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.

Inspiring Pedagogy

As a learner, I have never been able to learn a thing by memorization. I  am excellent at recalling totally incorrect facts, but once I have been able to really think about a new topic, mold it to what I already know and what I think it all means I start to feel excited.

So when I read through the following eight pedagogs I was initially overwhelmed but then I realized that they made sense, and actually describe (albeit more eloquently than I would write) what I would like to achieve as a teacher.

1. Facilitating deep knowledge through higher order thinking: Asking questions that students to give much more than a yes/no or simple factual answer.

2. Facilitating collaborative learning in which conversations are important

3. Supporting students in knowing how they learn best

4. Planning learning that is problem-based, and situated in real life contexts

5. Is relevant to students, and connects to their background knowledge

6. Supports learning that is owned, controlled and managed by students themselves

7. Is socially supportive, engaging, and values cultural knowledges

8. Is supportive of the development of active citizenship, and strong group identity.

I did a wee bit of web searching to help get a better understanding of the topics, and found this interesting link. How to encourage higher order thinking at home . My daughter started school this year and I have been trialling questions like these to hopefully find out a little more about what she has been up to.


I also found an interesting blog post and associated video which demonstrates how effective pedagogy can be applied.Inspiring pedagogy