Week 5

The lecture this week had some great tips on how to teach animation. Greg recommended getting children enthused by showing them examples of animation done by professionals or other students. Showing sophisticated animations will excite children. Showing the structure professionals use to make animation is also incredibly beneficial for students. Simple animation can be done as simply as using a telephone book and drawing stick figures - turning it into a flip book. As a teacher you can even address serious issues such as bullying, unfairness, and mental health through a story or animation. There are competitions students can enter their movies and animations into.

The lecture also highlighted that it is so important when students create something you celebrate what they have done and then help them to extend it further. Some of the things pointed out in the lecture students could work on include things as little as passing the microphone with no interference, to sound, making text stand out and how to film different angles. Another good suggestion from the lecture was to film students throughout the year so they can practice and develop confidence talking in front of a camera. They could even talk about their goals and then the next time they are filmed they can reflect on their previous goals. This would be easy to do, not too time consuming and I think students would really benefit from watching and listening to themselves in a film (it could even go in their ePortfolio).

REASONABLY CLEVER _LEGO
During the workshop I made a Lego character using Classic Kid-Safe Mini-Mizer (http://www.reasonablyclever.com/?page_id=29) see below. I liked this website as it was kid safe and it was user friendly. Students can build a character and describe them or they could write a play. I experienced on my teaching rounds that some students really struggled with what to write about and I think something like this would help reluctant writers.












MAKING A MOVIE USING DVOLVER
Whilst I enjoyed using Dvolver to make a movie I would not use it with my class as it has inappropriate images that can be selected when choosing the characters (http://www.dvolver.com/).

SKETCH SWAP

Sketch swap( http://www.sketchswap.com/) was an interesting idea but like Dvolver is not something I would use in the classroom as it sometimes sends you a sketch back that is not appropriate. For example in mine below there is someone shooting somebody else. I really like the concept of doing a sketch, sharing it and getting something else in return though.

MAKING A MOVIE
Another movie making website we looked at was http:www.zimmertwins.com/movie/create. This website is something I will definitely use with my future students as it is appropriate for students and easy to use. It allows students to choose characters, alter their facial expressions and make them move. Students can also choose different scenery. Students can type into the speech bubble the dialog for the characters. It promotes creativity and encourages students who are not confident writers. It is also free and easily accessible. The picture below is from when I was creating my movie.

BUILD YOUR WILD SELF

Another interesting website we looked at was http://www.buildyourselfw/ild.com.

This website allows you to be really creative and express yourself with animal body parts. Students can replicate themselves easily using the program. It can be used as an introductory activity at the start of the year or can be used as a literacy activity where student can write about their made up animal. They look great so they would be nice as part of a classroom display or the class could even make a class book about them.

ZIPTALES
Ziptales is a student friendly website that you have to subscribe to use (http://www.ziptales.com/). It seems stimulating and would benefit year 3 and 4 students. It has lots students can do from story machine, puzzles, puppet plays, to things you can make. For instance (without subscribing) you could make a Tiny Teddy which would be great linked to an early years literacy task on teddy bears (could even use the instructions to discuss procedural texts)

ROLLEMACHE
I was very impressed by the ABC website Rollemache (http://www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/rollermache/inspire.htm). It is user friendly and has lots of great resources. It shows students what real Australian animator professionals do and use to create animations. I like how the website is broken down into 3 areas: Inspire, Plan, and Create. It has resources for planning such as storytelling, story boarding, character development and props and sets. Its resources for creating stage include information on animation, editing and sound. It also has videos students can watch. This is definitely a website I would use with students as it offers students information on how they can produce an animation and is free. It teaches students about the process and fosters student’s creativity, team work skills and ofcourse technology skills.

TYPING ACTIVITIES

Greg recommended students do dictation for 10 minutes a day. Dictation with the computer screen off was quite enjoyable. The ‘Ode to Spell Checker’ also made it interesting as there was an amusing difference between the words we typed and the poem. Students practicing their typing skills in not the only benefit of this dictation. It can be used as an introduction to spelling, grammar and punctuation.

Greg also suggested another activity in which students start typing a story and then are asked to move to another persons chair and continue on with that person's story. This is a fun activity that I actually saw in action on my placement. The Grade 5s had a lot of fun and some of the stories were great. An activity like this ties in well with teaching critical thinking as students will notice changes in their thoughts when they move to a different location and have to keep going with an idea that was different to their own.

