Tom’s Blog

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=138cca3206c48b7098f4

Although this video is like an advertisement for the use of ICT in the classrooms I think that some of the things it highlights and emphasises are really important considerations for the modern teacher. I have said words to this effect before in my postings but it is important for the teacher to understand the tools they have at their fingertips – this video is a good way of reminding us!

The opening image with the man holding a computer in one hand and books in another and the caption ‘a new way of learning’ has wider implications than the obvious and I refer back to a previous posting here where I discuss these.

What I like about this video is that it makes ICT look and feel accessible and this is a really important message for teachers to take on, we mustn’t neglect the endless possibilities available to us only to revert back to the same tried and tested methods, it is not in our proffesional philosophy to stagnate.

toms-pod-cast

I have just read what I consider to be a fascinating article on project based digital learning. This article is actually familiar to me as I saw a news report on this very subject on TV some time ago. The concept relates to getting students to start accessing modern history by interviewing some of its key figures, in this case, holocaust survivors. While you can immediately see the limitations (obviously you cant go back in time and interview Attilla the Hun) but the project Telling Their Stories: Oral Histories of the Holocaust was a massive success as not only are the interviewing students invoilved in their own facsinating learning experience but equally all the people who watch the interviews will be developing their own understanding. It got me thinking about how we might use things like this in the English classroom and again, while it is not possible to go back in time to interview Shakespeare there are SO many areas we could explore.

Here’s a couple of quick examples that I would like to have a go at:

You could run a whole unit on visual literacy using this type of digital resourse, for example you could focus on Indigenous art, advertising and the semiotics of the way people dress and talk to an interview people with really useful insights from those in the indigenous community to people working in advertising and fashion. As well as this, the whole medium is something that the syllabus requires those studying English to explore.

Great article, have a read!!!

Picture retrieved from Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonandpam/2808097417/

by Simon Kelleghan http://www.flickr.com/photos/simonandpam/

I clicked on the link titled Computers as Mindtools for engaging learners in critcal thinking with masses of trepidation. As far as I was concerned, despite being an English major the title might has well have been in Japanese – I couldnt understand it at all. When I began to read the paper however I began to understand a bit more. Interestingly the paper follows the same line that I had discussed in an earlier post regarding the need to differentiate between ICT as a teaching tool and ICT as a learning tool. “technologies should not support learning by attempting to instruct the learners, but rather should be used as knowledge construction tools that students learn with, not from.” This is a key differentiation to make, particuarly for teachers that are starting their careers and who have (or should have) a better grasp of ICT than some of their older counterparts. I reviewed the ICT at the school where I completed my prac in relation to how well teachers were meeting the ICT requirements of the curriculum in the English classroom. Sadly I was not shocked to report that in 99% of the classes I watch, they werent. The ICT specific tasks were either creating power point presentations or creating flyers or word documents with a little bit of internet based research. There is no learning going on here!! Before this course ‘forced’ me (and I went kicking and screaming) to open my eyes and start thinking outside the box this tactic is exactly the kind of one I would have used in my classrooms.

HOWEVER… these digital resources that many of us are so scared of are there to BETTER our teaching practice in the way that they are intended to ENHANCE the learning of the students we teach, for this reason, like it or not, we have to embrace them and start looking at them as an opportunity as opposed to an  impassable mine field.

I am starting to embrace the culture and the next time I have to think about the ICT requirements of the syllabus this is where I am going to turn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_writing

http://www.makeliterature.com/

Keep reading and I’ll keep you posted as to how it goes….

Having just had a look at what some of my fellow bloggers are writing about I was interested to find that lucy had made similar arguments to mine on the topic of the use of ICT. As she points out, just because technology makes something more stimulating or exciting does not mean that students are learning any more from it. “Just because they do it doesn’t mean they are learning from it”. This is very in line with the sentiment I was expressing about the use of the internet as a learning tool, it must not just be a sophisticated replacement of a text book

Since my last post that discussed the work of Mark Lepper I thought back to things I had looked at previously and I realised that what Lepper was advocatig is very similar to what Papert talks about in his article Constructionism vs. Instructionism. Pappert argues for the need for students to be learning for real world value and not for the sake of learning alone.

