Digital Tool for Presenting Learning - Interactive Digital Map This week I had a play again, and again it is evident I will need a lot more practice! My prezi is a bit 'below par' and well my powerpoint could sure use some bedazzling. I did however get the free app in weebly to embed a powerpoint. Unfortunately, I can't seem to get the sound from my powerpoint to play in the weebly. I imagine that capability comes with the $$$$ upgrade version of the app. This week more than ever before, I am thinking of my teaching areas, especially in relation to the Australian Curriculum. This is mostly due to an assignment on that exact matter due for another course we are doing. But this has fired up the belly for ICT use according to the Australian Curriculum and I am pretty excited. During my exploring I have ended up choosing the alternate of this week's embedded task options - that's right I chose what was behind door number three: "new and different tools". Doesn't that just sound FABULOUS! And the new and different tool I am elaborating on is the Interactive Digital Map. Does this already have an allocated acronym in this amazing ICT world we inhabit I wonder? IDM.....IDM.....'today class we will be creating our own IDM'..... I like the sound of that. In regard to my pedagogy, as I have mentioned before, I want to be a facilitator not a dictator. I want to see kids have their lightbulb moment. This history teacher in the clip below is truly inspirational. He talks about if we don't adapt to technology there is a huge risk we will be left behind. I too want to use ICTs to make teaching better. In his case he says history is simply telling stories and anything that can make telling the stories better, he wants to use it. He wants the students to feel the story, see the story, be a part of it. And google maps, using Tour Builder has allowed him to do that. So so exciting! Below is a link to a google tour used with Tour Builder. It is a "tour" of this young soldiers career and where it has taken him around the world. The concept for use in the classroom has so much potential for high order learning. The student could tell their own story, or create their own interpretation of someone from history or a current social or political figure. I really like some of the ideas for interactive maps in the geography learning area. In particular, using tour builder to create an interative map and story. I looked at some of the resources in scootle and found this fabulous unit of work: Mapping Diversity. The Australian Curriculum content this particular unit of work for year 8 Geography links to: Factors that influence the decisions people make about where to live and their perceptions of the liveability of places. Link to ACARA page here. I imagine using an interactive map such as Tour Builder to tell the stories of the unit; either why the student lives where they live or looking historically from the perspective of a migrant to Australia at a particular time in history. This is certainly analysing and evaluating according to Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. Take it to the next level, where creating a class wiki and sharing the tours and possibly even with students from a different Australian city with other cultures. The powerful message of multiculturalism, sharing stories, understanding I believe falls in to high level pedagogy.
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Think about the nature of images, and the nature of your learner as introduced in Week 1. Think about the nature of pedagogy and how high level pedagogy could be supported through the use of multimedia by you, the teacher, but primarily by your students in creating media. I played with audio podcasts: see that in my reflection here. And I am starting on my road to being a ‘movie maker’ with video . That's in my reflection here. I am completely sold on how useful all the forms of media use could be in a classroom. For the purpose of the embedded task, I will add more detail to my earlier reflection on images. Below are the characteristics of the contemporary learner from our week one information: Enhanced maturity and control Eagerness to work Social entrepreneurs - change the world Technology users Question traditional choices Value inclusiveness and differentiation - greater diversity is the norm Blurred gender roles Entrepreneurial Seek knowledge - but not necessarily in school Social media is a research tool Multi-task and spatial thinkers Communicate with speed, and images Global collaborators and awareness Co-creators The one that stands out for obvious reason, “communicate with speed, and images”. Today’s learner can see, hear, interpret and express themselves quicker and through not only written word. Think about the age old saying “a picture tells a thousand words”. Our brains read a picture at high speed. Scouring through text books and print articles is time consuming and our learners today memorise content more easily if it image based. source: https://vwo.com/blog/snackable-content/ This infographic explains in more details to above, exactly why infographics are such a great learning tool. It will NOT be my pedagogy to be the all-knowing authoritarian at the front of the class, but rather the facilitator leading them through their school journey. I like Queensland’s Department of Education and Training’s commitment to successful pedagogy: Pedagogy that enhances wellbeing: · builds positive relationships between teacher and students · is responsive to the individual needs of students. Teachers do this by: · demonstrating respect for their students as individuals · providing opportunities for students to: o build on their strengths o use their preferred learning styles o work cooperatively in groups o negotiate what and how they learn. (Source: http://deta.qld.gov.au/initiatives/learningandwellbeing/curriculum.html) In my reflection on images, I used the QCAA curriculum for year 11 subject of Tourism. Link to QCAA Tourism syllabus and sample lesson plans here. I used the example of an excursion to Pumpkin Island aligning to the sample of were listed on QCAA for ''tailoring the travel experience". I believe this would allow opportunity for working co-operatively, build positive relationships and the use of the student's preferred learning style. Using ICTs for this project, where photo taking on the excursion (and certainly video and audio), collating and collaborating on the topic and building this Tourism project of "tailoring the travel experience" using popplet (see below) and sharing on the class wiki. Explore the technical features - how can your selected media be created? How can it be shared? Is it up-loadable, where is it best stored? What sorts of artefacts can you create? As we know, images are easier than ever before to take, edit and share. All phones have a camera. Digital cameras are cheap as chips and there are many editing programs available not to mention the editing features provided with the device the camera is in. This week we looked at the technical side of image manipulation: resizing, resolution etc. I find I learn through doing and referring to the help guide on any site / program and of course youtube. Weebly itself has caused me much headache with getting images in to where I want them. Snippy tool when all else fails for me. Then there are MANY programs for placing these images and other media on a platform to share. I had a play with popplet using a trip to Pumpkin Island for year 11 Tourism class excursion. See below: ![]() USE the SAMR model to identify how media could be used at each level of SAMR in your own teaching context. And lastly, here is my SAMR from the same learning experience: Digital Tool Reflection: Webspaces: Blogs The nature of a blog is one where sharing, reflecting, commenting and evolving is at the core. It is a place where attitudes and beliefs are evident. A place where the blogger can express themselves. And I believe most certainly it can be a place of learning and educating. How perfect for the classroom! Blogging, as with all forms of ICTs, has developed and changed. And it will continue to do so. Just as ICTs will continue to change, so too will my pedagogy. I want to be; and I will be; my own take on a contemporary teacher and I always want to adjust, re-think, try, try, and try again. This will be how I will meet the needs of the contemporary learner. Because just as my values and beliefs will form the teacher I will be, so too will my learners come from their own realities, their own set of value systems and beliefs, their own experiences. It is without doubt that the contemporary learner has far higher technical skills than previous generations. The very nature of what keeps them interested and engaged has changed. While this aligns perfectly with ICTs in the classroom, it is not without negatives. I like the Hyde et al description of how today's student lives in a 'reset world' (Hyde, Carpenter, & Conway, 2014). This poses a huge challenge to teachers, because we cannot simply 'reset' what needs to be taught. We cannot 'reset' the curriculum. An exam cannot be 'reset'. But what we can modify is the technologies we use to teach and how we use them. This blogging business has been a steep learning curve for me the last three weeks. For a person that does not even use Facebook, I have honestly struggled. The anxiousness that I have felt with public sharing, albeit only to our professional student and staff GDLT body, has been constant. But just as I will ask my students to 'stretch' themselves, I have pushed through my comfort zone and am feeling more and more confident with each reflection on this blog-o-mine. (For a look at someone stretching themselves, Owen Wright, who fought back from brain injury to get back to surfing and take out the latest title at Snapper Rocks, is an amazing story of inspiration. See story here.) So let’s talk about the technical stuff. When I first set up this weebly blog, apart from being totally absorbed in the pretty set-up options, my first error was that I set up the first couple of pages as web format, not blog format. At the time, I perceived this as a mistake, however now as I reflect on week one, I see it as unintentional discovery of the added function of weebly. It can be web page and blog! Which is fabulous for the class setting, where stand-alone pages regarding assessment content for example, can sit unchangeable. Then the blog pages can be commented on and added to. Video, images and embedding is all done with click and drag and considering where I sit on the tech savvy spectrum, makes it pretty straight forward. I have even fairly easily managed linking to past pages / blogs quite easily. Not to say that I don't find weebly at times "clunky" in particular I found myself getting stuck with a particular text box that darned if I couldn't change the white text on white background! See here for the how-to for setting up a blog in weebly. For an added fee you can set up specifically for a classroom setting as explained here. It allows the teacher to determine the participants and the privacy settings. In my earlier reflection 3.1, I looked at a year 10 Civics and Citizenship class. However, on further investigation I found a far better unit of work for a blog learning experience on the QCAA senior Social and Community Studies. The particular unit of work according to the curriculum is "the world of work". See the unit detail here. The topic would be on industrial relations in Australia. The blog space would be about a workplace and each contributor would have a different role: employer, employee, apprentice, apprenticeship centre, Fair Work Australia. The students would research and detail the rights and responsibilities of each role. From there the options are endless: posing different scenarios such as unfair dismissal, recruitment, pay and conditions, rights and responsibilities are only a few examples. ![]() In my week two reflection, I discussed the higher end learning of Bloom's Taxonomy. Well in fact, the reverse Bloom's Taxonomy. See below: source: https://saraeffron.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/blooms-revised-taxonomy.jpg Using the revised version of Bloom's Taxonomy, that is the six 'doing words' of; remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating, provides the framework for teachers to get the students to that higher end learning, which I am sure we all agree is the goal post. And I believe this is where we get to with the modification and redefinition stages of the SAMR model. See my SAMR for the project of the industrial relations blog as mentioned above: Substitution » Instead of hand written text, the students can now word process in their blog (or word doc first if prefer) and edit and save and work on copies. Students search the internet for information regarding industrial relations and their particular role in the workplace scenario. Augmentation » Unlike hand writing, students improve their work through the tools within the word processing program e.g. spelling, grammar check, thesaurus, word count. Images, video, researched documents and graphics are easily embedded within the blog. Students can email external sources for further information. Modification » The focus on collaboration through the virtual workspace is a major component. The virtual work world will be owned by the students. The students can comment with feedback. Being a webspace, the students can work on the project from home and are not limited by time constraints of the classroom. Redefinition » The teacher can collaborate with other classes in the area or even further afield. The class could collaborate with a class from an Asian country, as this is one of the key focus areas of the cross-curriculum priorities that we as teachers need to incorporate as per ACARA. (Read about that here.) And a final and most important matter is to discuss is ensuring the blogging is under the ethically, legally and safely umbrella. See the Queensland State Government site for cyber safety guidelines here. This is paramount. This reflects safety. In regard to copyright, as a teacher I need to be modelling this to my students. See smartcopying site regarding how to ensure this. This forms part of the legal and ethical considerations. We need to ensure that students understand appropriate referencing and the underpinning ethos behind it: just because it is online, it is still equivalent to theft if we do not source or reference properly. This task has been a great learning journey for me. I tried wiki, see blog 3.2. I see its place as a classroom ICT. But I love blogging and what that could bring to collaborative work, analysis and higher order thinking. |
Neil Gaiman // "I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."
photo by Nitch / CC BY ![]() Ernest Hemingway // "Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive... You will be dead soon enough."
photo by Nitch / CC BY |