WEEK 5

Engaging Students/Creating Digital Film Online

This week was all about putting theory into practice and involved hands on learning with the copious online and software programs that allow people to create their own digital film, strange creatures and games that also have educational purposes. During the lecture, Greg discussed the importance of engaging the students with concepts and activities that will not only benefit their learning process of ICT but something enjoyable as well. There are so many opportunities and possibilities for students to learn about technology through multiple mediums including the internet and also multimedia. The days are gone when school projects were paper based, today a terms project could involve groups of students making a film to present to the school on a particular topic.

With the available resources at our disposal as teachers, i believe all teachers should be incorporating these programs into the curriculum to bring assignments and projects into the 21st century. For example: if students were given the task to create a digital film, there are so many details and processes to complete before they have their finished product. A project such as this would encourage students to work with others to achieve an outcome, improve and develop their ICT skills, gain understanding of the processes conducted to reach a given point, for example, being a part of the process from brainstorming an idea to presenting the final product as a film to the school.

I wanted to elaborate on the programs/websites I found the most beneficial and appropriate to link into the school curriculum.

Build Your Wild Side is a website that gives students to create what they think their wild side looks like. I think this program is great because it challenges students to think of themselves from another perspective and allows them to be as creative as they like to show us their wild side. I was use this program as a part of a creative writing unit, literacy week block or even book week block as it can be used in conjunction with many stories such as “Where the Wild Things are” by Maurice Sendak. It will allow for imaginative story writing with the opportunity to use descriptive texts and writing. The picture to the right is an example of what the students might choose to do.

The next website I wanted to highlight as a program I would implement into my teaching is zimmertwins.com. This website provides students with the tools and equipment to make their own film that includes, actions, emotions, speech bubbles and intermission clips to combine together in the order they choose to create the film they wish. This type of software would be a great introduction to a film making unit to get students familiar with the processes and concepts involved in making a film. I have provided a screen shot of the process begin making a film on zimmertwins.com.

Finally, one other engaging activity that I would implement into my teaching is Rebus activities. It requires the students to use their higher order thinking skills to understand the text because all the words are not there to read. Because the students need to interpret the picture in a words place it encourages them to put meaning with context, something I noticed students do not do in their early primary education years. Rebus activities were used at my second placement as an element of LetterLand to familiarise students with words that begin with a particular letter, I found that to be very effective.

I had an example of something that would look like the final product students might produce during their initial learning and experimenting with film making. However, I have many difficulties uploading the film so I have provided the website where you can make your own. I would not recommend this website be incorporated into a primary school curriculum as the themes would cause contention from the school communitity, it is only an example for this purpose. Available at http://www.dfilm.com/

WEEK 4

Inspiration Task (Dreamtime) & M&Ms Task

This week’s lecture was focused on educational soundness in the digital age and the opportunities the digital revolution has provided in education. This includes improving learning outcomes, equipping students with the skills and knowledge to use technology and it provides an opportunity for collaboration worldwide. I believe there are multiple benefits in introducing students to a digital environment in the classroom including; multiple pathways and starting points, instant feedback and it combines text, audio, video, graphics and animations into one resource.

For the first half of this week’s workshop Greg set us the task retelling a dreamtime story through the software program Inspiration 8 IE. The learning objectives of the activity was to select a dream time story from the Dust Echoes series (available at, www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/) to retell only including the key parts of the story. If used in the classroom as a activity for students to complete it requires students to identify what parts of the story merit focus and understanding, by giving them a limited amount of points they can pick they will need to thoroughly read an comprehend the story and use a process of elimination to determine the information essential to the story’s message.

For the activity I chose the dreamtime story, “The Be” which highlighted the importance of kinship and identification with a community. As the story summary explains this story is about a mysterious stranger avoids entering the camp of an aboriginal tribe and instead he becomes someone feared by the tribe’s people. It is not until he is confronted by two tribal elders that he discovers that he is related to the people and finally has a place where he belongs. The underlying message of “The Be” is about belonging to a community and self discovery, teaching the students about accepting people for who they are and belonging to a community of people of different backgrounds and personalities.
Below is the mind map I created using Inspiration with a number of parts from the story which I believe are important to message the story is trying to portray.

The second half of the workshop was focused on maths activities and how technology can be integrated into the subject to enhance the learning experience and environment for students. The activity was focused on using Microsoft Excel to design a spreadsheet for M&Ms and the colours that appear in the package. I agree this is a great ICT activity that all students enjoy especially when they get to eat the M&Ms afterwards. I have included the excel spreadsheet that we completed in pairs during the workshop that shows the amount of M&Ms in a packet and how many of each colour. Students could take this activity one step further and conduct a survey of the classrooms favourite M&M colour. This would give students practice in recording data they gather making the activity an active process as they are involved in all stages of the process.

WEEK 3

Online Student Protection/Creating Quizzes & Activities

Before I reflect on this week workshop I wanted to touch on a few points that were mentioned during the lecture on protecting students online. As much as we encourage the use of technology in everyday learning in the classroom it is important to remember the potential issues and threats that could occur if students are not protected whilst using technology such as the internet. Even though the internet offers numerous benefits to students’ learning, the internet involves some risks that teachers and students need to be mindful of in the 21st century. Students access to online resources needs to be monitored not only in the classroom but at home to prevent potential threats such as; exposure to harmful material, cyber bullying, privacy of identity, spam and viruses from occurring. I found the information provided by the DEECD on cyber safety very helpful and useful and I plan to make an effort to encourage the teachers I work with, the parents of my students and the class I teach to be conscious of internet protection. I will provide them information to equip them with the knowledge of how to behave responsibly and safely online.

