Reflection 2 week 3

This week in our ICT course our class has been involved in finding out and discovering how to use three different ICT tools. These tools were a wiki, a weebly and a blog. We had to set them up and investigate what the tools can do and what they have to offer in the way of being used as support and enhancement for the learning of a class of students.

 I have been working on my wiki and playing around with it, creating different pages, you-tube clips and other links. The students that I have worked with are interested in many different things, and because these students learn in different ways a wiki is a great ICT tool for them. For example having an understanding of how your students learn is very important for a teacher to get the message across to their students. Learning styles is briefly explained in the inserted link. I can use lots of different ways on a wiki to explain what is needs to be done to complete the task.

I found that the wiki also gives students access to the other students ideas and information through social interaction. I beleve it can help students move ahead quickly and with investigation can lead to higher order thinking. Each time a student wants to add their information it shows that the student is being creative and helps with collaboration of all the other students and teacher in the class. This would be called social constructivism. There are many studies that show that ICT pedagogy is important.

With a wiki it is important for the teacher to have a scaffolded environment because with out control I think that it could get quite tricky if the students didn't respect each others work. With wiki's the information can be changed by any person even after the information has been posted.  Blogs and  weeblys can only be add to by other people, and the information can't be changed or delete by others.

My wiki is set up for a class project on extreme sport. The class has to show what they are interested in, write up fact and information and show how it relates to their outdoor rec class. This class already surf, rides bulls and horses and ab sail. The class have to share with each other this information because they must learn to trust one another for the activities they are going to be involved in.

I think wiki's are a fantastic ICT tool to use and should be used more in schools across Australia today. This will help many students connect and learn from each other as we have on this very course our selves.