A few weeks ago, I started on my Managing e.Learning Journey. In this course I was asked to read and engage with the coursework provided on the Central Queensland University’s moodle website and interact with the links about the technologies we were learning about. Each week I was introduced to various new technologies and had a play around with them before posting my thoughts and how I would introduce them into my classes on my blog. Each new technology brought exciting ways to engage the students and now I have the knowledge and confidence that I will be able to implement technology in my future classrooms to make the learning effective and engaging.
I am currently studying my Bachelor of Learning Management Early Childhood, which means my students will be from prep to year three. The technologies that I would implement within these classrooms would most likely be Digital Storytelling, Imcompetech, Google Earth, YouTube, Interactive Whiteboards, Flickr, PowerPoint's and Voki. The use of the technologies mentioned would be ranging from individual experiences to small or whole class experiences, for example YouTube is a fantastic resource where teachers are able to access a range of different videos to help engage the students by using visual aides, refer to my blog post YouTube. Also Voki's can be used to introduce and explain different tasks to individual students without a teacher being present, this gives the teacher more time to help other students that need help. The technologies mentioned will help teachers and students to effectively engage, inquire, create, communicate and operate information and communication technologies (ICT’s) and reach the outcomes associated with ICT’s. With the introduction of these technologies to the classroom teachers start to meet the needs of today’s students (digital natives) and relates learning experiences to the Learning Engagement Theory.
The technologies mentioned above would be used to enhance the learning environments in a teacher and student centred approach to learning. Both teacher and student are able to work together as a whole or in small groups or individually with these technologies to gain an understanding of how each different technology works and how to incorporate them into the learning in an engaging manner. The implementation of these technologies in classrooms would make all teaching, not just my own, more effective as learning experiences can be made up prior to the lesson and reach more children than a normal lecture. Referring to the Learning Pyramid (Central Queensland University Moodle site, 2010), it shows that the average retention rate of children is increased with the audio-visual aides increases by 20% and is further increased with practice by doing to 75%.
Each technology can be implemented into each year level in the primary school setting; in my future role as a learning manager it will be my responsibility to organize and maintain learning experiences that will engage the children within my specific year levels. When implementing learning experiences that involve students researching or using technology that requires Internet usage I will implement whole class discussions on netiquette and Internet safety as well as monitor the students with what they are doing. This will be valuable for the students learning and safety awareness development.
This course was really engaging and interesting to participate in. However personally I would only use YouTube for personal entertainment. I really enjoyed the aspects of blogging, as I was able to write down how I would implement the technologies within my future classrooms and relating back to the Learning Engagement Theory. I also really enjoyed how my peers would comment and leave suggestions for me on the specific blog post; this helped me to gather others understanding and knowledge of the same technologies . I would then go and read their blog post, which not only let me get an insight into how they would incorporate the technologies within their classrooms but also how they relate them back to the Learning Engagement Theory. I was also able to leave my comments on their posts to input my understanding and knowledge. For instance, I was unable to load a slide show into SlideShare (as my computer does not have Internet usage and I did not have a slide show available), but I was able to log onto another’s blog (see blog comment references, Blog 1) and view what they did. This allowed me to gather an understanding of how SlideShare worked and I was really impressed by some of my peers comments on this as the slide show was reaching out to a small child. I found the comments left on my blogs to be helpful and useful in gaining feedback on how I was making progress within the coursework and my understandings of the technologies and pedagogy discussed within the course.
I also found Google Reader to be helpful, as when I logged into the program I was able to view the new post that my peers had posted. Not only was I able to subscribe to a number of my peers blogs, but when I followed a certain blog through Blogger it was automatically listed in Google Reader and I was able to get an update of their new posts. This would be really helpful to a teacher when an assessment task is to do with blogs, they would be able to subscribe or follow all their students blogs. Then log on and read through on Google Reader, which would make it easier to assess what the students are doing rather than have them write or email you their links.
Today in the 21st Century, we are faced with Digital Native students, so to engage our students we need to be continually developing our understanding and usage of the technologies available. This means for me as a Learning Manager in the 21st Century, I will need to continue my development, understanding and knowledge of recent technologies to successfully apply e.Learning within an educational setting to engage my students and allow them to learn successfully.
Reference List
Kearsley, G. & Shneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement Theory: A Framework for technology-based teaching and learning. URL : http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm
Aldred. S & Central Queensland University (CQU). (2010). FAHE11001- Managing E-Learning: Moodle Site Term 1 2010. Rockhampton, QLD, Australia
The Abilene Christian Universtiy Adams Centre for Teacher Excellence. (2000). Why use Active Learning: Dales Cone. Active Learning Online. URL: http://www.acu.edu/cte/activelearning/whyuseal2.htm
Prensky. M. (2001). Digital Navives, Digital Immigrants. URL: http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf
Appendix - Blog Comment List
Blog 1
Coreena Byrnes, Key note for Blogs
Blog 2
Coreena Byrnes, Voki
URL: http://coreenabyrnes.blogspot.com
Blog 3
Peter Spencer, Imcompetech
URL: http://mylearningjourneyteachingforthefuture.blogspot.com
Blog 4
Amanda, YouTube
Blog 5
Amanda, Voki's
URL: http://amandagilley.blogspot.com
Monday, May 3, 2010
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)