that is very admirable to see being done, I question the long term effect on students completing their education there, and perhaps being denied the experience of learning to cope in the “real” world. When they finish their education they may find that the wider community is not so understanding and accommodating of their different intelligences. I suspect this may be the case from two of the comments posted under the video from former students. However there is no way to tell if these people did actually attend the school. An interesting video none the less.

In the workshop this week we looked at different Aboriginal stories from http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/dustEchoesFlash.htm. This website has many stories, as well as study guides for teachers to use in classrooms.

After we had watched one, we needed to retell the story using images from the video and print screening them into Inspiration. Mine can be seen below for the story of The bat and the butterfly.

This was a very fiddly and time consuming process. Each image was taken by print screening the video after pausing it in the right spot. Each image was then cropped and pasted into Inspiration. I then resized each image and wrote under each what was happening in the story. Then I attached arrows between each image so the order could be seen clearly.

This sort of activity could be useful for students to do, but like I have already said, is very time consuming. The activity has great adaptability for different year levels and differing abilities. Students can also utilise their writing and retelling skills.

Following this activity, we looked at sorting and graphing activities that students could do. The one we looked at was sorting the different colours of m&m's and then graphing this. This topic could lead onto discussion about many different things including:

- Why are some colours are more commonly found than others?

- What is the most common colour in your sample?

- What is the most common colour in the class?

Here is my finished graph of the frequnecy of m&m's by colour.

This activity is also good for developing the students' skills in Excel, looking at graphs, average, mode and median. There is also lots of room to do this with things other than chocolates or lollies, but that are still engaging and interesting. There is also a lot of room for further discussion or investigation, not only in terms of mathematics, but the students could investigate the production of m&m's, the packaging process, or debates around introducing new colours to the mix.

Week 3

The main focus of the lecture this week was on privacy and responsibility and how to encourage these values around technology among our students. It's all about encouraging students to act responsibly and safely on the internet. As a teacher I know that I need to always be vigilant about privacy and ensure students take appropriate precautions when using the internet. This is something I try to do by finding appropriate sites for the students to visit prior to lessons, rather than just getting them to search using a search engine like Google. I would also like to help my students to learn safe ways to search for themselves as well.

This week we were investigating design briefs (investigate/design, produce, analyse/evaluate) and using a website to construct quizes and games.

We had to investigate how to solve the problem of making a frog jump. This was something that we did hands-on, rather than using computer technology. We trialed different ways of using a rubber band, cardboard, sticky tape and a picture of a frog to make the frog jump. Ours worked by cutting and folding the cardboard and attaching the frog using the rubber band. when you push on the back of the cardboard, it jumps! We used a design brief to record the different ways we thought it might work. Below you can see a video/pictures of our design.

After this activity we used the website www.quia.com/web to make a quiz. The quiz I made can be found here http://www.quia.com/quiz/2513872.html. My quiz is about farms and farm animals. After we had all made our own quiz, we had a turn at answering different ones. It was good to see all the different ideas people came up with and have people do ours and give us feedback.

We also played around with making different activities or games. My game can be found here http://www.quia.com/jw/387140.html. It is a game of word jumble, where all the words are different big cats found in the world.

This website was really easy to use and I can see the potential for teacher designed games and quizes, as well as the opportunity for students to use. There are so many games and you could adapt them to suit a variety of different topics.

Week 2

In the lecture, Greg spoke to us about ePortfolios and their potential use in classrooms and for our own personal use in applying for jobs. I can see how ePortfolios could be very useful for students to present what they believe is important or valuable from their schooling to their parents and also to keep a record of their achievements. I think it is important that they are designed and implemented by the students themselves rather than just their teacher. As part of this process of students creating their own portfolios, students should be encouraged to evaluate their own work and justify why they have selected certain pieces to be placed into their ePortfolio. Teachers should also try to promote a culture of sharing student work and ePortfolios are a tool that can help in this, which is something I will definitely endeavour to do.

In the workshop this week we played around with creating a brochure in Microsoft Publisher. Below is one page that I made for a holiday to Zion Wildlife Gardens in New Zealand.

I formatted the background, practiced print screening and copy and paste. I also modified the text font, size, colour and position. I have had lots of experience with publisher before and made brochures like this during my own schooling. I think this is something that is great for children to do as they learn lots of different formating skills and can develop their extracting information skills. Like Greg said in the workshop, this is something that is much more beneficial for children than just talking/writing about what they did on the holidays.

After this we discussed ePortfolios and began creating our own in publisher. Below you can find the beginnings of mine (although I'm yet to add any information or pictures!). This is something I'll work on and add to.

As you can see it needs a bit of work! But I think it's a good idea and is something that I can continually add to and update.

Here's an update to my ePortfolio.