In just 5 weeks of EDU4PLT I feel I have learnt so much about integrating ICT in the classroom and current issues with technology in education.

Week 4

This week the lecture examined ICT tools in the classroom. In an objectivist approach ICT is integrated to help students remedy their skills, improve recall with drills, and help students’ complete work they have missed (Powell 2010). In contrast, a constructivist approach integrates ICT with an aim of promoting creative thinking, problem solving, metacognition, and to help students understand real world problems and complex concepts through mental models and to be cater for multiple intelligences and mixed abilities (Powell 2010). I found the video ‘The Key Learning Community Cultivating Multiple Intelligences’ (http://www.edutopia.org/key-learning-community) quite refreshing. It was about a school that places less emphasis on standard testing and more on experimentation. The school focuses on Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences arguing every child should develop their multiple intelligences. Students who are about to graduate assemble digital portfolios and students undertake a lot of project work. I intend to try to integrate ICT for skill remedy, fluency and for independent self paced learning but more so for helping students to develop creative thinking, mental models and for catering to student with mixed abilities and multiple intelligences.

Dust Echoes
The Dust Echoes website (http://www.abc.net.au/dustechoes/) is a very interactive website on dreamtime stories. During the workshop we were required to watch one of the 12 stories and then retell it. This involved copying the still images into paint, then transferring the picture into the program Inspiration 8.0IE and typing a description underneath the picture. Then I linked the pictures with arrows to show the flow of the story. The story I chose was titled ‘The Mimis’. The website is great for students and teachers, with study guides, quizzes, information about what the story means and where it comes from. Whilst I think getting students to retell a story in their own words is good the process of copying the still images into paint was very time consuming.

Graphing M&Ms

The M&M activity involving sorting the chocolate by its colour and then graphing it in Microsoft excel was very engaging. This activity allows students to practice entering data into excel and creating a graph. Through creating the graph students explore formatting features of the program such as changing the colours of the columns in the chart. I liked how each student was given a different handful of M&Ms and students can compare their graph and sample to others. Students can then explore features of their set of data such as the most common colour, the least common colour and discuss why this might be the case.


The Dust Echoes and M&Ms activities cater for inclusion of students of mixed abilities and with multiple intelligences well. They are both stimulating for students, encourage creativity and promote representing information in more than one way fostering understanding.

Week 3

The focus of this week’s lecture was protecting students online. Some of the risks to students identified were exposure to unsuitable material, commercial and financial risks, cyber bullying and harassment, privacy student’s identity, spam and viruses. I was concerned about these risks when I was on placement. As identified during the lecture it is important students learn how to navigate safely through content on the internet and are taught what behaving responsibly and safely means.

I found the recommendations on Cyber Safety on the DEECD website quite helpful. Internet Acceptable Use Agreements (AUAs) and Codes of Practice are something I will be sure to investigate when I am teaching at a school next year as I want to make sure that I have a clear understanding of my responsibilities. It is very important to educate students on cyber safety, as well as managing the learning environment so they support safe use of technology. One of the things I did on placement was to have students go to websites I had checked.

Cyber Pigs is a fantastic way to educate children on commercialism on the internet and how to use the internet safely. I went through the Privacy Playground – Cyber Pigs program and think it would be an engaging way to improve students’ knowledge of how to use the internet safely.
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/games/cybersense_nonsense/


Quia

Creating educational games using Quia http://www.quia.com/web was great fun and very educational. The quiz I made is on energy (http://www.quia.com/hm/668197.htm). It was helpful to swap and look at others and get ideas from them on what they liked and did not like about mine and vice versa. If every child subscribes for the free 30 day trial and students can create quizzes and take turns at each other’s quizzes which I think they would enjoy and benefit from as much as we did. Or students can complete quizzes and activities created by the teacher using Quia. One of the things I really liked about this program was the fact that if students were using this site many of the above mentioned risks were minimized – Quia is child friendly.



















Creating a Design Brief

Creating a Design Brief and investigating how to make a frog jump from limited materials was great fun and we were successful (as can be seen from the video below). This was such an engaging activity and materials needed were so minimal. The activity I feel would certainly help students develop their skills within the VELS Design, Creativity and Technology domain. The design brief helped us to determine the requirements for making a successful frog. The Investigating and designing dimension was easily fulfilled during the activity through the use of a design brief – which we used as a starting point to develop our jumping frog and we then selected and recorded methods for the different possibilities we thought of. Then as required in the Producing dimension we used the appropriate tools and materials to produce a product (a frog that jumped). It was very interesting listening to other peoples designs. Then as per the Analyzing and evaluating dimension we evaluated our choice of design against others. It was great to do a task that was technology but without a specific ICT focus. Doing the activity also made clear the importance of communication and collaboration in designing technology and is a great way for students to practice their communication skills.

