A Reflective Synopsis.
Before I sat down to write this synopsis, I gave my blog a reading-over, and wow, have I learned a lot in the past couple of months. I remember during the Res school listening to how we were going to be working on our own blogs, wikis, making our own podcasts and even attempt a website. I can tell you now that I was more than a little intimidated to begin with! Through the weekly engagements however, I was able to steadily make progress to the point now that I read over my blog and am hardly able to believe what I have been able to accomplish. Starting with the wiki activity in week one using deBono's hats, and progressing from there, I am impressed how the course has scaffolded my learning about many different technologies like wikis, blogs, voki, how to manipulate and embed images, and discovered my favourite website, Khan Academy. These technologies and more are talked about extensively in my blog and my wiki, which I am happy to say, are really coming together well, and have turned into a very useful learning resource. I also learned about TPAC and the methods by which technological knowledge, content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge are combined to form the technological pedagogical content knowledge (Mishra & Koehler 2006).
The use of technology is an important part of education and will continue to become more important as it becomes further integrated with our lives. The participation in the debono's wiki activities was the real beginning of my education on E-learning and how online tools can facilitate learning that incorporates multiple learning theories, with a focus on constructivism, as explained further in my blog. I found the experience transformed my way of thinking about e-learning, and the way it can help cooperation and the sharing of knowledge. It was also interesting to discover about Felder and Solomon's (reference) learning styles, and how to best engage with students according to their preferred style. I also learned about Multiple intelligences and recorded my experiences with them on my blog as linked above. Finally, I feel a strong personal connection with Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development," because, to me, it seems to solidify the fuzziness of common sense into a more concrete theory of how to bridge students' gap between what they know and what they want to know (Schunk, 1996). I also look forward to incorporating cooperative learning theory into my lessons, as detailed in my blog.
The initial focus aimed to outline the best practices for teachers to get to know their learner. Felder and Solomon propose there are different learning styles: active and reflective, sensing and intuitive, visual and verbal, and Sequential and global. There is considerable debate in the field however. Another theory to that attempts to categorise how learners learn is the theory of multiple intelligences, but theory is fiercely debated as explained by Han S. Paik. It is fair to say that within academia, the theory of Multiple intelligences is more supported than learning style theory. This is reflected upon in my Blog entry, where I independently reached similar conclusions. I applied this specifically to my area of business after reading in Evans (2006) that business students of today will need to learn the skills of the future, through colaboritive learning and knowing how to use technology today. I also enjoyed learning about Prenski's ideas in 'engage me or enrage me' about digital natives and immigrants, as recorded here on my blog. Lastly, I investigated some of Luis Mateus Rocha's (1998) ideas on self-organising learning processes that arise from seemingly random initial conditions here in my blog.
deBono's Hat Wiki
Lastly, I noted the 6 hats wiki activity was an example of a well structured learning environment, where learners were given the opportunity to see other peoples perspective, giving us the chance to discuss, debate and challenge each other, thereby providing an oportunity for peer tutoring. These are all examples of higher-order thinking, which as we know, is always the goal when teaching. According to Hattie (2009), the following are core principles of co-operative learning, as opposed to 'group work'.
After experimenting with both blogs and then Wiki's, I have decided that these two tools will be the focus of my attention for now. This blog will record my educational journey in the form of multi-media postings and reflection, whereas my wiki, can be accessed by using this link. The Wiki space has grown rapidly lately, why not check out what's new? The pic below is a sample of what can be done with a $150 camera and MICE. Here. Further reflections are found in the links provided.
The use of technology is an important part of education and will continue to become more important as it becomes further integrated with our lives. The participation in the debono's wiki activities was the real beginning of my education on E-learning and how online tools can facilitate learning that incorporates multiple learning theories, with a focus on constructivism, as explained further in my blog. I found the experience transformed my way of thinking about e-learning, and the way it can help cooperation and the sharing of knowledge. It was also interesting to discover about Felder and Solomon's (reference) learning styles, and how to best engage with students according to their preferred style. I also learned about Multiple intelligences and recorded my experiences with them on my blog as linked above. Finally, I feel a strong personal connection with Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development," because, to me, it seems to solidify the fuzziness of common sense into a more concrete theory of how to bridge students' gap between what they know and what they want to know (Schunk, 1996). I also look forward to incorporating cooperative learning theory into my lessons, as detailed in my blog.
