Week 5 - Engagement Activity - Glogster

My Glogster
Glogster EDU is an online scrapbooking program, that provides a new way of engaging ICTs within the classroom. Students are able to upload photographs and information to a secure online site only accessible by teachers and students in the class. Students can also embed yuoutube clips onto their page. It could be utilized in a home economics classroom, where students could be asked to create posters for healthy eating programs for young children, showing pictures of various healthy eating options with fun, relevant information. 

Glogster
Pluses	Minuses	Interests
Safe and secure method of online learning	Potential for students to focus too much on the presentation side of things, and not enough on content.	Can be embedded into wikis and blogs.
Can embed youtube clips and photographs.	The scrapbooking design is probably more suited to junior schooling than high school.
Creative and engaging.
Teachers can easily access and monitor student progress.

 

Week 5 - Engagement Activity - Prezi

My Prezi

 

Healthy Choices on Prezi

The benefits of using Prezi are that it is user friendly and that it is also very quick to make a presentation. Students are able to embed Youtube clips, photos and write speech bubbles. Another interesting thing about Prezi is that you can manipulate the outlay of your presentation. When designing your presentation there are tools on it that let you select different formatting and layout options that can enhance one’s presentation. The students will definitely engage in this type of technology as students will be able to create an interesting and exciting way to present their information for oral presentations. Students will engage not just as the creator, but also when listening to other students presentations, in particular with the ‘edit path’ option.

Prezi
Pluses	Minuses	Interests
Easy to use/user friendly.	Potential for students to focus too much on the presentation side of things, and not enough on content.	Students can select from range of predesigned layout options.
Variety of ways to present information.	Possibly distracting for viewers.
Highly engaging: both as a creator and viewer.
Is less ‘linear’ than powerpoint presentations.

Week 5 - Engagement Activity - PowerPoint

PowerPoint 
PowerPoint is a fun, easy and engaging way for students to be creative with ICTs. Students are able to use PowerPoint slides to enhance an oral presentation and also gain valuable experience with a widely used business presentation programme. The program also can assist more timid students. For instance, some students have difficulties facing an audience and presenting their topic, so the students are able to add voiceovers to their presentation to save them from the stress of performing in front of a crowd. This can assist in preventing the student from not achieving at their full potential.  

The use of the storyboard (Engagement Activity 2, Tutorial 1) set up is also great idea so that students can follow through on ideas and then start to put their power point presentation together in a logical order. However, these do not just have to be used in ‘mundane’ oral presentations. Students can also create interactive PowerPoint’s. For instance, students in a junior home economics class could create an interactive powerpoint dinner menu. The dishes available could be all listed on one page, and a hyperlink could link the name of the dish to another slide that has more information about it. A ‘return’ hyperlink could then return the user to the menu home page again.

View my PowerPoint slides here and here.

 

PowerPoint
Pluses	Minuses	Interests
Easy to use/User Friendly	Potential for students to focus too much on the presentation side of things, and not enough on content.	Hyperlinks can be used between slides to create interactive powerpoints.
Prepares students for the real world. Application in a business context for presentations.	Possibly distracting for viewers.
Interactive powerpoints can be engaging for both the creator and viewer.	Not as engaging as Prezi.

Week 4 - Engagement Activity 5

CSIRO Podcast

 

Also access CSIRO podcast from:

http://www.csiro.au/en/Portals/Multimedia/CSIROpod/Healthy-heart-program.aspx

 

What is a Podcast? According to Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, a Podcast is ‘a program (as of music or talk) made available in digital format for automatic download over the Internet’. Podcasts provide both access to information, as well as disseminating knowledge in a variety of ways to help different learner types. In particular, auditory learners benefit greatly from the use of podcasts in the classroom.

 

There is great potential to incorporate podcasts into the classroom and not just in the form of the teacher disseminating information via them. Students could also be asked to create their own podcast for an assessment pieces. For instance, in junior home economics, students could be asked to create a podcast on incorporating healthy eating into their meals. This scaffolding allows the students to become self directed learners, as they design their own podcast, using their own creativity. Students will research to gather information to put in the podcast. Students will then share their podcasts with the rest of the class and also the rest of the world. Thus, a network is created as students share their knowledge.  



Week 4 - Engagement Task 7

My Digital Video

The use of digital videos in the classroom provides an opportunity to engage with students through another different and exciting medium. In particular visual and auditory learners can benefit greatly from their usage in the classroom. As with podcasts, these could be incorporated into the classroom, both as a means of accessing information, as well as disseminating knowledge in a variety of ways to help different learner types. Junior home economics students could be asked to work in groups to create a digital video on creating healthy eating meals in the format of a popular television program, such as Masterchef or Ready, Set, Cook!. Students could also use the digital videos to create a summary presentation of the coursework of the semester.

Digital videos also allow students who are more timid to pre-record their oral presentations, so that the student is not disadvantaged in front of a class. However, a downside to digital videos is that there is the potential teachers use them in a way that does not benefit or engage the learner, or develop their self-direct learning.  Teachers must ensure that activities relating to the digital video involve some form of observation, analysis or reflection activity.

Week 4 - Engagement Activity 4

Voki
 
 Sound Recording.

Week 4 - Engagement Activity 1

Week 4 - Engagement Activity 1

Original (2.26MB)

 

Reduced (30.1KB)

 The resizing of photos could be utilized in my home economics/hospitality classroom, where students can take photos of their own dishes and upload them to their weekly blog. Reduced sizing will allow quicker uploading time. This will enable students to put many photos of their cooking on the blogs and also it will not drastically slowdown the page loading time. The visual difference between the photos is very minimal and difficult to spot.

Week 3 - Engagment Activity 5

Website Reflection

What is a website? According to Merriam Webster Online Dictionary, a website is ‘a group of World Wide Web pages usually containing hyperlinks to each other and made available online by an individual, company, educational institution, government, or organization’. The PMI analysis table below was used to examine the use of integrating websites into the classroom.

Pluses	Minuses	Interests
·         Virtual Classroom ·         Are nowadays easy to create and maintain using sites such as Weebly. ·         Creates an informal, interactive learning environment. ·         Student centred approach. ·         Assists multi-level learners ·         Only you can edit/add to it ·         Can be accessed outside the classrooms and for distance leaner’s – global learning ·         Can be used to enhance all teaching areas	·         It is more individualised learning. Lacks ability for collaborative learning. ·         Teachers cannot control content. ·         In individualist cultures some people are less inclined to share knowledge. ·         Some learners dislike the scope that is given to them in creating a website. ·         Students would need access to the internet at home to engage (socio-economic constraints)	·         Gives people opportunities to engage in ICTs ·         Opportunities to create and share information with others around the world

  

Vvygotsky identifies how students construct new knowledge by drawing on their prior experiences and knowledge (1978). Thus, in new learning situations, students bring with them their existing implicit theories and this influences the way they construct knowledge (Sutherland et al., 2004, p.415). As a teacher I must therefore keep this in mind when I create scaffolding for students to further their learning. A website integrated into the classroom can provide a range of ways of enhancing student learning if used as a ‘scaffolding’. In an English classroom, I could ask students to create a revision website on the novel they are reading for that semester. Students would therefore be synthesising the teaching from the classroom, as well as their own individual research (Sutherland et al, 2004, p.421). This would overall enhance student’s understanding of the text and create engaging and interactive ways of self directed learning.  

For junior home economics, students could be asked to create a fake restaurant website, with menus, prices, photographs and health information. Another option is for students to create a website that culminates all the recipes that students have made over the semester. Students could publish the recipe (ingredients and method) as well as photographs of the dish that they made. They could also have a section that discusses ‘tips’ and ‘common errors’. A requirement would also be that they have information on healthy eating and links to other websites about eating healthy. In this way students would be linking to not only where they got their information from, but students would also do wider reading and research and then link these pages to their website. Clearly these functions will enhance student learning and interaction.  

I could also create a website that gives students access to their weekly activities and readings, similar to the moodle sites for this course. In this way students would have easy access to their readings (hyperlinks) and also it minimises the possibility of students losing information in handouts.

Incorporating ICTs such as websites into the classroom will allow students to further their creation of knowledge in an interactive and engaging way.

References 

Sutherland, R., Armstrong, V., Barnes, S., Brawn, R., Breeze, N., Gall, M., … Johnw, P.  (2004). Transforming teaching and learning: embedding ICT into everyday classroom practices. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 20, 413–425.

 

Vvgotsky L.S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Week 3 - Engagement Activity 3 - Wiki Reflection

What is a wiki? A wiki is an online collaborative content management system. It allows the users to come together to edit and modify each other’s information and can be utilized to create a database of knowledge on a range of topics. The most renowned example is Wikipedia.  

The creation of the wiki for this week was certainly a learning experience. Whilst I had experienced using a wiki in the previous week with the de Bono’s hat exercise, actually creating a wiki opened my eyes to its learning potential. My wiki can be accessed here.

Below I have analysed the learning potential of the wiki using the PMI analysis. There were several similar characteristics to both the blog and the wikispace, with the latter however more suited to collaborative learning.  Wikispaces, as discussed in an earlier blog, can be described as utilizing the connectivist and social constructionist theories. The teacher can create a scaffolding in order for students to construct ideas and build of each other’s ideas, in a realistic scenario (Snowman et al., 2009, p341).. Thus not only does it allow students to become more self-regulated and independent learners, but also provides students with a network of knowledge form other students.

Pluses	Minuses	Interest
·          Is a great collaborative learning tool. Students can edit and add to each other’s work. In particular an excellent tool for group assignments (network). ·          User friendly ·         Student centred approach, whereby the teacher takes on the role of the facilitator. ·         Can be accessed outside the classrooms and for distance leaner’s – global learning ·         Makes education participant-centred ·         Encourages students to be active and engage throughout the semester in an interactive way ·         Assists learners improve their writing and literacy skills. Students would also get better at writing reflections. ·         Students can update their work. ·         Allows the teacher and student to see changes in a learner’s opinions and ability over time. ·         Creates an informal learning atmosphere that engages learners. ·         Saves paper and reduces costs ·         Assists multi-learner types	·        Students can edit each other's work without permission. ·         Information can be easily copied from other students.  ·         Some students may rely on the information posted by other students in the wiki which maybe not necessarily accurate. ·         Students would need access to the internet at home to engage.	·         It is a perpetual work in progress ·         Provides students a structure for their responses.

 

Students must be taught how to use the wikispace in a safe way, with ethical and legal matters in contemplation when they edit the page. They should be informed of the dangers of posting contact information, personal information and photographs on the internet. In particular in regards to photographs, parental consent must be sought. Students will also need to be made aware of the relevant school policies on their usage and about referencing and plagiarism on their wikispace. In regards to collaboratively learning, students must understand that there is an etiquette when it comes to editing other student’s work in a wikispace and a discussion with the other students involved should  take place first.

 

There a many potentially ways I could see myself integrating a wikispace into the classroom. For instance, it could be utilized for group assessment for senior hospitality students. The students could be required to plan a function using it. The groups would be able to have a page that organised who would bring and/or make what dish. Students would then be required to use the wiki to create pages and write about the particular theme they have chosen and provide research on menus. As a follow up students could upload photographs of the event and collaborate a review of how successful the function was. In assessing the students, I would also be able to see the level of contribution of each student through examining the history function.

 

References

Snowman, J., Dobozy, E., Scevak,J., Bryer,F., Bartlett, B,. & Biehler, (2009).Psychology Applied to Teaching (1st ed). Milton Queensland Australia: John Wiley & Sons.

Week 3 - Engagement Activity 1

Blog Reflection

What is a blog? A blog is a website that allows individuals to post regular content to be viewed by the public. It provides a range of new ways of engaging students.  This youtube clip explores ten interesting reasons for using blogs in the classroom.


Using the PMI matrix below, a range of other pluses, minuses and interests have been examined.

Pluses	Minus	Interests
·         Allows students to express their opinions ·         Allows to students to comment on other student’s blogs (collaborative learning) ·         Can be accessed outside the classrooms and for distance leaner’s – global learning ·         Makes education participant-centred ·         Encourages students to be active and engage throughout the semester in an interactive way ·         Assists learners improve their writing and literacy skills. Students would also get better at writing reflections. ·         Students can update their work. ·         Allows the teacher and student to see changes in a learner’s opinions and ability over time. ·         Creates an informal learning atmosphere that engage learners. ·         Saves paper and reduces costs ·         Assists multi-learner types	·         In researching for assignments, blog information is not always correct or reliable. It could also be biased. ·         It cannot be edited by other students, and thus it is not really utilising collaborative learning (contrast with a wikispace for instance.) ·         Some learners dislike the scope that is given to them in creating a blog. ·         Constant/regular engagement on a blog may be difficult for students with other commitments. ·         No privacy if teachers and students are giving feedback on a blog. ·         Potential for cyber bullying. ·         In individualist cultures some people are less inclined to share knowledge.	·         Gives people opportunities to engage in ICTs ·         Opportunities to create and share information with others around the world

 The use of a blog in the classroom creates an informal learning dialogue that can encourage students to be active and engage throughout the semester. As a future home economics teacher, I would utilize the use of this ICT into a weekly assessment regime in my junior classes. After the cooking class each week, students would be asked to create a blog about the dishes that they made. Students would be required to post the recipe (ingredients and method) as well as a photograph of the dish that they made. Students would then reflect in the blog on dish they created and suggest things they could improve on for next time. They would also be encouraged to positively engage and comment on other student’s blogs.

For a senior hospitality class, I would require the students to publish a ‘food critic’ blog. Students would be asked to go to a couple of restaurants over the course of the semester. Students would be required in their blog to review the service, cleanliness, taste and appearance of the food, the dress and friendliness of the staff and give an overall rating for the establishment. Students would be required to conduct such a blog in a positive manner with praise and/or constructive criticism.

Overall, the goal of the blogs would be to engage students in the learning process. Initially students would engage independently in posting their blog and then collaborate with other students by commenting on their peer’s blogs.