Blog 1

I have just read Renee’s blog on concept mapping and agree that they are a fantastic visual tool.  When I first used inspiration this year to create a mind map about learning technologies I was surprised by the amount of content that I was able to provide. 

Not only is the software easy to use but I believe it is a calculus for more information.  All the pretty colours you can use, means, that you need to think of more to add to your mind map.  This however, could mean that there is useless content in there but not really because you want to show people your creation:

‘Look what I did!’

I think I’m being a bit silly here but I do find it very enjoyable and don’t think I would have been as inclined to include so much information on a normal piece of paper.

I have not used an interactive whiteboard before but I think using mind-mapping software in a classroom with an interactive whiteboard will always be a lesson  brainstorming starter!  The great thing about this is that it can also be saved and easily called upon to add to or to compare and contrast to what they didn’t know to what they now know!

I just read Molly’s post and I am glad to hear that her thoughts and ideas are evolving beyond the traditional face-to-face, pen-to-paper.

I read the article by Graeme Salter and what stood out to me was his emphasis on interaction:

‘The effectiveness of an online educational environment depends on the ways in which learning tasks can generate interaction.’

When I designed my online learning task I was concious of this fact.  I started out with three specific collaborative learning concepts and used these as a framework for the development of my online LAMS project

o       students to be in control of their own learning

o       student centred learning

o       the designing of educational opportunities for students to learn co-operatively, collaboratively or independently

I do believe that generating interaction is vital for success in online education.  Students need to be excited, students want to be challenged but we as educators need to provide the right stimulus that leads students along this path.

Like Molly, I too have been using MySpace and facebook for a couple of years.  I agree that at first I never associated MySpace or facebook with the kind of social networking that occurs at school. 

I guess I thought like this because of the privacy and safety of students but this is part of the educational process, we are teaching students to be critically literate thus being able to make decisions on what they deem safe, accurate or appropriate information.

The article mentioned the following:

‘Focus on supervision rather than restriction, by providing opportunities to participate in meaningful online interactions.’

If you give students limits, guidelines, expectations then they will participate in meaningful online interactions.

I have focused on a different element to that of Meeghan’s posting.  I don’t quite agree with Papert on his belief that schools see only one way fit of doing something.  Isn’t it our responsibility to take the time to understand what type of learners our students are and to use this knowledge to cater to their strengths and show them other ways of solving problems and answering questions. In our schools we encourage higher order thinking, deep understanding surely this too is how creativety develops.

It is interesting that this article was from the late 1980’s and how many of the things that were ‘not’ being done at this time are now a big part of schools today.

‘And what’s great about this situation is that each could follow a personal path and they could discuss it with one another. So they could develop a sense of there being different styles.’   

This is what I would encourage in my classroom!

In this article Margaret Riel describes education as a human enterprise and describes a fundamental change in the future way solutions to complex problems that schools face will be solved. 

The internet will and already does bring together large communities of people who each bring a wealth of knowledge from their educational backgrounds.  I can only wait in anticipation to see what this type of contact will achieve with educators and professionals together sharing ideas and knowledge to solve complex, educational problems

Margaret has highlighted four components of an effective learning environment

Learner Centred

Knowledge Centred

Community Centred

Assessment Centred

I agree with Margaret that we do need to establish learning environments that students are interested in otherwise we face the prospect of having learning that occurs at a very slow pace, if at all.  When you have a classroom that is leaner-centred, students are occupied in the process of knowledge construction.  They are excited about the challenges that lay ahead and are motivated to development skills which require more practice and patience than others.

This video hit some points that I and my fellow peers have spoken about as obstacles that need to be overcome in the classroom. 

It mentioned that teachers are highly enthusiastic and wanting to use new technologies in the classroom however, they are not being supported by the system.  So often in schools you experience computer labs that have a high percentage of non-working computers and you see the need for teachers  on top of everything else to be able to fix a computer problem as it arises, in reality it does quite happen in this manner-we are educators not desktop support.

The other point made in this video was having the support (desktop support) to support you as a teacher in your effort to teach using technology.  Having a technical person on sight will help with the ‘support’ needed to guide teachers in the use of technologies.  This is the key, yet how can schools fund this, especially primary schools?

The end of the video showcased what educators want students to be in relation to technology in the classroom and that is simply active researchers and critical users of technology and that technology should be used by teachers to learn more about students’ learning.  Technology needs to work for this to truly happen in the classroom.

I absolutely agree with Matthew Kearney’s blog posting on Learning Designs.  The research into learning designs is very exciting!  I have just completed my own learning design using the LAMS community.  It was such a valuable experience for me as a 4th year student teacher to be exposed to another way of enhancing learning for my students.  

The LAMS community has allowed me to evolve my thinking and the way I plan a unit of work.  I now want to implement these types of projects that are specifically designed to cater to what my students are learning in the classroom. 

I enjoyed this site, it had some really interesting points and ideas!

I remember, and I’m sure students will remember the times they built sandcastles on the beach, this will be like turning on  a switch of good memories, it will grab their attention.

Students may notice a connection between making sand castle and using the internet as you can create a sand castle in any way you wish, you can browse the internet in any way you wish as well.

The connection that is made between parents and children whilst creating a sand castle will be lost while the children are using the internet.

I think the educational value will be lost by the end of the information given as it gets a little bit to technical compared to the start and seems to loose the original meaning of the text.

This article seems to have some vision that learning on computers is an ‘either/or’ situation, in that students are only able to learn one subject at the expense of another. Although the schools funding is limited, meaning they can only choose the most important subjects, there is no reason why a balance can not be met. The article also compares the benefits of modern technology with inventions of the 19th and 20th centuries, the major difference being that studying the radio and video technologies of the past would only benefit people who chose to work in those fields after completing their study, versus knowledge of the current technologies in one form another has become somewhat essential such as people working in offices who need basic skills in office software and typing.

Also with the advances of technology these days there are other benefits for students, such as no longer having to carry around serveral kilograms of learning material as this can be stored in electronic media for a fraction of the price of conventional medium, this reduced cost will also aid in the learning of tradionally disadvantaged people, such as those born into poverty. The other major advantage of technology for the traditionally disadvantage is that distance is no longer the disadvantage it once was, with current computer technology students are able to research and interact online with new technologies such as video conferencing.