Podcast

We can find a mountain of podcasts available on the web today. With those podcasts, many people often expect to listen to interviews or discussions. Therefore, it is useful to use podcasts as resources to realise other people's views as well as current issues being talked about. For example, BBC podcasts - Farming tells us about environmental analysis. This would be useful to give some ideas how environmental issues are related to farming in a subject like social study. The use of podcasts enhances students' learning engagement to collect necessary information.

Week 4 : Digital tools and pedagogies - Flicker

author : Suzee Que
image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/suzee_que/3248676309/

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” (Cisco systems, 2008)

To gain information, either listening or reading could be an option, which also means it might be difficult to get an organised idea without suitable images stored in the brain. Therefore, as cognitivism view argues, visual images are used as incoming information and the brain tries to organise the information. Visual images can impact on brain working. Cisco systems (2008) explains that people remember 50 % of what we hear and see whereas just 10% of what we read. I uploaded the photo of Elisabeth of Bavaria. In this case, rather than hearing she was the Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, the image is useful in understanding who she was.

Moreover, allocating information develop understandings students need to gain according to the theory of Big6 (Eisenberg, 2001)

Flicker provides additional information on rights to use. The uploaded image above is free to use. As mentioned, it is useful to involve some images during any learning activities, teachers have to notify students on the importance of copy right because one is not always allowed to use an image without informing the author.

References:
Cisco systems. (2008). Multimodal learning through media: What the research says. Retrieved from http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/education/Multimodal-Learning-Through-Media.pdf

Eisenberg, M. (2001). Big 6(tm) skills overview. Retrieved from
http://www.big6.com/2001/11/19/a-big6%E2%84%A2-skills-overview/

Week 3: Digital tools and pedagogies

PowerPoint - what is the purpose of using it ?
What I think about making PowerPoint slides is to keep it simple and make the flow of a chosen topic easy to follow. In response to that, we have to consider who audiences are and how we can close gaps between ourselves as speakers and the audiences. This indicates that speakers have to use any resources available. PowerPoint applications allow us to show varieties of materials like images, videos, and useful links, which can contribute to creating an interactive learning between speakers/teachers and audiences/students and this is my view of the purpose of using PowerPoint.

An overview of the tools

1:Access information
Google earth was introduced as a way of learning about Africa and its animals (Aldred, 2010a). While using Google earth, with its function of leading you to look at photos, students could learn about Africa and its animals as if they were able to travel to the country without having to move. The learning is on-going process, which means students are required to find out information such as location and pictures. Even if information is virtual, visible images can assist students with learning. This is why I think Google earth is an example of accessing information.

2:Organize knowledge
I would like to introduce the use of Bubble.us , which is a useful tool to organise knowledge and concepts. Brainstorming helps us to find out where to start, what are the concepts to learn, and where the learning journey goes. Bubble.us supports the beginning part of learning. It can be applied to the beginning of any subject learnings.

3:Consolidate and refine knowledge
Creating a blog individually can help to consolidate and refine knowledge in learning. Blog functions lead us to choose a title, decide a format and how long to write about a topic. Mostly, only one person can become the blog writer while many people can join each blog post by leaving comments. The former can become a process of thinking , reflecting as well as consolidating learning and the latter can become a part of realising different views, which is to refine knowledge.

4:Transform knowledge to develop new understandings
Wiki would be a strong tool to transform knowledge to develop new understandings. A Wiki web page enables us to achieve collaborative learning with its characteristics such as open, incremental, social network and so on (Aldred, 2010b). Therefore, people can just observe or edit information on the same web site. The use of wiki would be a great idea to work on a project with a group of people to create understandings. Also, a blog can help with doing homework no matter where students are.

5:Present knowledge to an audience
PowerPoint tool can play an important role. In my view, to make PowerPoint slides for presentation or uploading to share with other class peers supports the learners' understanding towards a selected topic. Then, using a wide range of applications, for example, adding images and charts and rehearsing before speaking in front of an audience can make the slides easy to understand the topic. To be ready for presenting knowledge, learners must rehearse before speaking in front of an audience. This is part of the process of using PowerPoint.

