Students in the classroom today are growing up surrounded by all different types of technology. Prensky (2001) has defined today's learners as being involved in technology for most, if not all of their lives (link to my reflection on Prensky). As future learning managers, we need to cater to this and utilise these technologies in the classroom in order to engage the students.
A great way to determine whether or not a particular ICT would be suitable or not to utilise in your classroom is to look at it from multiple perspectives. By using de Bono's six thinking hats, you will be able to see the problem from each perspective and work out if and how using the technology would work in your classroom. I recently contributed to a wiki space about using mobile phones in a classroom which used de Bono's six thinking hats. I found this really useful as I was not just seeing and thinking about the question with a biased mind, I had to think outside of what I normally thought in order get a broader understanding and see it from multiple perspectives (Reflection on wiki contribution). By using the knowledge gained by thinking using all six of de Bono's hats, you will be better prepared to overcoming obstacles that may arise within your lesson or even if the technology would be a beneficial tool to use with your group of students.
Over this course, I have investigated four different groups of ICT tools which can be used to support, enhance and transform the learning experience of primary school students. These four ICT tools include 'Online Spaces' such as wikis, blogs and websites, 'Multimedia Tools' which could include images or videos, 'Presentation Tools' like Microsoft PowerPoint and other 'Interactive Tools' such as animations and simulations.
Within this reflective synopsis, I have chosen one tool out of each of the four groups to discuss and explore in detail in order to provide an in depth reflection and analysis on how I can incorporate the use of these tools into my teaching.
Model and Support Safe, Legal and Ethical Practices in an Educational Setting
The internet can be an extremely dangerous place, especially for young children. Online cyber bullying and harassment, stalking and harmful and inappropriate content are just some of the threats the internet poses. It is important that Parents, Teachers and Students all know and understand the importance of staying safe, legal and ethical when researching and using information found on the internet. Within education settings, online safety measures such as parental controls, constantly monitoring and observing the students’ internet use and modelling safe, legal and ethical practices should be put in place to help to encourage students to follow by example and stay safe (Australian Government Cybersmart Website, 2012).
Before students learn to use the internet, they should first be taught that they do not provide any personal information on the internet, they should know how to reference and provide attributes to where they received information and they should also understand what to look out for on the internet.
‘Cybersmart’ is a great Australian government website developed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority that provides information about cyber safety to help inform parents, teachers and children how to stay safe while using the internet. They do this through games, learning programs and fact sheets to help inform everyone.
Another website I found that provided useful information on staying legal, safe and ethical online is called ‘Web Aware’ which offers information on Sexual risk and harm, Cyber bullying, Privacy, Pornography, Violent and hateful content, Gaming, Excessive Internet use and Marketing aimed at children (Web Aware, 2010).
It is important as a future learning manager that I demonstrate the importance of working legally, safely and ethically in an online environment.
Group 1 - Space Tools
I decided that for this first tool group I would focus on Blogs. I have only ever made this one blog but I have contributed to and seen many others since I began my study. Unfortunately I did not have any experience with blogs before I started university and they did not mean much to me at all, they were just a way for people to share their thoughts and pictures.
Now I understand that they can have much more meaning and I believe that they could be a great tool to use in the classroom. Many schools these days have their own blog and some even have blogs for each of the year levels, however by allowing the students to create their own individual blogs, it allows them to share their own learning through a variety of forms. This also allows parents and family to easily see what their children are learning at school. Another way that you can have all students blogging is to create a class blog where the students take turns or work in small groups to contribute weekly posts on the blog.
An important thing to remember when using blogs in the classroom is how public it is. Blogs can either be set up as public or private. Depending on the information and content that could be posted, it may be better to set up the school blogs as private, that way only those with permission can see the blog.
Please visit my blog posting about blogs to see the positives and negatives on using blogs in a classroom.
Group 2 - Multimedia Tools
For this group of digital technologies, I have decided to experiment with MobaPhoto. MobaPhoto is a program that enables you to upload your own photos to resize and edit them. This program also has a tool that creates an album of the photos that have been edited. I downloaded the free program and it was not long till I was losing time editing my own photos.
This program is a great example of an image tool that can be used in a classroom to enhance student learning. By implementing this tool within the classroom students can learn how to upload images onto the program to be edited. To make the experience more worthwhile and meaningful to the students and their learning they could use a camera to take photos of experiments or activities they are involved in. After uploading and editing the images the students can then create a story board from the images to retell and reflect on their experiments and activities.
You are not only limited to editing your own photos using MobaPhoto. Students can search for images on the internet, however they need to make sure they have permission to use the images first. Flickr is a great website to find many different images that are free to access however students still need to recognise where they retrieved the image.
Please follow this link to see the images that I edited using MobaPhoto and a list of Advantages and Disadvantages to the use of this tool.
I found that Microsoft PowerPoint was a great tool for presenting things digitally. Most computers in schools already have this program installed on them as it is part of Microsoft Office so there is no further downloading needed. PowerPoint is easy to use and is fantastic when making an oral presentation. There are so many things other than the simple information slides that you can do on PowerPoint including making story boards, creating images and making simple still shot movies.
The narration function in PowerPoint is very useful in a classroom setting as it helps promote language development and communication skills. This is especially helpful to students who have difficulty speaking in front of others. When I tried to narrate my presentation it had clicks every time the slide changed and silent spots where it cut out the background noise so I ended up just adding audio which played over the slides.
PowerPoint can be used to support learning in various subject areas and can be scaffolded to include graphic organisers such as concept maps which can be created using the shapes and smart art function. This tool can also be shared online as I have done on my blog. I have done this by converting it into a video format however there are also other programs you can use to do this.
The potential uses of PowerPoint in the classroom are endless and if you use it correctly and creatively it can be a fun and beneficial program for learning purposes. Overall, I would definitely promote and encourage the use of PowerPoint in the classroom as it is simple, creative and fun to use.
Please click here to see some PowerPoint presentations I made and a list of plus and minus's as to why this tool would be great to use in the classroom.
Group 4 - Other Interactive Online Tools
I recently had the pleasure of creating my own digital pop-up-book using ZooBurst. ZooBurst is a digital storytelling tool that allows you to easily create and share your own 3D pop-up books. There are over 10,000 free images and materials that are available to use or you can upload your own images. When registering for an account, you can sign up for basic membership, premium membership or a school license. Features and prices of each account type can be found here.
This is a great educational tool as it provides students with new and exciting ways in which they can tell their stories, deliver presentations, write reports and share the ideas. When signing up for an account, you can register as a teacher. Teachers can then assign usernames and passwords to their students, this prevents students from having to share their own personal information and it allows the teacher to manage and moderate student work in a protected environment.
Overall I believe that this tool would be great to use in a classroom. It would help students to think and focus on the task as it is fun and entertaining.
Please see my ZooBurst post to see my 3D pop-up book and a list of Positives and Negatives of using this tool.
Conclusion
In conclusion I have learnt an amazing amount about different digital tools and how to integrate them into teaching. Throughout this course, my knowledge in ICTs has grown and I now feel better prepared to teach 21st century learners. By integrating some of these tools I will be able to extend and increase my students learning and engagement in tasks.
References
Australian Communications and Media Authority. (2011). CyberSmart. Retrieved from http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/HOMEPAGE/PC=HOME and http://cybersmart.gov.au/
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. In One The Horizon. MCB University Press. Vol 9 No. 5
Web Aware. (2010). Media awareness network. Retrieved from http://www.bewebaware.ca/englich/default.html
0 comments: