Reflection on ITC to date...

I think that it is all well and good to introduce new technology into the classroom, but if the teacher (me) has not understood the learning theory then introducing a new type of ITC tool, then the students may result in students playing rather than learning. Combining an understanding of learning theory with the SAMR model (substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition) will hopefully mean that as I discover and introduce new digital technology into the classroom the learning experience will be enhanced not hindered.

In the beginning I was uncomfortable about the way I was being asked to learn about ITC this year. The materials were not presented in the usual way, and I was being asked to explore and enhance my own learning. I was miffed to start with, but then remembered how hard I have found traditional learning approaches, and at the end of the first five weeks I realised that I have actually learned an enormous amount of new skills without it being painful. Dare I say, it has even been fun? Essentially it wasn’t about learning how to make a blog, or a wiki site it was understanding why you would do this.  It struck me that this approach to teaching worked because of the imbedded learning theory. I finally put the pieces together and perceived that it would be all well and good to go out and learn and develop lessons based on the myriad of technological resources available but unless I understood learning theory, I might not actually achieve a better outcome for my students.

The main tool that helped structure (perhaps even scaffold) my learning has been thinking about the SAMR model, and how each of the different groups of tools fits into the model.

Substitution in its simplest form is indicated by the blog: instead of writing in a diary we write online. Similarly, if I use Japanese POD101 to read-reread and use flash cards I am practicing and reaching a pre-defined result at each stage, I could do a similar thing at home with flash cards and this is how I traditionally learnt language. But it was easy to take both of these simple technologies to a higher level when additional features allowed the learning experience to be augmented.

It was when technology was augmented by learning that I started to have fun.  In theory with the blog by allowing comments and giving feedback to others meant that the diary went from a one-way learning tool, to a learning experience that invites learning from others. It also allowed other technologies to be imbedded and I definitely found that once I had mastered a simple form of bubbl.us I was able to reinforce my understanding of the SAMR model every single post. Tools such as the language learning pods become more than rote learning when quizzes are added and you can listen to a native speaker, watch a movie, and most importantly take all of the information with you. I practice this as I lie on the couch at night. I believe that if I upgrade to the professional version I can interact with a real person in real time whether this is by writing or by speaking I am not sure but this would definitely modify the way learning a language is done outside of the classroom.

I found it hard to distinguish modification from re-definition, I felt that in many cases these two stages of technological uptake would merge. What has struck me the most about these two stages is that these are essentially group activities. There is no doubt that learning from peers, or from an expert community outside of the classroom is the way students will gain most of their new knowledge in the future.  Essentially, this is where we started our first activity with De Bono’s hats wiki. We read other people’s thoughts and added our own. To scaffold this we were asked to read and comment on each other’s blogs, web-pages, wikis.  On reflection, I did gain significant knowledge from my peers during these activities, but not through direct interaction. I gleaned information from the moodle discussion boards, and by browsing other people’s work. But I did not actively engage in anyone’s work.  I have been happy to participate in some processes but not all. So I can imagine that in the classroom this will undoubtedly be an issue for some shy learners.  But mostly I think that this is a very exciting and engaging way of learning.This also made me think about how to keep my students safe - not only in terms of their comfort with learning, but also with how to keep them safe from inappropriate use of information on web sites which have public access, and also when students are asked to completed their own online research. I think that abiding by existing guidelines and rules, applying common sense, and moderating students work, should keep them safe - from outside and inside too.

What this means for me, is that I am going to have to gain further understanding of the theories underpinning ITC. I have a basic grasp of the concepts of behaviourism, cognitism, social constructivism, and will surely uncover multitude of old and new ideas of how students learn. I also have an incredible amount of technology to learn and I am grateful for the knowledge of my lecturer and experience classmates. I also benefit from the less experienced peers, because I think when someone has not understood or known what to do, that different types of answers from different types of thinkers pulls the knowledge into place. Learning about ITC is a journey not a destination.

Froguts an example of Interactive Learning Objects

 With an interactive learning tool (ILT), the purpose is to physically engage the student in an activity. They may need to click or move a mouse, enter a written command, use a speech command or even use a physical gesture to input a command.

The students need to act, and they need feedback. This type of learning allows them to focus their attention and to think about and work through a problem

 Recently I have been using a simple interactive learning tool without even realizing . This semester I will be placed at a high school teaching Japanese. My Japanese is shaky after years of neglect so I have been using an online program to quickly refresh my reading, writing, spoken, and comprehension skills with a program called JapanesePod101. Each lesson is presented in a number of different formats: different scripts, different audio, and also video. At the end of each lesson there is a quiz, which gives you immediate feedback allowing you to go back immediatly and review those areas you have not got right. The program also has flashcards to help you remember words.



For this reflection I looked more closely at a biology ILT called  Froguts Virtual Dissections.  I had access to the the free version which doesn't allow you to do everything that the paid version does but it gave me a good feel for what was possible. As a very brief summary, I could virtually move through the frog learning about each of the different features as I went, and being questioned along the way. I found the experience fun, and a great way to learn, I also got a bit bored, and found it hard to navigate through the prac at times.

To put this in context, I can remember every dissection I have ever done. The first was in high-school and was a mouse. I think this was the coolest thing I had ever done - that was until we dissected a whole sheep when I was at uni. I also had to fill in for a invertebrate zoology class learning all about crustaceans and they dissected a crab. Three dissections over a 15 year period.The point is that it is rare for students to be able to do dissections because of animal ethics (for good reasons). A tool such as froguts removes the need for animal ethics from the class room - sometimes this may mean that a class still gets to be taught, even if the students don't get the full experience including touch and smell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bufo_marinus_from_Australia.JPG

In terms of the SAMR model for this reason I think that tools such as Froguts can be both a substitution and an augmentation tool for student learning. Students can drill down into the virtual animal, learning about the skin, the skeletal system, the organs (substitution). They also need to interact, clicking on parts of the animal to demonstrate they have understood, and to progress through the practical. This is an activity they could do prior to a real dissection, as a revision at home, or as a compliment to the practical class (augmentation).

To take this type of learning experience to the modification stage, I suspect that students would need to be able to capture their own observations in an online collaboration, perhaps comparing what they actually saw or experienced in a real dissection with a virtual dissection. Students could also make some real life observations of how frogs move, eat, breed, vocalise, using video and audio files, imbed these in a presentation file and then link this to images from the dissection in order to demonstrate how physiology and anatomy relate. This would be a redefinition of how dissections are carried out.

Power to the Powerpoint

Every year I go to a conference for freshwater ecologists. When I first started going over 10 years ago, presentations were on overhead transparency's, and a few years later they let us use power-point. Then came the flashy transitions which would always freeze. In the last few years most people just give a straightforward text and image presentation. First year Phd students love imbedding flash images and still use transitions which are used to make the audience laugh.

The reality is my colleagues and I may not be  harnessing the true the power of power-point and for this weeks refection on ITC's  I am going to experiment with power point and some other cool presentation tools to see just how these can come into the classroom. A review of these and some examples are posted on my webpage.

The following is my initial analysis of how powerpoint and related software could be used under the SAMR model.

I have had a crack at improving my skills in powerpoint and then extended to Prezi and Glogster.

In powerpoint I used in presentation  hyper-linking options and applied this to a short presentation on symbiosis as part of a biology class. Which I then uploaded using authorstream. This doesn't completely work with the links I put in, but I can see that with some practice both powerpoint and sharing tools will be useful for teaching.

What has much more potential, but will take me much more time to master is Prezi. This looks like lots of fun, and I think that this non-linear way of presenting information is going to be of more relevance to tech savvy students.

Finally, I had a play with some of the basic features of glogster which I think will be my new favorite tool for putting together handouts and posters. The link above takes you to a poster I put together for a biology assignment.

Symbiosis

More PowerPoint presentations from Claire Sellens

This morning I found this awsome TED talk about parasites: I would consider using this as a hook for bringing students in to the whole concept of symbiosis..

 

Images Video and Audio as Pedagogical Tools

Images, whether photos or pictures have a story, one that the viewer can put their own spin on, or can use as the starting point for further research. Audio files tell a story or provide information, the listener can then put the information in context. A video can both show and tell a story. 

Digital images may come from a variety of sources: students and teachers can take their own photos, edit and upload. They can search for online images imbed in to projects. They can use software to create collages, turn them into slideshows or insert into videos. 

Audio files can be sourced online as podcasts, created by the teacher to support other digital media, they can be created by the students to create a digital record of what they can hear, or of what they are thinking or seeing.There are so many different ways video files can be used. Either as a direct teaching tool - a biology class watching a file about predation, or a language class watching daily language use in a foreign setting. There are multiple sources of educational or inspirational podcasts such as from ABC radio, TED Talks, ITUNES U (Catholic network Australia). Students can also create their own films which brings in a whole new dimension of learning: using different sets of skills to collaborate, plan, research, create, edit new knowledge.

   

When I start my teaching one of my areas of specialisation will be Japanese, for today's reflection I will be focusing on the pedagogy of using online media (images, audio, and video) in LOTE. At first I was quite excited by the idea of using pod casts - native speakers giving the correct pronunciation, or demonstrating the correct stroke order for Chinese characters. However, I quickly realized that this was not much more than augmentation, and that to get above the line, students would need to be more interactive, and I have outlined some basic ideas in the flow chart below. I haven't had a chance to play with these apps but found useful feedback from the lote blog .

 I think that even at the augmentation level  pod-casts in particular will be of significant use to language students. Particularly when learning a foreign script. Based on this, I made a very basic stop motion movie with my kids (3 and 5), one took the photos, the other wrote and they both had a go and recording (and re recording audio). I learnt how to put it together in office. I will need to learn about encoding next...

So much to learn, it's taking me awhile to connect the potentials of these technologies with learning theories, I am hoping that the more I play with the ideas, and absorb and learn the relevant theories then this will all start to make much more sense. At the moment it is a lot of fun with a great big fear of missing the point underneath.
 

Teaching Biology in the digital age: Potential of online resources for the student experiment Does Clove Oil Inhibit Mold ?

Just in my last year of my extended undergraduate degree we were given an email account, we had access to the web and our favorite lectures were delivered by a new tool called power-point.

Interestingly, since I still work in the university environment, most of my communication with peers is still via email, we use the web to quickly access information and presentations are still delivered via power-point. So even though there has been  a lag more than 15 years, my ability to harness some of the new and very exciting ways  tools for learning and teaching has stalled.Shortly, I will be heading back into the high-school room to teach biology and Japanese, and I am keen to explore ways of keeping students engaged and encouraging higher order learning through online resources.

Blogs, wikis and and web pages are not completely foreign experiences for me. I have briefly played with blogs in my personal life, but not beyond using it as a substitution for a hand written diary. I  used a wiki about 5 years ago. My friends and I were planning an expedition to Western Australia, we were not going to meet up until we got to Broome so we used wiki to share ideas and information. Again this was just text based. Fifteen years ago - my first job out of uni was to develop a web page for the Process Manufacturing Industries Training Board. It turned out that this meant re-typing all of the photocopies that would normally be sent out to students, and having it converted to HTML. In summary my previous forays into using these technologies has been at the substitution level. I will be learning how to find and apply more tools in the coming months and years.

Blooms Taxonomy - Apparantly not a classification system for Florists

Taxonomy has been a significant part of my professional life. Insects in particular but also plants. Why I hadn't considered that you could also classify learning I don't know.

De Bono's Hats

Image sourced from www.mindwerx.com

When I was a kid there was a show on TV about about a scarecrow called Worzle Gummage. He had the amazing ability to change his heads depending on the type of activity he needed to do. As a child I loved this idea, that you could put your smart head on, or your friendly head, or scary head. When I started to read about De Bono's hats, I thought that maybe at the core there are similarities: that is, within us is the capacity to "put on different heads" to look at a problem in different ways.