During the workshop this week we completed a number of activites that we could use in our future classrooms. The first activity was to use a design brief with the components; investigate/design, produce and analyse/evaluate. The problem we were given to solve was how to make a frog jump with the materials we were given; cardboard, tape, a rubber band and a paper frog. The activity required us to first design something using the materials that would best increase our chances of making a frog jump. I have included the design brief we completed during the workshop to demonstrate the process we went through to achieve the final outcome. I found this activity very interesting and engaging and one I will definitely store away to use in my future classroom.

The activity is perfect for an inquiry based component in the classroom as it requires students to first think about their design and what needs to be included before using the resources. Once the design is constructed to students test their designs and determine whether it is successful, if not, what needs to be changed, if yes, how can it be improved. Creating a design brief encourages students to use their higher order thinking skills to collaborate and research a topic/issue that they must solve based on an inquiry question to determine the best outcome through analysis/evaluation. It is designed to get them to think of new ways of doing things 'think outside the box' and helps develop and build their creativity and thinking skills.

For the rest of the workshop we experimented with an online program QUIA, a website that provided you with the tools to create and develop your own activites ranging from quizzes to cloze activity to word jumbles. The following links are examples of the different activities you can produce using QUIA:

Quiz: http://www.quia.com/quiz/2511801.html

Word Jumble: http://www.quia.com/jw/386804.html

Cloze: http://www.quia.com/cz/347238.html

WEEK 2

ePortfolio / Microsoft Publisher

The focus of this workshop was on an introduction of ePortfolios and how we can best use them to benefit us as pre-service teachers searching for positions after we graduate from our studies. We were given a crash course in how to create an ePortfolio for ourselves, which is also a part of our final assessment for the subject. My initial thought on ePortfolios was that it is a digital resume used for online applications for positions, however I now know much more goes into an ePortfolio then I assumed.

An ePortfolio as well as a form of assessment can be used as a form of self reflection; this gives teacher and students a channel of communication that allows teachers to understand a student’s learning and progress. It is important to understand that an ePortfolio is not just a collection of student work but a selection, a difference worth noting. The process of deciding what to include in an ePortfolio is just as important as the final product. As students we have to choose pieces of work to present in our ePortfolio and also justify why we thought the pieces were work including. The purpose of an ePortfolio I believe is the most significant is that it provides a sample of the student’s work, which shows growth over time. By reflecting on our own learning in the form of self-assessment, students begin to identify our strengths and weaknesses in our work which with teacher assistance weaknesses can become strengths.

Greg’s explanation of what our ePortfolios should be used for is to demonstrate our progress through the semester and show the skills we possess through the selection of our work. An important rule to remember is “don’t add things for the sake of it!”, and the saying quality not quantity can be said for our ePortfolios. A good ePortfolio should include the following pages; an introduction, contact details, resume (with education and employment history), our philosophy of education, awards & achievements, reflection & discussion entries, application of theories to classroom experiences, referees and teacher references. Finally, an ePortfolio needs to provide a snapshot of the applicant that will make the selection panel remember them.

Our next task was to explore Microsoft Publisher and the different ways it can be used within the classroom. We had to create a brochure for a country to practice using various techniques students would need to use to complete the same activity. I thought the brochure activity was an excellent example for a class activity using technology which I agree should be incorporated into everyday learning. Through the activity students learn to express themselves in a variety of ways using different styles of writing. As research can be included into the activity students could also practice their researching skills including different resources and sorting useful information from unnecessary knowledge. The students can not only design a brochure to market a holiday destination but a variety of topics. The students use a word processing/desktop publishing programs to publish their brochure.

Finally, Greg went through the interview process when applying for jobs in the future. As the interview stage means the applicant has been shortlisted by the panel he discussed what we can do in our applications to make our own stand out among the rest. I found his advise very helpful and the few points that stuck with me included; talk about your strengths and provide examples of when your strengths have successfully helped in a classroom or other situation, know the school you are applying for, this shows them you have taken interest in the particular school and demonstrates initiative, if they ask you “do you have any questions?” always have a question and finally make sure to answer the criteria set.

Week 1 - Getting Started / Inspiration 8 IE

Getting Started / Inspiration 8 IE

To be honest, technology scares and we are not always friends but it was something that Greg said during the lecture that made that thought pointless. As teachers we do not need to know everything about computers and technology, if you learn with your students and learn from your students, the amount of knowledge you will acquire will continuously grow. After our first teaching rounds I was astonished by the extent of knowledge some students had about computers, I learnt simple short cutting techniques when using the internet from them that I have in fact continues to use since finishing my practicum with them.

In our first workshop for EDU4PLT, Learning Technologies we set up our blogs for our major assignment in which we reflect of learning and technologies from the unit. I chose to use a blog for my reflection rather than a wiki for this unit as we are already utilising a wiki for our major assignment for EDU4PIN. I wish to gain practice and experience in using both concepts of technology to expand my knowledge of ICT techniques and strategies. As a teacher I feel it is important to provide students with opportunity to explore different technologies because, technology is altering (rewiring) our brains and the tools we use through technology define and shape our thinking.

We then explored to software program Inspiration 8 IE which I found very user friendly, useful and interesting. While we experimented with creating mind maps and diagrams I continued to think of ways in which I would use the program in a primary classroom. This first activity that came to mind was creating a family tree, an activity I remember doing when I was in primary school. The difference being that I created mine on paper whereas this software enables you to create a more sophisticated family tree including pictures and diagrams the students find important and want to include. My simple mind map “Me, Myself & I” demonstrates how simple creating a mind map is, I choose elements of my life that are important to me and was able to add pictures to represent them to give anyone a good vision of what I enjoy and what is important to me, something that would appeal to students. A good example would be to use the program as an introductory exercise to get to know your students at the beginning of the year. It is for this reason a program like this has great potential to be valuable when I begin teaching.