What a journey!!I thought that I had used a lot of technology in the classroom, but to be exposed to a lot more has given me food for thought. As it said children learn best when thay are engaged or challenged to learn and ele@rn enables all students to allow them to grow as learners in this digital and global era. Remenber, it's not about that technology that you include in lessons, it's all about good teaching and learning and then using technology is what helps them learn.
As part of reading groups, we use a blooms taxonomy model, to differentiate the curriculum. The verbs that were on that model, allows us to create more challenging activities which will enable to the children to be more engaged. Adding a Wikis and podcasting tasks may reach those students that require that extra stimulation to some children to learn in this digital age.
Through this Web 2.0 course, I have been challenged and given so many ideas that I can start using in my classroom. I am really excited about using Wikis and podcasting into my teaching/learning this term as it was something that I had heard of but have never used and now I have many good ideas and I can start sharing thses tools with my students. Thank you!!
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Module 10
I had heard of the term Wiki before, but really didn't know what it was. I knew students had used Wikipedia to find information and I knew that the information wasn't always 100% accurate. The video provided a great explanation on how to use a Wiki and it doesn't sem to be as hard as I thought. It makes life a lot easier rather than sending lots of emails, you can create a Wiki page. The video said it is as easy as creating a word document and rewriting it and you use the two tools of edit and save. Once someone edits it and saves, it is there for the next person to view it. It's as easy as that!! I think that I would like to try a Wiki this term in the classroom as part of an English activity where the children are building on a narrative and adding to it. We are studying rainforests this term as well and I could somehow link it to that, even when we research a rainforest. Any ideas anyone??
How can Web 2.0 assist in improving learning outcomes for all students?
When children are enjoying what they are learning, they achieve better results. The children love using the computer any time that they can get. Children these days have been brought up using computers and they are so good at using them. I hate to say this but a lot better than some teachers!!! They are starting to teach themselves how to use specific tool that are useful to their learning like accessing the Internet, searching and copying and pasting information, they can even teach other students or the teacher a few things. We as educators need to keep up with learning these tools because we don't want to limit what the children can do. I think this Web 2.0 course, has opened my eyes up to the learning tools out there to use in our classroom and to implement as many in the classroom as possible to cater for differing needs of the children.
How can Web 2.0 assist in improving learning outcomes for all students?
When children are enjoying what they are learning, they achieve better results. The children love using the computer any time that they can get. Children these days have been brought up using computers and they are so good at using them. I hate to say this but a lot better than some teachers!!! They are starting to teach themselves how to use specific tool that are useful to their learning like accessing the Internet, searching and copying and pasting information, they can even teach other students or the teacher a few things. We as educators need to keep up with learning these tools because we don't want to limit what the children can do. I think this Web 2.0 course, has opened my eyes up to the learning tools out there to use in our classroom and to implement as many in the classroom as possible to cater for differing needs of the children.
Module 9
Scootle is a fantastic website and I have used it quite extensively in the classroom. It supports a lot of the KLA's. For our democracy unit, it was hard to find a lot of resources that were child friendly. I spent quite a lot of time searching for appropriate learning objects and saving them to my learning paths.It is also good for differentiating the curriculum as you can set different learning objects for different groups of children in the class. I have used these learning objects before for rotating maths activities in maths groups.
I liked looking at the Second Life site where you can enter virtual worlds and learn by being immersed into other worlds.I think this is an interesting tool as children are learning differently to when we were at school. It is said that traditional lectures and where children are being talked at doesn't hold the interest of many students, therefore children are not doing a whole lot of learning.I think this idea of 'role playing' would capture the interest levels of children.
I have not used social networking sites such as twitter for personal use or in the classroom. At our school at the moment, we have a lot of children that are on facebook, even though the minimum age is 13. So they(or their parents) are signing them up for an account. I don't see the educational value for these sites in the Primary Classroom. It mentioned that we as teachers are able to educate the students from a young age on ways they can be responsible and use the websites for the better rather than for the worse. I think that was a very important point as some children in he school have been involved with cyber bullying and not understanding the consequences not displaying responsible behaviour on the net.
