Reflective synopsis

This was a particularly difficult assignment for me to attempt. I’ve never before taken on the role of educator, and I am fairly unsure of how to apply these technologies in a teaching environment. Nevertheless, I have been and still am, a student, so the way in which I’ve researched these methods of elearning is how I would like to learn from them.

Google earth really excited me. It has a greater capacity to engage students rather than looking at an atlas. Imagine perhaps tracing the steps of your daily routine and then comparing it to the steps of someone else, possibly in another country (Google earth 2009). Geography could be totally rearranged with the use of this tool, History too.
However, I experienced a couple of technical issues with the program. I’m not sure what caused it, but my Google earth stopped working properly after about half an hour. It stopped responding to the commands I was clicking on, which was quite frustrating. Whether it was a program error or a computer error I’m not sure. This could have implications on its overall use, after all students and teachers aren’t going to use a tool that is sluggish and frustrating.

During my time in High school, students around me complained mightily of the uselessness of some of the things that were being taught. Looking back, I agree with them. Web quests would have been much welcome in my classroom back then.
Reading about web quests made me realise just how aware of the world outside of the school room we could make students. In particular, the web quests I read about terrorism (March n.d)and the environment (Hawkquest 2004). One only has to think about our communities to understand that these two subjects are probably the most prominent of this past decade. And although we are becoming more aware of these two universal issues, many people understand little about these problems.
I see Webquests as a terrific way to introduce these issues, and future issues into the classroom. They utilize some of the key aspects of connectivism. The idea that we learn through experience, and using the experience of others to form multiple valid arguments (Siemens 2005).

I’ve been aware youtube for a while now. I watched it for music videos and funny videos but not educational videos. You can find a youtube tutorial on just about anything you want. Youtube is good for spatial/visual learners, audio learners and musical learners. It also incorporates some of the Dale’s learning aspects(Aldred 2009). According to Dale’s cone of learning experience, we learn 30% through demonstration (watching youtube videos) and 75% by practice by doing (making youtube video, or acting out its contents).

Avatars can be a cute distraction used to break up large amounts of text. Some of the other students in the course have mentioned that they use avatars on their younger children to gain their interest (Makiko 2009). They are quite good at gaining attention, but probably not so good for long dialogues of information. I would definitely incorporate them into my teaching style in some way.

Another piece of learning tech that incorporates the idea of connectivism is the Voicethread (Siemens 2005). Voicethread uses a number of concepts to develop a mini forum around an image, in which people from all over can come and comment. They can use factual knowledge or anecdotal evidence to explain the image they are viewing. The image promotes a discussion that can be monitored and edited and is mostly used for educational processes(Voicethread 2009).

Incomputech is an excellent music resource. The creator Kevin Mcleod is very generous in believing that his art should be available to everyone (Mcleod 2007) and his target is specifically aimed at educators and students, who generally have limited music resources. Copyrights of musical artist must be observed, one has to be careful how they use any piece of music that they find. Knowing that there are sites like this that exist are a great relief. Music downloaded from this site is free to be used.
I would definitely use this site. Particularly when developing media projects like flash animation, dance routines, and video productions. This is another example of connectivism, one person sharing his creations with others so they can create.

Group collaborations are being more and frequent in students assessments. Wiki is a handy tool which resembles an online white board. A group of students can quickly log into their Wiki page to type their ideas and see what the others have put on up on the wiki. It enables people to share their views and ideas. This is a much easier way to access other student’s information as opposed to email, telephone and texting.

Picnik is a photo editing program that is free to use. Programs such as these are good for students and teachers with limited financial resources. The free tools are very basic, you can use picnik to reshape, resize, cut and colour your pictures (Picnik 2009). The more elaborate tools, come with a fee. It’s a good program to edit your photos and make them more suitable for uploading to other websites.
Picnik also works in conjunction with Flickr a free, educational site for students and teachers to upload there pictures. The pictures are sharable, and are free to use within the copyright laws (Aldred, 2009). Like Incomputech, this program has availability for everyone in mind. Again this is a good teaching tool for visual spatial learners, and draws on the connectivism learning value of shareable knowledge

There are more tools in the following Blog, but these are the tools I’ve specifically chosen as they suit my learning style the best.

References

Aldred, S (2009) An introduction to teacher’s delivery technologies, Retrieved December 15, 2009, from Moodle, FAHE11001 Managing Elearning.

BGFL (2009) Multiple intelligences, Retrieved December 18, 2009, from http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks/ict/multiple_int/what.cfm

Google (2009) Google Earth. Retrieved December 10, 2009, from http://earth.google.com/intl/en/index.html

HawkQuest Educational Enterprise (2004) Antarctic ice to water Australia. Retrieved December 9 from http://pbl.cqu.edu.au/web_quest/home.htm

Makiko (2009) Amazing Avatars. Retrieved December 17, from http://kellyselearning.blogspot.com/2009/12/amazing-avatars.html

March,T. (n.d) Freedom fighter or Terrorist. Retrieved December 9 from http://www.web-and-flow.com/members/tmarch/freedom2/webquest.htm
Mcleod, K (2007) Incompetech. Retrieved December 13, 2009, from
http://incompetech.com/

Siemens, G (2005) Connectivism. Retrieved December 18, 2009, from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

Voice thread (2009) Voicethread. Retrieved December 13, 2009 from https://voicethread.com/#u668920

Wood, J (2009) Google earth in the classroom. Retrieved December 10, 2009 from http://joewoodonline.pbworks.com/Google+Earth+in+the+Classroom

