Digital Education

I have just finished Maria’s blog titled Concept Maps need to be taught and I agree 100% that they do need to be taught. Scaffolding is important but students see things differently. When I used Concept Mapping on Practicum I was shocked to see the students writing a list of dot points rather than constructing the diagram in their workbooks.

I understand that they are not used in every classroom but students need to be shown there potential to help them with their studies… The video below from You tube describes how concept mapping is effective in students learning and can demonstrate to teachers the importance of using this technique to write assessment tasks.

After reading Matthew Kearny’s blog titled “Use of Video Medium”, I was shocked to realise how much video learning can be adapted. While, I was at school videos were used to fill in time. Whilst, on practicum I tried to change this to make videos more meaningful, but still found that other teachers used them to fill in time.

But after reading Matthews blog I found that I now know more ways to use videos in the classroom. In particular the use of digital storytelling- an adaptation of narrative use to introduce or reinforce a topic in my KLA. This even stems to allowing the students to create their own video tasks to demonstrate their learning and understanding.

Made available under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Available here.

I have just completed reading ‘Computers as Mindtools for Engaging learners in critical thinking’ by David Jonassen. This article uses Papert’s Constructivism to ensure students are constructing their own learning. The article lists a number of cognitive tools that use the constructivist learning to ensure students are representing what they know and the content they are studying.

There are several classifications of mindtools mentioned including:

·         Semantic Organisation Tools

·         Dynamic Modelling tools

·         Information Interpretation Tools

·         Knowledge Construction Tools

·         Conversation and Collaboration Tools

These tools all allow students to develop their own research, organisation, presentation and reflection skills whilst constructing and reflecting on their own interpretations of topic areas. I still believe after reading this article my interpretation in another blog that Constructivism is more applicable to my KLA of Business Studies, Economics and Commerce.  

I have just completed an article by Educause Learning Initiative titled “7 things you should know about collaborative editing“. This article demonstrates a fabulous example of students collaborating with other students to enhance their learning. Even though this is a university example this can be applied to Secondary Education to allow students the ability to enhance their own learning. This generation of secondary students are able to learn as they are going. They know who to work with to enhance their learning of subject content.

Students can use collaborating online tools like Zoho writer or Google docs writer. The two videos below I have found on Youtube to show the students how to use these tools. The first is for Google Docs Writer…

Second video is for Zoho Writer…. 

Both are great examples of technology assisting learning.

The following Audio discusses the article by Lynne Anderson-Inman and Mark Horney- titled Computer Based Concept Mapping: Enhancing Literacy with tools for visual thinking.

concept-mapping-blog

In response to Joel Penny’s blog titled, ‘Does the ASX ‘Share Market Simulation Game’ fit?’ I came to the conclusion that some teachers believe it is either a technology lesson or it is not. I used the ASX Game on practicum as an additional component of my lessons focusing on Investing (Commerce Option). The students were given 15 minutes of every lesson to see if they could incorporate the theory into their stock options.

The Commerce Syllabus is overcrowded if you look at it as overcrowded. But, if you using the relevant software like the ASX Game to allow critical thinking and problem solving on concepts that are very difficult to 15 to 16 year old adolescents- the software becomes relevant not irrelevant.

The subject area that I will be discussing is titled ‘Content Free Software’ which focuses on mindmaps, spreadsheets, databases, etc. The mind map above has some examples of content free software that is specific for Social Sciences.

I have just finished reading a commentary titled ‘Cognitive Tools in the Classroom’ by Jung Eun Shim and Yue Li, which details use of content-free software. I found the lesson the article focuses on was a fabulous example of how to make lessons ‘significant’ to the class.

The Biology lesson discusses mind mapping using “Inspiration” and Microsoft Excel as visual arrangement software that allows students to do the research and see the connectivity between the concepts. I believe it is very important in education to construct, understand and remember the important concepts following the Confucius Quote:

I hear and I forget….

I see and I remember….

I do and I understand…..

These cognitive tools are described by Shim and Li as “any tool that can support the learner”. I believe these tools are best used for the higher levels of Blooms taxonomy and can be used for all of Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences. It is important that learning goes beyond the simplistic 4 walls and allows students to use software that can allow higher order thinking and problem solving. Allowing this in the classroom is allowing the content that is being taught to become “real world” not, just theory they have learnt in a textbook.

The following Audio is in response to Doctor Romeo’s article titled ‘Teaching, Learning, and Technology: Research, Reform and Realise the potential.

My apologies for the audios clarity, I have a bad head cold.

Romeo Audio

In response to Linda’s blog on Doctor Romeo speech titled “Teaching, learning and technology: Reserach, reform, realise the potential”. The articles focus on the two extreme classrooms was unrealistic and unreal.

The use of computers and technology in both examples was designed to show that in these situations the focus was on teaching rather than learning expecially in the first example where the students lives were being invaded by their parents.

I agree with Linda that being a co-learner, co-investigator, facilitator and guide will definately be the best kind of teacher..

xoxo

I have just completed a reading titled “Constructionism vs. Instructionism” by Seymour Papert. I found this article compelling how it uses the two methods as examples to show that it is not about how we are teaching the students but rather about their learning in and outside the classroom. I agree with the article that with use of technology what the students learn in schools will be more useful in the real-world. Constructionism and Instructionism are the two approaches to educational innovation used in this article. The definitions from Papert (1980) are listed below:

Instructionism is the theory that says, “To get better education, we must improve instruction. And if we’re going to use computers, we’ll make the computers do the instruction.”

Constructionism means “Giving children good things to do so that they can learn by doing much better than they could before.”

I believe that the articles uses of technology are profound and a little outdated due to the article being 28years old but, the underlying ideas of how the technology can assist learning is relatively the same and has become more profound. The school classroom has the benefit that technology has become more readily available which can assist in the development of programs used in the classroom.

Learning in the Business Studies and Commerce Syllabus is designed to be very real world with an emphasis on using media examples to demonstrate this. I believe that Constructionism is more applicable to Business Studies and Commerce than Instructionism. 

How can we improve learning in our KLA using this technology?