Summary of Digital Technologies Analysis
The last few weeks of investigating and exploring with ICT’s has been challenging, frustrating, exhilarating and a time consuming process. However, this process has been beneficial for allowing me to critically analyse and evaluate the capabilities of each tool to enhance the learning of my students, as well as, the ability of these tools and online spaces to keep my students safe at all times. The following summary discusses those tools I have selected across the four groups to best serve these purposes.
Group 1
After delving into the world of online spaces, I have decided the Wiki is the technological tool that is most versatile and supportive of my students learning in this group. Wikis incorporate the features of a Website with the valuable addition of interactive capabilities. This social software approach supports knowledge-building networks through collaboration, communication and creation. They not only engage students in the content I want to teach but also with each other to develop higher order thinking, creative thinking and problem solving skills. I do find value in teaching students to be reflective in their learning; however, I feel successful blogging requires commitment over the long term which can place a higher demand on student’s time and therefore, would not consider using this in a primary context.
As an introduction to Wiki, I would discuss the responsibilities of the students when using Wiki. Firstly, I would engage the class in a ‘communities of practice’ task which would require students to negotiate the rules and regulations of participation. The aim would be for students to understand that they own the online space and that respect for each other is required. I would scaffold this activity to facilitate higher-order thinking such as; social etiquette, appropriate language, attribution and copyright. This would then become a page that students could refer to ensure that the standard is maintained by all students at all times.
To further enhance student learning, the Wikis would become the ‘hub’ of the class. I have discovered, with the set up my own Wiki as a family organiser “(See Appendix A)”, that they are very effect and efficient for communicating with the online generation. I would definitely implement a class organiser page which would include important dates, parent information notices, homework tasks and assignment criteria sheets so students have access to the information they need 24/7 with no excuses. The Wiki is so quick to edit, information can be easily be updated to avoid it from becoming static and to encourage students to stay engaged in class activities. Lastly, I would use the Wiki as a place for students to link or upload resources they have found to share with other students to extend learning beyond the classroom. Students can also communicate ideas, opinions and ask questions to promote discussions to develop an online network to also enhance learning.
Wikis are also flexible in that the settings can be altered to accommodate editorial rights to just the teacher or to everybody in the class. The value in Wiki is in the ability for students to edit the page, so it is vitally important that there is protection from unwanted visitors. Student Wikis should be established through the ‘Learning Place’ which is recognised as a safe, password protected online space specifically designed for educational purposes.
Group 2
Moviemaker was a standout in this group because as it can incorporate many of the technological skills applied in Picnik and Flickr. Furthermore, Moviemaker has no creative limit which makes it highly valuable for engaging and extending my students. Learning will be enhanced through having students develop a critical awareness of this powerful medium through having to consider target audience, planning, team work and purpose, all the while encouraging students to communicate with one another. Moviemaker is also a very useful tool for teachers to gauge the level of student understanding of key themes and concepts covered.
In my classroom, I would require students to form small groups to produce a movie from photos and video footage acquired during a school event such as, a camp or fete to be presented on the parent night. All footage and photos would be pooled as a resource for each group to compile their own movie. Students would then be stepped through the process of producing the movie over six in-class tutorials. Each tutorial will focus on developing technical abilities in importing media files, using and editing files, using and editing video clips, adding slide transitions and special effects, creating narration, adding titles and credits, and, saving and playing the movie.
The final product will be assessed on the student’s ability to accurately identify a sequence and patterns in events, as well as, their ability to best emphasise the key elements of the event in the most creative way. Moviemaker is perfectly positioned to support all student learning styles alongside a number of other positive attributes as mentioned in my Moviemaker MADNESS Blog analysis “(See Apendix B)”. Additionally, students will have to engage skills of negotiation and compromise with one another to produce a high quality presentation.