Week 2 ICT

The focus of ICT Workshop 2 was to create a brochure and ePortfolio using Microsoft Publisher.

Creating a Brochure
The brochure that can be seen below is the one I made during the workshop and is on China. I had not used publisher since I was at school but I found it fun and easy to use. Creating a brochure allows students to practice their writing skills and practice targeting a specific audience. I liked the idea of students making a brochure for a holiday destination as these are of course common media students may have come into contact with in the real world. Through using Microsoft Publisher or another word processing program to publish a brochure students learn and practice using ICT to ‘capture, validate and manipulate data for a required purpose’ (VELS 2010 ICT for Creating). The activity would enable them to create information products (a persuasive brochure) and help them to demonstrate their knowledge of a country (helping them to progress towards the VELS ICT for Creating standards). It would also help them to practice managing their files and to plan the progress of the task if it was extended. Additionally, through students sharing their brochure with the class they also practice reflecting on how effectively they used ICT (VELS 2010 ICT for Creating). I think this sort of task is an excellent way for students to develop their ICT skills and is something I would do with my future class.


ePortfolios

None of the schools that I have been to have made ePortfolios for their students and I have never seen an ePortfolio prior to this week’s lecture. I think an electronic portfolio which has a compilation of students work showing their skill level, development and achievement in an area would be a wonderful thing for students to keep and show their parents. Today we made an ePortfolio using Microsoft Publisher (see below) it was easier to do than I expected.

Anderson (2004) discusses that it is the process involved in creating a portfolio that is the most valuable to the learner. Through this process students learn the skills of how to be a ‘self-directed and life-long learner’ (Anderson 2004). Anderson (2004) argues that developing a portfolio involves four stages: collection, selection, reflection, and projection.

One of the clear benefits is that a more extensive collection of evidence of student learning can be captured through using different multimedia (e.g. images, video and text) (Anderson 2004). To do this it is necessary that technology is used to capture students learning on an ongoing basis. I think in the classroom this would be challenging particularly in the early years with students needing more support to work independently.

One of the areas I also think that would be particularly difficult would be selecting which pieces of work should be chosen to be shown in the portfolio. I agree with Anderson (2004) who suggests that the work which shows the most evidence of the student’s development should be picked.

Another benefit of an ePortfolio for students is that it promotes reflective learning. Through creating an ePortfolio students are able to practice reflection and self assessment. Anderson (2004) suggests they reflect on each piece of work selected for the ePortfolio with students saying why they chose to include it and how it shows their achievement.

The final step in building an ePortfolio according to Anderson 2004, is projection to future. This involves students answering questions such as – “What could you include in your ePortfolio that you did not this time? Where will your learning go from here?” (Anderson 2004). This helps students to set future learning goals.

When I was on placement one of the final lessons I facilitated required students to write what they had achieved over the last two terms and this was to be included in their report. Many students struggled with this and could not remember what they had done. I think if they had selected work that they had done which showed their development over this period their reflections and therefore reflection skills would have been better.

I really like the idea of ePortfolios for students and hope to implement this for my students. Some of their clear benefits are:
- help information become knowledge
- connect assessment and learning and show development over time
- promote reflective learning and self assessment
- help students to learn from their mistakes, set goals and track their progress
- help students gain real world ICT skills
- provide context for learning and assessment
-encourage students to be self directed and life-long learners
- let students creatively express themselves
- students are involved with decision making
- its an holistic approach to individual progress which celebrates the student as a learner
- assist students transitioning between year levels
(Powell 2010, Digital Portfolio Resources 2010, Natcom 3 2010, Anderson 2004)

As the lecture this week pointed out I would consider if the school I am at has the vision, technology, logistics and culture for me to be able to produce ePortfolios for students successfully. The safety of the ePortfolio is an issue that needs careful consideration (Powell 2010). It is also important that students clearly understand their responsibilities regarding the portfolio and using computers – particularly the internet. Students should be educated about the schools internet protocols (Internet Acceptable use Agreements) (Powell 2010). Students’ personal information should not be published on the internet and students should be continually monitored when using the internet (Powell 2010). Ethical considerations also need to be made in the use of ePortfolios including copyright, software use, privacy, hacking, obscenity and respect for others (Powell 2010). Certain logistics such as server and storage of computers in classrooms is something that I feel would prevent some of the classes/schools that I have been in from successfully creating ePortfolios. Despite these considerations I think the process of creating ePortfolios would be very beneficial to students and is something I would like to implement in the future.

