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
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