Furthermore, as a teacher, I will have to make sure that those students who do not have a signed media release form are not used in the project resource pool to ensure I uphold a ‘duty of care’ for all my students. Moviemaker also provides an opportunity for students to learn to work ethically when using the work of others. This requires them to give attribution for all audio clips, images and text used in their productions to ensure there is no breach of copyright laws.
Group 3
For this group, I took an old powerpoint and created three new presentations “(See Appendices C)”. The first was with interactive powerpoint which was very simplistic but still had the same format and boring undertone of powerpoint which most students are already familiar with. The next format was Glogster which was easy and fun to use, but had too many gadgets which I think could have potential to distract from the quality of content. Furthermore, I did not like how you could not see the whole poster on the computer screen. This makes managing the content more difficult which would also impact upon the presentation quality. The last was a Prezi which looks like powerpoint but with a new attitude. The Prezi provides a perfect balance between being the most creative to use while providing the most professional finish.
In my upper level primary class, I would ask students to research a topic and then present their findings to the class in Prezi. The structure of Prezi is more of an open canvas rather than a linear progression as in powerpoint. This promotes higher-order thinking for students as they lay out their thoughts in no specific order on one page, similar to a mindmap. This process is more time efficient as it eliminates the need to create a separate storyboard. The canvas becomes the presentation as ideas are organised into slides by a pathway. Furthermore, Prezi’s bird’s eye view of the presentation allows the student to zoom in and out and across the canvas so information can be presented centred round questions from the audience. This facilitates discussion and a more audience centred presentation resulting in a more meaningful learning experience. Prezi’s also limit the amount of text used on each slide forcing students to be creative in the use of other embedded formats such as videos and images to help communicate ideas and thoughts to the audience.
Prezi is also stored online and accessible from any computer with internet access eliminating the reliance on flashdrives. Prezi is also a safe online site for students as access is password protected and allows up to ten students to collaborate on the same presentation. This eliminates the need to email sections to other group members in order to construct the presentation. Furthermore, because Prezi is stored online there are no issues with newer versions conflicting with older versions. With this in mind, I think it would be the most valuable tool in my classroom for developing the presentation skills and enhancing the learning of my students.
Group 4
In this last group, I chose to explore Dipity and Bubbl.us. Each tool serves a different purpose within the educational context. Dipity has the power to bring the traditionally boring history lesson to life. I created my timeline of events over a three month period but I found that if activities were placed too close together on the timeline the images reduced in size and the timeline lost some of its visual appeal. I spent much time on trying to reduce the time span to allow more room on the timeline; however, I didn’t get it worked out. As for Bubbl.us (See Appendix D)”, it was really user friendly as I had it mastered in about five minutes. Mind mapping and brainstorming are essential skills which often underpin projects and assignments throughout the schooling years. For this reason, I wanted it to be included in my eLearning experiences tools to facilitate the development of these skills.
The beauty of Bubbl.us is that it also allows students to record as many ideas as springs to mind, in whatever order, collaboratively online. I used it to organise key ideas for a powerpoint presentation. The addition of colour in the bubbles helped to link ideas on a strand to better organise my thoughts. Bubbl.us enhances student learning because the map is easy to edit, so corrections and adjustments can be made as you go and the page remains neat and tidy. In the classroom, it would be an ideal medium for students to brainstorm for problem solving purposes. The format is free of restrictions which allow students to get really creative in their thinking. In addition, I would also encourage students to use Bubbl.us to graph their thinking process to be embedded into a Prezi or written assignment to help convey complex information more clearly.
Lastly, due to the unexpected and untimely nature of technical difficulties, a lot of time and hard work can easily be lost if it hasn’t been saved. It is important that when using any online stored eLearning tool like Bubbl.us that students develop the habit of saving of their work frequently to minimise the effects of technical glitches. Furthermore, these online tools are often password protected to ensure their online safety. Students need to understand that they should not give their passwords to anyone and they should not be written down in a place that is accessible by others, e.g. school diary.
Appendices
Appendix A.
Appendix B.
Appendix C.
Appendix D.
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