The initial focus aimed to outline the best practices for teachers to get to know their learner. Felder and Solomon propose there are different learning styles: active and reflective, sensing and intuitive, visual and verbal, and Sequential and global. There is considerable debate in the field however. Another theory to that attempts to categorise how learners learn is the theory of multiple intelligences, but theory is fiercely debated as explained by Han S. Paik. It is fair to say that within academia, the theory of Multiple intelligences is more supported than learning style theory. This is reflected upon in my Blog entry, where I independently reached similar conclusions. I applied this specifically to my area of business after reading in Evans (2006) that business students of today will need to learn the skills of the future, through colaboritive learning and knowing how to use technology today. I also enjoyed learning about Prenski's ideas in 'engage me or enrage me' about digital natives and immigrants, as recorded here on my blog. Lastly, I investigated some of Luis Mateus Rocha's (1998) ideas on self-organising learning processes that arise from seemingly random initial conditions here in my blog.
What surprised me after reading my colleague's contributions, was that I could now see each issue we covered in the black-hat section had a plausible solution. My own offering put forward the proposition that a school's IT department might be tasked with ensuring internet access be made possible only through the school's own properly filtered and monitored secure WiFi network. Bullying could be curtailed by ensuring all communication between students be collated and stored in a way that complies with the appropriate privacy mandates, and students informed of a strict zero-tolerance policy to bullying.
Being able to learn and understand the various perspectives of my classmates in the hats that followed stimulated me to conduct additional research into some benefits of integrating ICT.
DeBono's scaffolded wiki activity struck me as based mostly on constructivism, as we were working cooperatively and gaining new knowledge through interactions with fellow peers. Vygotsky (1962) proposed that learning is heavily influenced by social interaction. It can clearly be seen that the wiki facilitated higher order thinking, as we worked through the hats, we were able to conduct a mental SWOT analysis and evaluate which side of the mobile phone debate held the strongest position. I was quite surprised at the outcome of my evaluation stage, as I had entered the exercise skeptical about the use of mobiles in class, but after due consideration, changed my view to that of cautious optimism. My own Wiki can be found here. https://taicullumict.wikispaces.com/.
Lastly, I noted the 6 hats wiki activity was an example of a well structured learning environment, where learners were given the opportunity to see other peoples perspective, giving us the chance to discuss, debate and challenge each other, thereby providing an oportunity for peer tutoring. These are all examples of higher-order thinking, which as we know, is always the goal when teaching. According to Hattie (2009), the following are core principles of co-operative learning, as opposed to 'group work'.
I've linked here and here to show that I understand the legal and ethical implications of posting images in a public, online space.
Here is the link to a concept mapping tool I used called Bubbl.us. I engaged in an extensive investigation for the topic, including all technical details and reflections. Having never used a tool such as Bubbl.us, I was unsure about what its function actually was and how I might be able to introduce it into a classroom situation. I wonder no more! I believe that this would be a powerful tool and effective pedagogy due to the fact that learners have a significantly higher rate of retention when they are involved in the 'doing' of an activity, compared to simply reading, listening or viewing alone.
I demonstrate embedding a video by pasting it into the HTML editor instead of simply using the 'insert a video' button. I questioned its usefulness until I realised I could only use the button for youtube videos, otherwise I'd need to download it using one of my groovy Chrome extensions to download and then upload it myself. This way is indeed much better. Here I talk about the power of images.
Wikis, websites and blogs are investigated too, Here is a link to my Weebly website, I spent a few minutes trying to do something interesting on this site but became frustrated by the limited nature of what is allowed with a free account and decided to give Google's offering another try. This would prove to be my second unsuccessful attempt at making something useful from Google's free web hosting service, as I tried briefly about 18 months ago. I gave up pretty quickly on both occasions because I found the service to be very un-user friendly, and obviously not designed to do what I wanted it to do.
After experimenting with both blogs and then Wiki's, I have decided that these two tools will be the focus of my attention for now. This blog will record my educational journey in the form of multi-media postings and reflection, whereas my wiki, can be accessed by using this link. The Wiki space has grown rapidly lately, why not check out what's new? The pic below is a sample of what can be done with a $150 camera and MICE. Here. Further reflections are found in the links provided.
I undertook extensive research looking for an online tool that would complement the teaching of mathematics and chose the Khan Academy. I explain it on my wiki here and here, well, I'm not sure I should post all of the places I have talked about it because it will be confusing. It's much better if you just explore the wiki yourself. Please look through the references to my work there on deBono's hats and some other technical details. I really went to a lot of trouble to demonstrate my mastery of some more tecnical aspects of wiki design and other web construction. There are lots of details I don't have room to explain in this synopsis, so please consider the link above an appendix.
Here is a very detailed look at my thoughts, including reflections on the group 4 technical tools. Space is restricted, so consider this a referral to an appendix.