I liked looking at the Second Life site where you can enter virtual worlds and learn by being immersed into other worlds.I think this is an interesting tool as children are learning differently to when we were at school. It is said that traditional lectures and where children are being talked at doesn't hold the interest of many students, therefore children are not doing a whole lot of learning.I think this idea of 'role playing' would capture the interest levels of children.
I have not used social networking sites such as twitter for personal use or in the classroom. At our school at the moment, we have a lot of children that are on facebook, even though the minimum age is 13. So they(or their parents) are signing them up for an account. I don't see the educational value for these sites in the Primary Classroom. It mentioned that we as teachers are able to educate the students from a young age on ways they can be responsible and use the websites for the better rather than for the worse. I think that was a very important point as some children in he school have been involved with cyber bullying and not understanding the consequences not displaying responsible behaviour on the net.
Module 8
RSS seems easy to use. I signed up really quickly and then I used the search engine to find topics that would interest me. Last term, Year Five studied Weather, so I added some weather sites. On the YouTube clips, it showed us how to search by URL as well. I think with a little more playing around with this site, I will begin to see some benefits and how I could use this in the classroom.
Module 7
Delicious is a fantastic bookmarking tool. You are forever being introduced to different websites, whether they are interactive ones for the classroom, music/movie downloads, recipes, clipart, hotels etc.you can never remember all the different types of websites. I always hear of these great websites and want to implement them into the classroom but by the time we do that unit I may have forgotten about it or couldn't find it when we searched on google for it. That's why I believe that delicious is such a great tool. Rather than use your favourites tool from your computer, delicious enables you to access all your bookmarked sites from any computer, anywhere, which will be useful if you are at home or you have changed schools. I will endeavour to use this tool to start saving all my links and experimenting with this website.
I commented on my colleague's page(Alisha Cunningham) on making a photo book with all of her images from her latest holiday. I haven't used the "make Stuff" from flickr yet, but from another source and it was a great idea to capture of all your favourite photos.
Friday, October 14, 2011
Module 6
Flickr is a great website to upload and organise photos. I think that it could be used effectively within the classroom as it's a great way to collect and store your own and class photos and share with those you will allow. I'm hoping that it is privacy protected as I would feel nervous about uploading images of children to the web without consent. You could upload photos from an excursions, sports carnivals, special days and share them with the students in your class.
Children need to be made aware of copyright. I think everyone assumes that because images are available on the web, that they are accessible for anyone to use. Just like when children are doing research, we make them aware that they cannot copy and paste great slabs of information from a website. We also need to make them aware that it is the same with images from the Internet and that they understand the consequences of using images that aren't theirs as their own.
It was difficult to add my photos via the photo link with the URL, so i just copied and pasted the links from flickr.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Module 5
This week we looked at a program called Glogster, which enables us and students to create detailed web pages or posters on any topic using visuals, graphics or audio. I used Glogster Year Five students last year. I found that it was very time consuming to set it up for every child to use. Once I set it up though, I found it a valuable classroom tool. The children were able to link youtube pages, music and graphics to their page. When they presented their research on different types of weather, it made their presentation more interesting.I was going to use glogster again this year, but I was unable to access all of my students without paying a fee, so I didn't implement i in the classroom this year. Here is a glog from one of my students last year:
http://amyyazbeck.edu.glogster.com/thunder-storms/
The next program we explored was bubble us. This a tool that can be used to digitally create mind maps. This is a process that is used in the classroom all the time and it is great to be able to use a digital version. I think that it would be a great interactive tool too as you could set up one that every child could add to. It was a bit fiddly for us, but I think the children would pick it up really easily and it would make the brainstorming part a little more interesting. Looking forward to using it.
http://amyyazbeck.edu.glogster.com/thunder-storms/
The next program we explored was bubble us. This a tool that can be used to digitally create mind maps. This is a process that is used in the classroom all the time and it is great to be able to use a digital version. I think that it would be a great interactive tool too as you could set up one that every child could add to. It was a bit fiddly for us, but I think the children would pick it up really easily and it would make the brainstorming part a little more interesting. Looking forward to using it.
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