Reflective Synopsis

What is this thing, “e-Learning"? At the beginning of this course if I was asked about e-learning I would have told you that it helped traditional pedagogy look more sophisticated with the help of technology. However from the first week my thoughts changed very quickly to a different understanding of e-learning. My concept now of e-learning is integration of technology and pedagogy.

In the past students and teachers used slates and chalkboards and then upgraded to pens, paper and whiteboards and eventually to computers. All these items were just tools for education and not a significant part of the curriculum. Today, students and teachers are using the technology everyday not only for social reasons but for learning and education, everywhere, anytime and with any learning style. E-learning is not just an ICT tool it is a learning design framework as displayed in the TPack model. As Marc Prensky (2001) puts it "today's students are Digital Natives" meaning that today's students are brought up knowing how to use technology unlike people of my age and older who might be classed as digital immigrants. This also means that today's students learn differently than I did back in the 80's and 90's.

Having an awareness of learning theories has helped me put e-learning into perspective. Learning theories such as Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism and Connectivism were brought to the forefront of our first exercise involving the whole cohort. Our learning styles were also investigated and the results were posted on my blog. One of the teaching strategies described by Marzano & Pickering (1997) that has stuck in my head is creating good relationships with your students. This is very important with e-learning because with good relationships comes respect, with respect student will more likely follow today's legal, safety and ethical protocols that must be adhered to in e-learning. Students must be taught the correct use of the different ICT media to make them more competitive on the world stage.

It is a big world out there and it's not only in the classroom that students have to be able to use e-learning technology. As a teacher you can not expect students to stop using  today's technology as soon as they come through the door. After learning this information I was involved in a group exercise using a wiki for the first time. The wiki was our thoughts and ideas about the use of mobile phones in the classroom. We used DeBono's six thinking hats model to explain our positions on the task (Page 21). The exercise was well scaffolded and was a great introduction to collaborative learning. At the start I did not know what to expect but it did not take long to work out how the wiki was used. This task was a great exercise in social constructivism, a learning theory founded by Vygotsky.

You could easily use the same type of exercise for a class of students learning about another subject. A wiki really helps in collaborative learning because of the way the media is set up, as well as incorporating higher order thinking by scaffolding the reasoning process. Vygotsky (1962) states that individuals learn within a zone of proximal development, but with scaffolding, support and social interaction the learner can construct new knowledge. We had to create our own wiki's that could be used for a class exercise and I am very happy with what I have created and will keep using my wiki for a long time to come. This wiki like all ICT has legal and ethical protocols such as copy-write acknowledging other peoples work whether it be pictures, audio or text.

I was lucky to be able to then play with other types of e-learning media such as weeblys and blogs. I do believe that as a classroom tool, used in the correct way e-learning will just be part of the students every day life. As a school exercise, students will be able contribute and feel comfortable using this media. Once again the students can access these e-learning tools when they want from anywhere. Then I was let loose to be creative like any other student who uses these tools would be, and played with a still movie maker and pod cast. I almost got a recording contract out of it. The next group of tools were great fun to work with and really lets students create, share and learn from each other. These tools were power point, Prezi, slide show and glogster. I have a PMI on my prezi that helped me class this ICT tool for classroom use.

E-learning has to be the future of education. I believed I could not do what I have done with all these ICT tools but yet was able to. If Teachers keep the students legal, safe and ethical practices in check education of the future is looking brighter already.

References

Marzano, R.J., & Pickering, D.J.(with Arrendondo, D.E.,Paynter,D.E.,Blackburn,G.J., Brandt, R.S.,                     Moffet, C.A., Pollock,J.E., & Whistler, J.S.).(1997). Dimensions of learning teacher's manual                 2nd ed.). Alexandra, VA: Ascd.

Prensky, Marc. (2001) Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Retrieved from
          http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/

Reflection 5 Week 6

In this weeks topic of Mobile learning I almost felt old. I first went through the weekly information and was surprised at some of the topics I did not know much about. For example personal learning environments and massively open on-line courses (mooc's), I guess like the university course we are part of now.

But after thinking for a while in my own household my whole family are all using mobile learning everyday. From my young son who is at the start of his schooling, he is using reading eggs on his Samsung Tablet. This is just one use of the emerging technologies that has not only  infiltrated today's classrooms but our homes or for that matter anywhere we want to learn or study.

My daughter has an Apple Ipad and boy does it get a work out. Not only can she look up the information to help her with her schoolwork, but she can Skype her friends and family for (FREE) and access knowledge and information from them. This is part social constructivism and connectivism in a setting of collaborative learning. Digital media literacy is becoming the norm in social spaces and is growing rapidly within school classrooms. With students using mobile learning tools they can use all types of new media from mobile apps cloud and tablet computing to blogs and posts.

My wife and I both use our mobile smart phones for finding information out for both study and social reasons. We can look up the latest topics, trends and referenced research from almost anywhere. With mobile technologies we have the world at the touch of our fingers. Another benefit that I found is that unlike a live interaction you can replay, review and research the information over and over. This type of tool is great for all classroom subjects and students different learning styles.

I think mobile learning is the way of the future, even my mother uses mobile learning and that shows how much of an impact it has on our social community.

 

Reflection 4 Week 5

This week I played with a few different ICT tools. I was amazed at the number of ICT tools available and their applications. Setting up each tool it is mostly the same sort of procedure. For example, you need your email address and a password to set up your account. Both power point and prezi were in the same group which on a basic level can be used for presentations. However, students can use them for more than just presenting their information. Students can also evaluate and enhance their understanding of the meaning of the information. I thought these tools were quite easy to use. I think that the more time you spend investigating them the more you could get out of them. There is so much to learn.

The following links are to my wiki, where I have embedded some artefacts which result from my investigations into the tools:
Power point and Slide share
Prezi

I also investigated glogster which is embedded at the end of this post.

The following PMI table looks at Prezi as a tool for teaching and learning.

Plus	Minus	Implications for Teaching
A large variety of media can be embedded in Prezi, including, video, sound, images and text Great designs and effects Assists creativity	Might take a while for some students to learn how to use it. I found it a bit trickier to initally navigate around.	Could be used for class projects enhancing collaborative learning and creativity. Using a prezi can be much more than a simple presentation of information as it lends itself to a large variety of media.

Google Earth

The following PMI table looks at Google Earth as a ICT tool for teaching and learning.

Plus	Minus	Implications for Teaching
Amazing design and & easy to use Great understanding Good for scaffolding information Source of creativity	Can not find any	Students can measure distance Students can find locations that relate to their learning. This can assist them make meaning of what they are learning by making it more authentic.