References:
Aldred, S. (2010a). Three vignettes. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, FAHE11001 Managing E-Learning, http://www.e-courses.cqu.edu.au

Aldred, S. (2010b). Digital tool 3: Wikis for collaborative learning. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, FAHE11001 Managing E-Learning, http://www.e-courses.cqu.edu.au

My wiki page and Weebly

This is my wikipage.

This is my Weebly page.

A wiki page enables different authors to edit web contents through a collaborative work. This application allows you to blog. With those functions, students will be able to enhance their cooperative and social learning in a group, which also connects to constructivism theory that explains students learn through the interaction with people.

Since a wiki page has a blog function, it is possible to work on a particular project by sharing work that has been assigned individually. This also helps each author to provide own knowledge for sharing and contributing to group learning.

Weebly also has great reasons to be used in an educational setting. First point is that a weebly page does not place any advertisements which sometimes mislead students, especially young students to unacceptable web contents. Second, it provides your own domain on the web; therefore, making new pages, editing, or uploading some images/links is totally your decision. A weebly page also gives an option to add new pages. This contributes to creating a classroom setting available on the web. In addition, having student blogs followed by comments will also enhance interactive learning activities.

Week 2: Teaching in Online Environments

Online learning can provide many opportunities to back up ideas students learn in the classroom. CQUniversity also provides internal students with Moodle online courses to enrich knowledge gained during lectures and it is useful for us to grasp an overview of course goals to achieve.

Teaching and learning are still based on a face-to-face presence; however, now both teachers and students are able to share useful information related to the learning with each other. In terms of cooperation, what comes to my mind is that wherever students live, they can help each other's learning and make a contribution equally through editing, posting, and sharing their ideas online.


The framework to analyse the digital tools




The Big Six (Eisenberg, 2001) categorises ICT experiences. I would like to choose this theory to design ICT learning experiences, because this enables students to find out types of activities they are to perform, and what kind of performances are suitable to do. For example, if students need to use information, engaging and extracting relevant information will be solutions.

This framework also gives ideas to help the learners reach the learning goal. There are various stages to progress the learning in the classroom and each process has to contain necessary activities. Thus, this is where the teacher can suggest the most suitable ICT learning experience design for activities shown on the image above.

Reference:
Eisenberg, M. (2001). Big6(tm) skills overview. Retrieved from
http://www.big6.com/2001/11/19/a-big6%E2%84%A2-skills-overview/

Multipul intelligences - in my case

Functionality of a blog in classrooms

What comes to my mind when considering about blogging in classrooms is it can cater to many types of students' needs.

In classrooms, students with different abilities have their preferred learning styles such as visual learners and logical learners. With the ability to provide any materials from sensory resources
( images, sound) to text reading, students can apply their strength without having to feel stressed when participating in classroom learning with other students.

The great part of blogging is to compare and share ideas. Learning is referred to as a cycle of evaluating student understanding and reflection. As Constructive theory suggests, blogging is beneficial in terms of shared understanding. Sometimes learning should be done by individually; however, sometimes it has to be a collaborative work. A blog also enables both learning managers and students to exchange their views or suggestions through posting comments to each other.

Week 1 : My learning style and concept map for week1

Style scores
Visual 8
Social 13
Physical 9
Aural 16
Solitary 10
Logical 8











It surprised me to realise my learning style was categorised as an aural learner as well as a social learner. The other scores ranged between 8 and 10, which indicates those scores are average, not particular strengths of mine.

Upon reflecting on my learning based on personal experiences, I agree with categorisation as an aural learner. Although I prefer to read text information from books, I often repeat some phrases and important information from the reading verbally, which helps me to memorise. Sometimes peer interaction for learning raised my understanding, especially when I struggled with keeping up with learning. For instance, conversations with other students to exchange some useful knowledge stimulated me to learn a new concept.

According to my result above, I am not a visual learner; however, given the fact that some students learn from visual images, ICTs play an important role in enhancing their learning preference. Even if we look at some learning types such as social and verbal, ICTs have potential to match with today's young learners.

In the classroom setting, the students will show us their diverse learning needs. Knowing the learners will be a part of constructing learning experiences as an educator.

Week 1's concept map