Pappert suggests that the focus should be on constructionism and in terms of ICT, finding ways in which the technology enables children to use knowledge, not just store it in their heads. I suppose this is what I was looking at in the blog I posted regarding the use of the internet as a learning tool – we do not simply want to replace the text book with a computer version of it, we need to be more innovative.

Picture retrieved from Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/ames28/2315765406/
by Ames2880

I have just completed an assignment for another subject within this course that followed the area of increasing motivation to learn and interest in students studying English. The task was to give a presentation on this topic concerned with how one might increase student motivation to learn and interest – needless to say that I thought I knew the answer already, I was adamant that this was done by creative engaging teaching. While doing the research I encountered the work of a man named Mark Lepper. Mark Lepper suggests that developing a real word connection to what students are learning is the key to getting them motivated. This suggestion was very in line with my own thinking, I was and am still convinced that this is one of the fundamentals of getting students interested and motivated. The difficulty is that the study of English is slightly more difficult to relate to real world relevance than something like maths or science.

What does this blog have to do with ICT though?? Well Lepper in his work found that it was using ICT that promoted this successful motivated learning environment that he was trying to achieve. He used a kind of simulation or game in a maths class where students controlled a spaceship and completed several mathematical missions as the learning tool. (Read about it here – long article though) He encouraged students to name their spaceships, put their friends names as the names of the crew and fill the imaginary stores with the provisions they would need. The research highlighted huge success and the students learning exceeded expectations. While this is fantastic if you are a maths teacher I am still racking my brains as to how this might be transferred into the English classroom… any ideas….

Lepper, Mark R. “Motivational Considerations in the Study of Instruction.”
Cognition and Instruction 5, 4 (1988): 289-309.

I have just been reading an article from Log on Education called K-12 and the internet which discusses the importance and value of the internet as a learning tool in the classroom. (The article can be found here p19-soloway.pdf) The suggestion being made by the authors is that using the internet as a learning tool is somehow more efficient at promoting deep learning as well as creative, thoughtful learners that we as teachers hope to develop.

The suggestion is that with the internet, learners have an instant resource that can answer their questions in a way that no teacher or library can – the huge selling point of the internet is that it is almost instantaneous. The obvious concern to raise is that with this kind of access learners can look at just about anything and this means time is wasted and on occasions material brought up is inappropriate. The article flags this and offers some good suggestions to combat it including webquests. To me, at face value, these webquests sounded like fantastic ways to use ICT effectively but as the article points out a webquest is really no more than “questions at the end of the text book chapeter in HTML clothing”. The suggestion appears to be that while students need structure and bounaries in order to be safe internet users they also need more freedom to explore.

Thinking about this article from the perspective of my KLA and having been unsure for some time about how I would intergrate ICT into my classrooms I found the suggestion about allowing students to generate their own questions to be a great suggestion. This offers huge possibilities as you are allowing students to use several facets of ICT and as well as this you are promoting the deep learning and creative, thoughtful learners that I flagged above. For students to set questions themselves requires research and knowledge in the area, and of course an understanding sophistacated enough to be able to give an answer and explanation for their questions.

I just read Ben’s blog regarding his concern that with the increased role ICT is playing in the that classroom students may see teachers as obsolete. I found the following article to be quite an interesting resource that he might find helpful.

http://www2.plymouth.ac.uk/distancelearning/roleteach.html

Interesting point Cody…
While I certainly wouldn’t consider myself to be a digital native or even to be particularly well versed in digital culture, saying that we are not immersed in it would be wrong.
Regardless of whether you consider yourself digitally literate or an active participant in the digital generation inevitable we all are, whether we like it or not. Nowadays we all use computers, we all use social networking sites for not to do so is committing social suicide. We can even do a week’s grocery shopping and have it delivered to our door without moving away from the computer. We take for granted the Skype and messenger style applications which allow us to talk to the other side of the world as if they were in the next room, fascinating really when you consider that I can remember having to be connected by the operator when dialing overseas.
Like it or not, and regardless of whether we deny it our generation is totally reliant on digital fluency

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by BeFitt http://www.flickr.com/photos/befitt/