Week 3 - Assignment 1: Reflection 2

Engagement this week required the creation of a blog, a wiki and a website. I found all three to be extremely easy to create and use and are appropriate for all primary school students. Information can be presented, discussed, debated, read and updated easily and in an organised way.

• Click here to view my Managing E-Learning Weebly Website
• Click here to view my Managing E-Learning Wiki

Some suggestions on how these three online spaces could be used in a primary school classroom are as follows:

Curriculum: English
Topic: Students are required to consider the story of a young convict girl - Eliza Bird.

• Use a blog to create a journal Eliza may have written, using her point of view and a recount of events that took place.
• Use a wiki to complete a jigsaw activity where each student is given a character from the book and the student uploads thoughts, feelings, opinions on the events that took place talking from the characters point of view
• Use a blog to synthesise what they have learnt about Eliza Bird including facts, dates, anecdotes and pictures.

With education now being all about "21st century learners" who grace their presence in our classrooms, I believe online spaces are great tools to engage, integrate knowledge and use to teach the curriculum.

Week 3 - Websites

Click here to view my Managing E-Learning Weebly website.

I found creating a website via Weebly very easy and user friendly. I did however feel compelled to edit it further and I felt the design process was too "basic" for me. If I had the opportunity, I would prefer to create a website from scratch using HTML, in order to express my skills and creativity and would keep me more interested in the design process. 

Due to its functionality students could easily create websites to display information for an assignment - and perhaps is a great alternative to the good ol' poster charts. Websites are great for displaying information about certain topics in an organised way, as "subheadings" can be placed on separate pages and linked from the home page. However, websites are "static" so would not be appropriate for a project where students were required to regularly update or to collate information.

Week 3 - Wikis

Click here to view my Managing E-Learning wiki.

I have actually used Wikis previously in a group assessment setting and found it to be a positive experience. The main reason the group decided to use it was because members had difficulty arranging face to face meetings due to other commitments and instead could log on anytime at home to share ideas for the assessment task. It was especially helpful when we were required to develop a script for an oral presentation. Each member was able to place their paragraph into the document and edit according to the other members to ensure the ideas within the script were sequential and flowed well. 

I believe that wikis are fantastic in a classroom setting because of the ability to share ideas, opinions and build prior knowledge. It is a perfect example utilising a constructivist approach, using Vygotsky's zone of proximal development theory in a 21st Century technology-based context.

Week 3 - Blogs

After creating my blog using Google Blogger I have found blogs are extremely easy to use - just pick a template and type. If required, they are slightly customisable. The simplicity means they are easy to read and are in a "journal" structure where posts are organised by date.  I think this is great for classrooms in primary grades, however, the customise option is perhaps too simple for students who possess advanced web development and coding skills and can limit the ability to express their creativity and technological ability.

Blogs are free and accessible by anyone who has an internet connection - to read one or create one. This can be great in the classroom because a blog can be accessed by other students, the teacher, parents at home, or even students on the other side of the world which brings a sense of "global" to education. On the other hand, easy access to create also means that a blog can be a single person's opinion and knowledge - whether or not it is correct because it can be difficult to know the poster's credentials. 

Week 2 - Assignment 1: Reflection 1

Wikispaces is a tool used frequently in education because of its application of real life learning in an online environment, allowing users to participate in discussion in a simple and organised way. While there are some drawbacks to using this type of platform for discussion, if used in conjunction with the de Bono scaffolding many constructive viewpoints can be presented in order to present a “whole picture” response to an issue.

Wikispaces allows for social learning and collaboration, therefore it lies under the constructivism theory and more specifically, social constructivism – the idea that students can learn by sharing knowledge with one another. The fact that posts were editable so that opinions/ideas/disagreements/agreements could be expressed in an organised way is an obvious characteristic of a collaborative environment. I believe this type of activity holds great value for students as sometimes it is difficult to realise a different point of view until it is mentioned to you. I believe it also applies to general constructivism where prior knowledge is tapped into and used to complete a task. I found wikispaces to be very similar to other forums I have personally used such as facebook and reddit so I was able to easily transfer what I knew from those to wikispaces in terms of formatting, navigation and the embedding of a youtube video and images, as well as knowing general “netiquette”.

As I was late to enrol in this subject I found I missed out on the crucial time where the sharing of fresh ideas and raw discussion took place. However, after browsing through the other students’ pages I found that most of my own ideas and opinions on the subject of mobile phones in classrooms were universally agreed upon so I do not feel I missed out. This is an obvious drawback to anyone who is not available to participate straight away, as by the time I viewed the pages a lot of the same ideas had been rehashed and mentioned numerous times. Due to the high amount of self-edited information, Wikispaces is also an environment where readers can be easily swayed by others opinions and ideas. I can relate to this as I am impressionable and have the ability to see all points as valid. While this is a good attribute or not, I’m not sure.

Sometimes my thinking can be cluttered and unorganised. I tend to be cynical at the best of times so I can easily focus on the negatives even if I know it is a great idea. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier I am impressionable so I can see all points as valid and have trouble making decisions. Because of this, I particularly enjoyed the de Bono thinking scaffold which allowed me to “think” in a sequential and organised way. I found it interesting that the Black Hat or Negatives was placed first, because this is also the first aspect I focus on when faced with an issue. I found that moving onto the other coloured hats guided me to draw myself away from the negatives because usually I would remain stuck on them, consequently getting even more confused about the matter.

All in all, my wikispaces participation was a positive experience while being a learning curve in regards to the way I think about issues that I come across in my everyday life. I feel I am now able to face issues with confidence knowing that it is okay to see the negatives, but it is important to then move on to consider the other viewpoints. I found wikispaces to be extremely user-friendly and I am eager to utilise the tool in any of the numerous group assessments I have coming up.

Week 2 - TPACK

The TPACK Framework proves that the mocking quote "Those who cannot do, teach" is completely wrong.

TPACK means that in order to teach you in fact do need the skills (technological knowledge). You need to have a knowledge of what needs to be taught (content knowledge) and you need to know how to teach it (pedagogical knowledge).

TPACK clearly outlines what teachers require "under their belt" at the most basic sense in order to cater for their students needs.

Image by Cary Academy