Podcasting

I've been listening to my favourite radio shows through podcast for about a year and a half. For me, it is a particular handy tool. Most often, I forget or don't have time to listen to my favourite radio broadcasts, so I download them and listen to them through my car, ipod and computer. There are a lot of educational programs out there to compliment teaching subjects, however, I have noticed that on long broadcast (around 45mins, or 1hr) I tend to start 'tuning out'.
On the other hand, podcasts are great because you can pause, and rewind. This could be helpful if your not a a strong auditory learner. If you are a strong auditory leaner, the podcasts are a good way to supplement the subject that you are learning.
Video's are also available as vodcasts, this allows for storage of good teaching programs or related videos on to portable devices. Students are very mobile these days, it makes sense to use technology to bring the education to them wherever they are.

References

Aldred, S (2009) An Introduction to teacher’s delivery technologies, Retrieved December 16, 2009, from Moodle, FAHE11001 Managing Elearning.

Alded, S (2009) Active learning and Diversity, retrieved December 18, 2009, from Moodle, FAHE11001, Managing Elearning.

Cheek, B (2006), Multiple intelligences, Retrieved December 18, 2009, from http://www.gp-training.net/training/educational_theory/multint/multint.htm

Youtube

What a resource Youtube is! For years I've been using it to watch video's of people hitting pinatas, however recently I found it can be used for all sorts of learning purposes.
You can find tutorials on anything you can think of. I have a keen interest in playing the ukulele so it was one of my first searches and I found this little video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78nr8QMaUbI

Learning the Japanese language is the second subject I looked for:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4OsejI4mIg

Some video's posted on Youtube are better then others, and if you manage to find some quality programing, you can subscribe to it, and Youtube will store the video's in your subscriber file. Teachers can find instructional video's to compliment their teaching subjects, and also encourage students to possibly make their own You tube video. You tube is a good place for people who learn by visual instruction. You can probably find any number of You tube videos that suit all types of learners.

References

Aldred, S (2009) A introduction to teacher’s delivery technologies, Retrieved December 16, 2009, from Moodle, FAHE11001 Managing Elearning.

Youtube, LLC (2009) Youtube: Broadcast yourself. Retrieved December 16, 2009, from http://www.youtube.com/

Quizzes

I'm not a particular fan of quizzes. I believe they are useful in evaluating how much you know, but I'm not sure of their value in assessing a student formally. Developing a quiz was more difficult then I thought it would be.
Structuring questions so they are understandable to others was tough. since I'm not a teacher, it also felt awkward. I'm not an expert, so I felt my questions and answers were too risky, after all I wouldn't want to give anyone wrong information.
I did attempt to make a quiz through Class Marker, which was easy to use. In the end, I scrapped the quiz, I needed better questions, and more accurate answers.

References

Aldred, S (2009) An introduction to teacher’s delivery technologies, Retrieved December 16, 2009, from Moodle, FAHE11001 Managing Elearning.

ClassMarker (2009) ClassMarker. retrieved December 16, 2009, from
http://www.classmarker.com/

Powerpoint

I made a Powerpoint presentation for an assessment last term. Initially I believed powerpoint to be quite stagnant and boring. but there are numerous applications to be done with this tool. Using action buttons can make a powerpoint presentation a lot more interactive and engaging for the students. Adding a voice over using the in program software isn't very good quality, Luckily there is free software, like audacity available. The audio files made by audacity are quite large, and a large audio file may not always be able to save to a powerpoint presentation. Aside from those things, PP is very popular, it looks stylish and is easy to use.


References


Aldred, S (2009) A introduction to teacher’s delivery technologies, Retrieved December 15, 2009, from Moodle, FAHE11001 Managing Elearning.

Audacity (2009) Audacity. Retrieved December 15, 2009, from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

E Portfolio

When I think of an E portfolio I think of it in a traditional sense, a place to keep your work so it may be presented to potential employers. Without a doubt that may have been it's original use. I see the potential of utilizing it for an educational purpose, but not a direct teacher to student way. With all the Internet media that's available, teachers could find useful ideas through blogs, images, tutorials and the like, opening up more avenues to develop their own teaching style. E portfolio has the potential to become a creative hub for teachers to showcase their work, and learn off and connect with other teaching experiences.

References

Aldred, S (2009) A introduction to teacher’s delivery technologies, Retrieved December 15, 2009, from Moodle, FAHE11001 Managing Elearning.

Mosep (n.d) Mahara screencasts. Retrieved December 15, 2009, from http://www.mosep.org/index.php/lang-en/toolbox/maharascreencasts

Wiki

Wikki appears to be a place for fans to post messages about their favourite shows (Wetpaint 2009), but I can see an educational use for it. Wiki feels like a natural expression for group collaborations for online students. It also incorporates the value of connective learning, and increase experience in dealing with new information and assessing its value (Siemens 2005).
The interface is user friendly meaning younger students (and older ones) can start putting their idea's forward to their peers immediately, instead of the tedious going back and fourth with other modes of communication. Wiki also means editing, so mistakes can be altered and new avenues explored.

References

Aldred, S (2009) A introduction to teacher’s delivery technologies, Retrieved December 15, 2009, from Moodle, FAHE11001 Managing Elearning.

Siemens, G (2005) Connectivism. Retrieved December 18, 2009, from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm

Wetpaint.com, Inc (2009) Retrieved December 15, 2009 fromhttp://www.wetpaint.com/