Coming into the course I thought I would teach the way I was taught in high school, I soon found out things have changed quite a lot. The biggest change I can currently see is the use of technology in the everyday class, this has helped change the focus from teacher centred education to student centred. I was well aware of PowerPoint and that they would be used, as every training course I have been to in the last 10 years have used PowerPoint, but I was unaware of the true power of PowerPoint and the use of a lot of the other digital technologies currently in use.
There is a commitment to integrate digital technologies to support learning and teaching, this is tempered by a cautious, critical approach and the influence of external constraints operating. (Hennessy, 2005 p2). Due to the evolving technologies the integration of ICT’s is described as being in a state of flux(Hennessy, 2005 p33) as new tools are being adopted into sound pedagogy.
It is important to integrate ICT’s into the curriculum, “Effective technology integration is achieved when its use supports curricular goals. It must support four key components of learning: active engagement, participation in groups, frequent interaction and feedback, and connection to real-world experts”(Edutopia). My KLA’s are math and IT and this has influenced my selection of tools.
In this Assignment I will be featuring 4 different tools, they are Blogs, PowerPoint, Podcasts and Gizmos from the ExploreLearning site. I have explored several of the other nominated tools from the study guide, although all of the tools have potential use in the classroom and will undoubtedly be used in my classes I have decided to explore these in higher detail. Good pedagogy is essential in all facets of education and using ICT tools is no exception. I will also detail how these tools support and enhance higher order thinking.
Blogs
Blogs are online empty spaces where anyone can put anything they like (within reason). As such they are good for a number of purposes, including reflection, submitting work or collaborative feedback.
Further analysis of classroom ideas and a SWOT analysis of Blogs can be found in my blog from this link. Blogs are a great tool for reflecting, the very process of reflection is an analysis of what has been taught and evaluating the content, these processes are higher order thinking defined by the Blooms Taxonomy (Clark D, 1999). The engagement of the learner is paramount to learning and the interactive and multimodal features of blogs promote this engagement of the learners. The constructivist methods used in building and maintaining a blog benefit student learning. Students can also be encouraged to collaborate on blogging, with the use of comments, this student to student interaction encourages improved effort as others will be reading their work and encouraged to make productive comments. There is just a vast array of benefits to student education in using blogs.
Podcasting is an audio (and more recently video, sometimes called vodcasts or video podcasts) file that can be created and uploaded to the internet. Or conversely audio or video files that can be streamed or downloaded from the internet to a computer or as the name suggests the files can be downloaded to an iPod (Podcasts in the Classroom) and other mp3 devices.
The use of podcasts in the class would work in two directions, with the growing library of educationally suitable podcasts on the internet, including sites like the ABC, students can access podcasts on any number of subjects. This provides students with an educationally advantageous range of podcasts available via a class website and can assist students understanding of subject matter in a variety of ways, including a broad range of real world applications. My analysis of the use of Podcasts is available in my blog
Creating podcasts is the second way they can be used in class, as with many ICT tools they encourage an array of learning benefits. Collaboration, student centred learning, engagement, Cognitivism and Constructivism are all benefits that can be achieved by using podcasts, as long as podcasting is scaffolded correctly and use sound pedagogical practices.
Engaging the students by getting them to create a podcast in a collective group is also a great learning tool. “The use of student produced podcasts as a means of assessment clearly demonstrated that meaningful self-reflection and understanding could be generated through a clearly structured curriculum and assessment criteria.” (Oosthoek, 2008, p7).
With any web based technology there is always concern with copyright and content. Although students sign on to the school ethical guidelines, there may be a lack of awareness in something like podcasts. There is an official guide for copyright from the smartcopying website for creating podcasts and using podcasts, these need to be known and explained to the students if there are any concerns. Inappropriate content needs to be monitored as well, both downloading of content and creating content can have unwanted outcomes.
PowerPoint
PowerPoint is the dominant presentation tool at the moment, although PowerPoint is owned by Microsoft, the tool is commonly available on most computers, Microsoft also freely distribute a free PowerPoint viewer, so PowerPoint can be legally viewed on any computer. I have reviewed PowerPoint in the linked Blog.
PowerPoint is an excellent tool for teachers to present work to the students,”The strength of PowerPoint is its ability to allow an instructor to import graphics, audio, quotes, and music or to link to simulations or Web pages.”(McDonald 2004) This is an effective way enhance and support students learning. The ability to stop a PowerPoint presentation and interact on the screen with the use of a tablet computer and a stylus pen, this allows the teacher and students to explore further in the lesson, enhancing understanding for the students. Effective PowerPoint presentations should accommodate all of the different strengths of students learning styles of students.
When students create they are engaged in what they do, they also think about their work at a deeper level, the constructivism that occurs when a student makes a PowerPoint presentation either individually of or in a collaborative environment promotes higher order thinking about the subject matter that as a teacher must be scaffolded.
Explore Learning (Gizmos)
When I first used the explore learning website I thought it was fantastic, as a maths and IT person I could relate to it straight away and see how the integration of this tool would be a benefit in my classes.
Gizmo activities can be set up for in class or as homework. As a class activity there are opportunities to work independently or collaboratively, there are a vast range of gizmos to use and range from creative to simple equation answering. The engagement of the students is paramount in higher order thinking and creative exercises in the gizmos are an interesting way to engage maths and science students. There are many examples of using similar math rules in different situations in the gizmos, a lot of these refer to real world situations, this variety helps students understanding of the math rules and implementations so when it comes to needing these rules in different situations, the broader understanding of the principles can help the students identify ways to implement the correct rules.
The results from students doing gizmo exercises are made available to the teacher immediately, so monitoring the students results to ensure each of the students understands the concepts being taught and supported is important for the student now and with other concepts that expand on the concept being tested.
Conclusions
As a teacher in secondary maths and IT my role is defined as a guide and facilitator of the curriculum. The use of ICT tools in the classroom allows this role to be enhanced as these tools and many others promote many of the positive learning outcomes that we are after. These ICT tools help promote engagement, cognitivism and constructivism and with these higher order thinking outcomes students will benefit.
Unfortunately explore learning is not an open source site and as such the development of gizmos cannot currently be done by the public, also there is a cost involved with using the site, this is always an issue with school administrators (and the accounts who set the budgets.).
With any use of ICTs and access to the internet there are always concerns about the students anonymity, the moral issues with content on the internet and content that some students will make and the legal position of the school with copyright laws of content sourced from the internet and malicious code from the internet. There must be a policy in place at any school concerning all of these items and these policies must be made aware to the students before they gain access to the school’s IT resources. There are education Queensland policies about a number of these items available from the education Queensland website http://education.qld.gov.au/strategic/eppr/information/index.html .
References
Hennessy S, Ruthven K, Brindley S: 2005
Teacher perspectives on integrating ICT into subject teaching:
Commitment, constraints, caution and change
Edutopia (unknown authors)
Podcasts in the Classroom (unknown authors)
Oosthoek, Dr Jan 2008 Student Produced Podcasts:
Assessing the Pedagogy of Podcasting
McDonald K, 2004, PowerPoint in the Classroom
Clark D, 1999, Learning Domains or Bloom's Taxonomy
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