References

Digital Portfolio Resources 2010 http://www.hrdesign.com.au/dp/planning-dp.html
Natcom 3 – Project Proposals 2010 http://www.pa.ash.org.au/natcom/natcom3/models/portfmod.asp
Kembler D Smart Classrooms Byte www.education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms
Powell, G. (2010). ePortfolios for Teachers and for Student use in the Primary Classroom.

Week 1

Today we set-up a Blog and experimented with the program Inspiration 8.0IE. This was a great introduction to Learning Technologies we could use with our students. It has also revealed what some of the obvious benefits of using ICT in the classroom are. These benefits were discussed in this week’s lecture and include students extending their higher order thinking and problem solving skills, enhanced engagement in interdisciplinary learning, and support for low performing students. Also students are given the opportunity to develop real life skills that are used in many workplaces and using these technologies allows students to collaborate and work on projects together.

Web 2.0 Technologies
As Cisco (2008) point out Web 2.0 technologies such as Blogs, Nings and Wikis have clear benefits for students such as collaborative communication, users in control, and device independence. They are free and easily accessible. Students in the middle years I’ve observed on my placements have often used Wikipedia to find information but are unfamiliar with what it is and how to create a Wiki to share information they know.

I had never set up a blog or a wiki before so using www.blogger.com.au and www.wikispaces.com was a new experience for me. I think they would be great to use in the classroom as they allow students to collaborate and record a body of knowledge. In the case where different student groups research different things a wiki can be used to create a reference for the class to refer to. It can be used in a range of subjects to record specific information.

Web 2.0 Technologies clearly support the VELS curriculum. The VELS Information and Communications Technology Domain has 3 dimensions; ICT for visualizing thinking, ICT for creating, ICT for communicating. A class/student Blog allows students to practice their ICT skills for communicating as students ‘present ideas and understandings to audiences, communicate with known and unknown audiences and support knowledge-building among teams’ (VELS 2010). Students can also use Wikis or Blogs for ‘discussing alternative views, acquiring expert opinions, sharing knowledge and expressing ideas’. Instead of just handwriting or typing a persuasive essay students could create an opinion leading blog.

Inspiration
Inspiration is a very user friendly ICT tool (http://www.inspiration.com). It gives students practice using visual tools. Visual tools include; mind maps, idea maps, concept maps, plots, and webs. The mind maps I created are on fruit and animals at the zoo (see below). I found making these fun and think students would be engaged making a mind map using Inspiration. Using Inspirations visual tools helps students to think critically and analyze and evaluate information they encounter. It also helps students to think creatively and take risks with their thinking and make connections. Inspiration also helps students reflect on ideas they have and then refine them. Inspiration Software, Inc (2010) identify that research shows that visual learning enhances reading comprehension, student achievement, thinking and learning skills (e.g. seeing patterns) and retention.




Inspiration also allows students to meet the ICT for visualizing thinking dimension of the VELS Information and Communications Technology Domain. This dimension requires students to use ‘ICT tools to assist their thinking processes and reflect on the thinking strategies they use to develop understanding’ (VELS 2010). The inspiration software visual tools assists students to ‘clarify thoughts, and to identify patterns and form relationships between new and existing knowledge’ (VELS 2010).



The use of Web 2.0 Technologies and Inspiration 8.0 IE help students practice not only ICT skills but also real life skills (e.g. problem solving) that will help them in the future careers. As Seimens (2005) states ‘The pipe is more important than the content within the pipe. Our ability to learn what we need for tomorrow is more important than what we know today’. Learning how to understand and make meaning from information available to us is an important skill that the above technologies help students to practice.

References
Cisco (2010) http://www.getideas.org/sites/default/files/whitepapers/9/getideas_21st_century_whitepaper.pdf
Inspiration Software Inc 2010 (http://www.inspiration.com/sites/default/files/documents/How_Digital_Tools_Prepare_Students_for_the_21st_Century.pdf).
Powell, G. (2010). Lecture 1 Learning Technologies (ICT) and Twenty First Century Education
Siemens, G. (2005). Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm