Evaluating

Question 2: 

a)     Conveying new information- 

The way a teacher conveys new information to students needs to be dramatically changed! Instead of just asking the students to start a new section of their book, begin a new page with the heading or title page of a new subject, Web 2.0 allows endless possibilities for engaging students interests in new subjects. For example introducing the new Subject of Romeo and Juliet to an English class has endless interactive possibilities. Students could be shown a clip/trailer from http://www.youtube.com with the trailer embedded within, and then a comparative clip from another trailer to show students that the subject is not going to be about passive learning but interesting engaging learning. The subject could even be presented on a wiki with the files embedded within to allow for greater interactivity and interest. Presenting new and unknown information in a format that is comfortable to students in their digital native environment stops the tasks from being daunting, but deepens opportunities to succeed. Examples shown below. Free easy to use wiki available at –

 b)     Encouraging collaboration- 

Collaboration is easy amongst younger students but harder to achieve for competitive older students. When creating our project on http://trenchwarfare.pbwiki.com is was hard to create tasks aimed for year 12 students that enabled individual deep learning but also collaborative in nature. Examining the syllabus on http://www.boardofstudies.com allowed us to recognise that the outcomes of year 12 are HSC based, so assessing on similar grounds does help students to achieve the best eventual results. BUT saying that, the way students learn is different and creating an opportunity within a project for students to work with their peers and learn on creative levels, that targets self learning styles is important.

   

Advanced students will be able to create roles within the group such as leader, and scribe etc. Having projects based on the web enables quieter students to acheive beyond expectations and show potential by breaking free of mould dictated within physical social interactions. The iternet enables great group work.

c)      Classroom Management Methods- 

Software that is more traditionally known as web 1.0 are sites such as http://www.hotmail.com, which provides a service that the individual has to ‘outsource’ to find information. Google search page was also another initial Web 1.0 software that enabled individuals to search to a separate page but going from one web page to another. http://www.google.com was the first to be involved to change this ‘outsourcing’ to instead have information ‘in sourced’ by being able to search off your homepages through the Google toolbar that gets placed within your own toolbar. This addition of software is a sign of Web 2.0, meaning to have the information on the Internet in sourced to the ease of the user. Knowing this information is highly resourceful to a teacher! When creating projects that are web-based (more and more necessary) stop students from procrastinating is vital. To do this, you must give them the information (this also allows you to provide reliable information which is good) or ‘in source’ the information to them. Students who are all digital natives, do not like outsourcing and will quickly become bored. Instead hyper linking text so that information is readily available, deepens learning opportunities. Video clips are great for use within education as they enable the ability to hyperlink in by embedding software and even upload videos straight to the home sites to stop students from procrastinating and wasting time searching for suitable videos such as http://www.youtube.com. Uploading the video they need to view allows direct access and maximises learning and helps with time management. Video clips also target visual learners and make the web and classroom web-based projects more interactive. The use of sound on the Internet encourages diverse learning styles by targeting musical learners. Sound clips can be taken from speeches, pod casts, broadcasts, media extracts, recordings of events and many other useful sources. Once again, placing them onto the web-based projects will allow students direct access to the information that is needed, not just popular music. http://www.bbc.com is a highly resourceful site for video and sound films that can be utilised in the classroom. The schools link provides Web 2.0 information presented within key learning areas and interesting tasks that can be used by teachers to encourage learning. The radio is highly useful in pod casting from broadcasts or useful sites to keep the students up to date with events. Web 2.0 has made this so much more easier for the internet user by providing the ability to RSS feed sites, meaning to ‘subscribe’ to updates, events and media. An example being students can RSS to http://www.ninemsn/news to have news headlines in video format come straight to their homepages. Links to newspaper articles that are related to class work are very useful and informative for students. It gives primary sources, which are always up to date. http://www.smh.com.au is an example where you can also subscribe to regular media updates or interest stories to be emailed directly to your email. Photos or pictures personalise and allow students to have an intimate approach to the Internet. http://www.flickr.com enables the Web 1.0 action of outsourcing to upload your own photos, which is a negative, but then has further Web 2.0 software that allows you to interact with the images and even RSS feed your own images to your own site. This change over from old technology to new is what Web 2.0 is all about, creating the ability to do something simple within our comfortable Web 1.0 world but then furthering potential by having possibilities of ‘in sourcing’ with highly developed software. Online learning plays a necessary and poignant role in today’s education system but unfortanutely more noteably so in the ‘better-off’ schools. Online and digital based learning is increasing in students lives today and will eventually take over pens and paper. From a teaching point of view there are several key points to remember- To facilitate effective online learning, there needs to be-A teacher constantly wondering around the class to make sure students are on track and to subconciously remind them of what they need to do.-Pair based learning to allow students to interact with the results they come up with think, pair, share and also more importantly which was something we learnt in this course, PEER TEACHING. Every student explores the internet with different exploratory techniques and making a wiki together we all digested the information together in different ways and assisting one another was a key part of this point.-Self taught learning is when students discover and experience for themselves finding atheir own information and having to digest it in a way that isnt spoon fed like normal class.-Examples being all the websites that students use that older people are out of touch with such as myspace are mostly self taught but there are young children using internet coding even to only make a background but embedding files deep within webpages was once considered a hugely complex task.- The teacher needs to create online tasks that link into the ideas of online learning. So for the students just to look up and print off an online journal article is not enough, instead staying online and synthesising analysing and even creating further tasks puts them into the highest level of deeper learning and probbaly takes half the time seeing as it is completed online and in a way that the students best relate to and appreciate.More traditional teaching methods still apply, such as needing to strategically place students with students whom they work well with, not just their friends, and to give occasional checks that students are on task by subconsciously slowing walking the room so they don’t have free range. With computers though, insourcing is the key when teamed with presenting information in interesting ways. 

Example of ideal classroom for group work in computers. Gives opportunity to work with peers aswell as independently, and the teacher can freely walk around.

 

d)     Higher level learning-

Higher level learning is vital to enabling students to learn to the best of their ability.

http://www.kurwongbss.eq.edu.au/thinking/Bloom/bloomspres.ppt

http://www.kurwongbss.eq.edu.au/thinking/Bloom/BLOOM%20(one%20page%20poster).doc
“We Learn . . .10% of what we read
20% of what we hear
30% of what we see
50% of what we see and hear
70% of what we discuss
80% of what we experience
95% of what we teach others.”

Higher level learning will occur when

1. student is presented with information in a way that targets their interest. (see answer 2 part a and c)

2. Presented in a varying range of learning styles so that they can learn best suited to their own learning style.

BLOOM’S REVISED TAXONOMYCreatingGenerating new ideas, products, or ways of viewing thingsDesigning, constructing, planning, producing, inventing. 

Justifying a decision or course of action

Checking, hypothesising, critiquing, experimenting, judging

  

Analysing

Breaking information into parts to explore understandings and relationships

Comparing, organising, deconstructing, interrogating, finding

 

Applying

Using information in another familiar situation

Implementing, carrying out, using, executing

  

Understanding

Explaining ideas or conceptsInterpreting, summarising, paraphrasing, classifying, explaining 

Remembering

Recalling information

Recognising, listing, describing, retrieving, naming, finding