Website

Today I made my first website using weebly.com. I can't believe all these years I thought websites were too hard for me to create!!! I had a lot of fun creating it. (www.aliboyce.weebly.com). The only thing I needed to decide was what I wanted the web site for. In the end I made a website to promote me as a teacher.

This program is easy enough for middle primary students to tackle. Websites would be a great way for students to catalogue their work throughout the year so parents and relatives could see see what they have been doing (Ie. a portfolio). It is a great way for them to promote themselves, and learn new ICT skills. 

For the teacher, I can see how this can be used as a tool to promote themselves to potential employers, as it allows the person to communicate their personality and interests more than a traditional CV can. 

Professor Wikipedia

Wiki

Alys Wiki

Today I set up my first Wiki site, using wikispaces.com. Until Thursday, I had never even heard of a 'wiki', besides 'wikipedia'. Basically, Wiki is a space where a community - large or small, public or private - may posting new ideas on the one topic and editing existing posts to come up with a more refined product. Unlike blogs, which everyone can read, but noone may edit, a Wiki can be viewed by all and edited by others also. What an amazing classroom tool!!!!

As a student I can count a dozen times where this tool would have been helpful in my studies so far. By using Wiki we would have eliminated the need to send group emails back and forth, wasting time reading over the same things and duplicate ideas. When organising events and assignments through group emailing, the task is almost always pushed forward by the most organised person who doesn't mind re-organising information and sending it back in a collated form. The Wiki would save this person so much time as there is no need for one person to be the organiser. With wiki the responsibility is on the GROUP.

There have been many changes in education over the years. Before the industrialized era where education became print based, people were educated aurally (Ferris & Wilder, 2008). Oral culture had the strength of being based in community and people had group ownership of knowledge. The introduction of print based education moved education from a community focus to an individual act. Print also meant information was not from the 'now'. Instead, the printing of information meant education could become stagnant and outdated. Ferris and Wilder (2008) talk about the era of education called, "secondary orality," where technology allows education to take the best of both print and oral methods of acquiring knowledge. 

I absolutely see the benefit of Wikis in the classroom. Wiki technology reintroduces the focus on group/community and encourages participation. In a class setting, it benefits the students, but also the teacher who can easily monitor who has been contributing to tasks by looking at the log of edits, and can contribute clues if groups are off task, or have inaccurate information.

Learning styles quiz

My task at University this term is to test different digital tools that can be used in the classroom to enhance learning. The idea is that, by including technology effectively into lessons, all students, with varying learning styles and experiences, can be better catered for more effectively than when traditional teaching methods are employed.

I continue to be in two minds about technology in the classroom. Just because the students are more technology savvy these days, and prefer playing computer games than reading a book, does that mean we should continue to encourage their tendencies, or is it our job as teachers to give them a taste of the 'traditional' (books, paper and pen, sedning letters in the post etc) to balance their technology-saturated lives? I am still unsure where I sit on this issue. Does technology really 'enhance' the learning environment?

Well, this is the question I will endeavor to answer during this course.

But before I begin poking, prodding and critiquing as many available technologies for the classroom as I can, I must start by looking at myself. Who am I, as a learner? How do I best work? 

I pop onto a learning styles website (www.learning-styles-online.com) to find out more...

The results are pretty much as I expected. Above all, I am a social person who prefers to work in groups. I have equally strong preferences for learning visually (pictures, images, spatial awareness), physically (using body and sense of touch), aurally (using sound and music) and logically (using logic and reasoning processes). I learn least effectively when learning is verbal (using words) and solitary (working alone).

Blogs for the classroom?

When asked how blogs could be useful in a teaching context, I began to think about blogs of friends - cooks, photographers, travelers - and how they used their blogs to address certain needs in their specific contexts. Travel blogs were used to keep family and friends up to date with travels, cooking blogs helped establish a cyber-community of people who share the same passion and want to swap techniques/recipes, and journal-like blogs could be used as a tool for reflections on professional experiences.

It seems that all of the above needs are also needs of teachers. Teacher blogs can help establish cyber-communities where resources and ideas can be shared, and journeys of particular teachers that interest you can be followed. Through the actual writing of the blog, teachers are also able to consider and reflect on their practice and their own learning journey. In this way, I think blogs definitely have a place in teachers lives.

But what about the students?

As far as I can see, blogs may also provide students with a platform in which they can reflect on their own learning experiences, and share these with classmates, locally and globally. The blog may serve as a way for students to meet other students doing similar topics, etc, all over the world. The issue to be considered here, though, is privacy. Blogs pose serious risks for some students who do not wish for their identity to be made public. It would be difficult to ensure all students are writing blogs, maintaining 'netiquette' standards and ensuring all classmates identities remained anonymous.

It seems to me that blogs are a great tool for teachers, but perhaps a private forum within the classroom or school community would be more appropriate for students to use.

Mind Mapping

Today I used bubbl.us.com to make a mind map of the what has been taught/learned this week at uni. I found the website very easy to use, and pretty self explanatory. The skill level needed to operate the program definitely made this tool appropriate for primary school aged children. They could use it to illustrate thought processes/processes of working/connections in learning. Now, if technology is meant to be used in the classroom to offer something that old ways of teaching can't, I cannot se how this tool facilitates MORE learning than simply using the old-school brainstorming on paper. To me, it does the same thing, but misses the appeal to kinesthetic/spatial learners. The old sticky notes still seem like a pretty good way to organise/connect/categorise information to me!

Blogspot vs Wordpress

It's day three and I have noticed more people at Uni have chosen to use blogspot than wordpress (actually, I think I am the only one using wordpress!) It is time to check out what the differences are...

Having discovered that you can easily change around the format on blogspot and the backgrounds are more easily changed... I am now a blogspotter!