Week 5

Digital Technologies 3 & 4

This week we explored some new and exciting digital technologies that can be implemented in the classroom to support learning.  The technologies explored this week include PowerPoint, Prezi and Glogster.

PowerPoint

Ease of use

When going through the tutorial for making a basic PowerPoint I found that I already knew how to do most things. PowerPoint is a versatile program used by many people, which I have utilised myself throughout my primary and secondary schooling and also in my previous university degree to support oral presentations. However when it come to making an interactive PowerPoint I had no idea that the program consisted of so many additional features that I had never known about or been shown how to use. I found the interactive features of PowerPoint such as Mouse Mischief very interesting and think that a feature such as this would be very engaging when used in a primary school for learning activities.     

Benefits for learning

Both teachers and students can benefit from PowerPoint by using it to support a lesson and oral presentation respectively. PowerPoint allows the user to embed text, audio, video and images, along with creating images, interactive quizzes or concept maps (Fasso 2013). PowerPoint presentations are presented in a linear order which is great for some students that have a sequential learning style and not so good for students that don’t learn most effectively from linear activities. As mentioned above the Mouse Mischief program run through PowerPoint can be used as a whole class activity seeing up to 25 students being able to actively participate in a lesson.  

 

Using it with Primary school students 

·         Getting them to use PowerPoint to display an assessment piece

·         In small groups use PowerPoint to make a concept map of a given topic

·         Make a PowerPoint with a letter of the alphabet on each slide with a small word and picture of something starting with that letter for young students P-2 to work through individually or in groups to learn the alphabet and make associations with words and things that start with each letter – a similar activity could be done for colours and numbers

·         Make a quiz on a topic that has been taught in class for the students to do to see how much they learnt from a lesson

·         After a class excursion students could be asked to put a PowerPoint presentation together using the images they took and the information on the handouts they received to be shown to their parents 

Please click here, you will be taken to my wiki where you can view the interactive PowerPoint that I made. The main feature of the PowerPoint is the use of hyperlinking.   

Prezi

Ease of use

I have to admit that I got very angry with this program on my first attempt to use it as it was completely new and I was just doing everything wrong. After some much needed assistance from my partner who has limited computer knowledge I was on my way to creating my own Prezi which I found to be very enjoyable and much more fun to use than PowerPoint. I loved that you could choose templates, search and insert images and videos straight from the internet and add, move and change frames. After getting my head around how Prezi worked I found it so easy to use and think I would use it over PowerPoint to present a class lesson or to get students to make their own presentations. 

Benefits for learning

Prezi is a non-linear presentation tool that would be best suited for those global learners that struggle learning from or using PowerPoint. The main feature of Prezi is its zooming capabilities. The first slide shows the big picture, from which you have the ability to zoom into very small detail and out again to the big picture (Fasso 2013). The zooming in and out on information is more likely to keep students interested and willing to learn in comparison to a PowerPoint slide where half of the information is too small to read causing students to lose interest in the lesson. As I found the program difficult to use in the beginning I would suggest that only higher grades use the tool, however younger grades may have the capability of using the program as they are generally more tech savvy than us these days.     

Using it with Primary school students 

• Present the class with information on a topic at the start of a lesson, with all information readable to students at the back to the class due to the zooming ability of the program
• Students could use the program to present a research assignment with each slide zooming in on a different aspect of the research, diagrams and or examples that help explain their findings on the topic
• Weekly spelling words – have the list of words as the big picture then zoom in on each word for the students to look at, then each letter so that they can spell it out, followed by a blank slide after each word so they could think about it and have a go at spelling it without looking – this activity could be run by the teacher for the whole class, in small groups of students or taken home on a USB to practice for homework 
•   Teachers can scaffold a unit of work around their students building a Prezi on the unit of work as they go. After being introduced to the basic information by the teacher at the beginning of each lesson on a particular unit students could be provided with websites to explore to gain further knowledge on the topic. Students would then use Prezi to create a presentation of their understanding. By the end of the unit of work all students in the class would be able to present a completed presentation to their peers. From receiving information from the teacher, to researching for a further understanding and creating a presentation using the zooming feature to show the class what they thought were the most information aspects of the unit all students will have worked through Bloom’s Taxonomy starting from the bottom and working through to utilising higher order thinking skills.      

Please open and view the Prezi below that I constructed on the Animals of Africa.

Legal, safe and ethical guidelines for students when working in Prezi

·         10% of a work can be copied for educational purpose

·          All material that is not your own should be referenced appropriately. This includes text, images, video and audio 

·         Cyber bulling is not acceptable and will not be tolerated

·         All schools should have a content filter in place on students computers to prevent the risk of children being exposed to inappropriate material e.g. pornographic, violence or illegal practices   (Fasso 2013)

As internet access is required to use the Prezi tool it is essential that students understand the rules and safety issues of working online. As always the teacher should model these guidelines in their practices online to encourage safe internet practices in their students.

Glogster

Ease of use

The online scrapbooking tool Glogster is very easy to use, providing the user with a number of different page designs to select from; there is also the option of starting from scratch and creating your own page design. There are many different effects that can be added to a Glog to make it bright, interesting and interactive. A teacher and their students are all connected to each other allowing the teacher to view the progress of their students work. No one else is able to view a student’s work making it a very safe site for primary school students to be using.      

Benefits for learning

Glogster is the 21^st century version of a traditional poster used to display a student’s work. It allows the user to include text, images, videos and audio. You can select frames for your images and a player for audio seeing each student’s creativity shine and guaranteeing unique work by all students. This interactive online poster allows students to incorporate the features mentioned previously into their work making the task more appealing to students and interesting for their peers to gain knowledge from and to view different design ideas. A teacher can present what students would normally call a boring topic using the features Glogster possesses to make it more student friendly, gaining their interest and increasing participation in discussions on the topic. Overall, I think students would find using Glogster a fun and exciting activity that teachers can scaffold to maximise student learning at the same time.    

Using it with Primary school students 

·         Getting students to present their assignments in this form  

·         Teachers can present activity instructions using Glogster   

·         After learning about a topic give the students a question ‘What have you learnt from this topic?’ and get them to put everything they have learnt on a Glogster to gauge how effective your lesson was

·         Students could make a group Glogster – collaboration

 

The Glogster below is one that I made on Sun safety for primary school students.   

After exploring the group four technologies I have decided that I could incorporate bubbl.us into many classroom learning activities.

Bubbl.us

Ease of use

When doing my exploration of the group four technologies I found bubbl.us to be one of the easiest tools to use, hence making it a very appropriate tool to incorporate into the everyday teaching in a primary school classroom. Starting with a topic in the parent bubble, you simply press ctrl + enter to produce a child bubble off the parent one to start recording your ideas. You can create as many child bubbles off the parent bubble and as many sibling bubbles off each child bubble as you wish. The user’s ideas are recorded in colourful bubbles, whereby the bubbles can be colour coded according to the hierarchy of the ideas and information (Web 2.0 Teaching Tools 2009). If you are interested in using bubbl.us in your classroom, click the web link to try it out for yourself https://bubbl.us/

Benefits for learning

Bubbl.us possesses many learning benefits for students, including encouragement of group discussion, risk taking, helps to generate ideas, helps in organisation of thoughts and incorporates multiple intelligences (Web 2.0 Teaching Tools 2009). Carefully scaffolded brainstorming exercises require students to use critical thinking and creativity in order to display all of their thoughts and ideas on a topic and the connections between them. Concept mapping is a very effective tool for both visual and kinaesthetic learners. Along with adding text students can also include images to express their thoughts and ideas on a topic. The visual learners in the class benefit from associating ideas with images where as the kinaesthetic learners benefit from physically writing down or drawing their ideas (Web 2.0 Teaching Tools 2009).  Mind mapping can be used as a collaborative group activity where students can bounce ideas off each other to add to their map or as an individual activity where students can display their information in the way that best helps them learn and understand. For example some students may find a map like I have done below to be messy and may prefer to display their ideas in more of a list format.     

 Using it with Primary school students 

·        Used like a KWL activity – before learning a topic students could be asked to construct a mind map using bubbl.us to write down what they already know on the topic and some other things that would be interested in learning about. The mind map which can be saved can be revisited a few days later after the topic has been taught so students can add what they have learnt to their mind map. The teacher can view the student’s maps to identify any key ideas that are missing that should be revised to limit gaps in students learning.

 

·         Used to construct a story line e.g. including plot, theme, characters

·         Use to collect ideas before researching for an assignment  

Below is a mind map that I have made to analysis the digital technologies that have been explored this week. You can get my general findings from this map instead of reading my explanations if you only wanted a brief overview of the technologies explored.
The small image below provides an overall view of my map and the bubbl.us viewing page below that can be manoeuvred around and zoomed in and out of so that you can read all of my thoughts and ideas on PowerPoint, Prezi, Glogster and bubbl.us. It needs to be zoomed in to 100% so that all text is in its bubble.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Legal, safe and ethical guidelines for working in bubbl.us

·         Student accounts should be password protected

·         10% of a work can be copied for educational purpose

·          All material that is not your own should be referenced appropriately. This includes text, images, video and audio 

·         All schools should have a content filter in place on students computers to prevent the risk of children being exposed to inappropriate material e.g. pornographic, violence or illegal practices   (Fasso 2013)

Before incorporating bubbl.us into any classroom activities students should become familiar with the above guidelines for working online.   

References

Fasso, W. (2013). EDED20491 - ICT's for Learning Design: Study guide. Rockhampton, Qld: CQUniversity, Australia

Web 2.0 Teaching Tools.  (2009). Bubbl.us – Brainstorming, Critical thinking, Creativity. Retrieved from  http://www.web2teachingtools.com/bubbl_us.html

Week 4

Digital Technologies 2

The 21^st century is causing many problems for schools around the world as they are unable to keep up with the ever advancing and complexity of today’s technology. Being creative goes beyond being able to write a good story or report, it includes the interactive use of images and sound (A Global Imperative 2005).  The digital tools that will be focused on and explored this week include images, audio and videos. Providing these digital tools to students from a young age (primary school) will build their knowledge, allowing them to utilise more advanced technologies hence keeping up with the complexity of new technologies coming onto the market.

Images: resizing and uploading digital photos

Ease of use and implications for learners

After experiences some difficulties in the actual download of the MobaPhoto program the rest was easy. Upon opening the program you are presented with four large icons to select from. For this activity the ‘Batch photo resizer’ icon was selected. The window allowed you to view and select the photos that you wished to have resized. To resize the selected pictures it was as simple as clicking on the button ‘Resize these pictures’. Finding the resizing activity so easy myself I believe that students would be able to follow step by step instructions from a piece of paper or their teacher once or twice before they become fluent at the activity.  For less than a few minutes work you have the same pictures that will take minimal time to upload to the web.

Exploration and benefits for learning

Images can have many learning benefits, especially for the visual learners in the class. Teachers can utilise images when presenting learning material to help engage the students in the topic and to get them thinking which will most likely result in many questions making the students keen to learn. Instead to getting students to write a book review or take notes on a field trip they could instead be encouraged to draw images or take photographs to catalogue the events, which would see the students higher order thinking skills come into play. The meaning of literacy has somewhat changed in the 21^st century, from the ability to read and write to ability to ‘read’ things such as images or gestures. In today’s society we are faced with many images in our day-to-day life, making visual literacy skills vital for everyone’s learning (Thibault & Walbert 2003).    

Purposeful use with Primary school students

Teacher uses

·         Illustrate concepts

·         Provide examples of things

·         To prompt discussion of a topic

·         To encourage collaboration among students (JISC Digital Media 2013)

·         See-Think-Wonder activity

Student uses

·         Document a field – digital images

·         Provide evidence of what they have learnt by drawing an image

·         Can be a prompt when reading  

·         Take digital images of a school project to include in a report

 

The images below have been resized using the MobaPhoto program. The original image of figure 1 is 2.82 MB and the one seen here is 114 KB.

  

Figure 1: Resized image

The original image of figure 2 is 2.98 MB and the one seen below is 214 KB.

 

Figure 2: Resized image

 

Podcasting: digital audio recordings

Please feel free to listen to the Voki instead of reading about the ease of use and implications for learners

Ease of use and implications for learners

The digital audio program that I selected to trial was Voki. I found creating a Voki was easy and fun to do. Voki has many options that allows you to change the skin, hair and lip colour of the character, along with selecting a background and customizing the characters clothing. Then there are a number of different options on how you can give your character a voice, including record by phone, text to speech, with a microphone or by the upload of an audio file. When making my Voki I used the text to speech option. If you have never created a Voki I suggest you clickhere and try it. The activity of recording a podcast is a very simple task that would be both enjoyable and education when used in a class activity for students.

Exploration and benefits for learning

A podcast can be defined as a simple sound file that is shared with others when published online (Fasso 2013). There are many different digital devices that can be used to record and or listen to audio. These include directly to or from a computer or portable voice recorders e.g. MP3 or iPod devices. After making an audio recording they can be uploaded to the Internet or used as sound for a movie or PowerPoint presentation (Fasso 2013). A podcast can be viewed live on the web or downloaded and viewed at a later date. With the use of portable devices podcasts can be listened to wherever and whenever a person pleases (Podcasting in Education 2013). Podcasts can be beneficial to learning in the classroom as they allows students to share their knowledge and learning experiences (Department of Education 2013). It is simply another modern technology that students need to be aware of, have the skills to utilise, while seeing the auditory learners of the class being more engaged when a podcast activity in incorporated into a lesson. Not only can students make their own podcasts they can download or listen to many educational podcasts available on the Internet from organisations such as CSIRO and ABC (Department of Education 2013).       

Purposeful use with Primary school students

Teacher uses

·         Provide activity instructions for auditory learners

·         Communicate with parents (Podcasting in Education 2013)

·         Incorporate into assessment

Student uses

·         Listen to a podcast relevant to research e.g. Scientist from CSIRO  

·         Interview guest experts (Podcasting in Education 2013)

·         Record a review of a book or field trip

Digital Video   

Ease of use and implications for learners

The digital video program that I downloaded to make a video was Windows Movie Maker 2.6. I found this program very easy to use as the tool bar is displayed in order of the steps you need to take when producing a video. The captions displayed around the program prompted you along. For example when you have added your photos to the program a caption prompts you to “drag a clip and drop it on the storyboard below”. This easy to use program would be easily incorporated into many classroom activities to engage all student learning styles as video clips, sound and text can be utilised using this program.       

Exploration and benefits for learning

When creating a video students are required to use and gain knowledge and skills of many other technologies apart from the program they are using to construct their video. In order to collect the material to make a video student’s may need to use a digital camera or video camera, sound recording devices and other programs such as PowerPoint. The study undertaken by Kearney & Shuck (2006) provided evidence that video tasks helped students develop new literacy and teamwork skills which are relevant to this generation’s future careers and everyday life. The image below depicts Edgar Dales ‘Cone of Experience’ that he developed to demonstrate the role of media learning. The model shows that learners learn more effectively by ‘doing’, rather than by ‘reading or observing’ (Young 2004). Therefore the quality of a learning experience is improved with the use of a practical video based activity opposed to reading about or being shown by the teacher how to make a video.

Figure 3: Cone of Experience (Young 2004)

Doing activities that include verbal symbols at the point of the cone, students are using Blooms lower order thinking skills. However if students are given the task of making a video, this sees them using higher order thinking skills as they are piecing together everything they have learnt in order to demonstrate their video making skills. Overall, I think that video use would be very beneficial in a primary school classroom as it can be used as a collaborative or individual activity where students experience many different technologies and their higher order thinking skills come into play.   

Purposeful use with Primary school students

Teacher uses

·         Providing additional information to students on a topic to increase their knowledge and understanding

·         Educational videos on the topic of study

·         Providing ‘how to’ activity instructions

·         Recording student work e.g. speeches, plays

 

Student uses

·         Create a video to demonstrate what they have learnt from a resent topic that has been taught to them  

·         Students work in groups filming each other making an educational video on how to do something and present to their peers

·         Video record parts of a school trip, incorporate still shots and text to present to students parents

Below is the simple video I created using still photographs and text. It depicts the process that occurs leading to(heat detection) and doing artificial insemination in beef cattle.  

 

Legal, safe and ethical guidelines for using and creating digital videos

·         10% of a work can be copied for educational purpose

·          All material that is not your own should be referenced appropriately. This includes text, images, video and audio 

·         All schools should have a content filter in place on students computers to prevent the risk of children being exposed to inappropriate material e.g. pornographic, violence or illegal practices   (Fasso 2013)

·         Parental permission should be gained if digital video that students are in is going to be uploaded to a blog, wiki or webpage

·         Videos shown to the class by the teacher should have an appropriate rating for the age of the children viewing the footage  

Digital videos may not require students to use the internet, however if they do the above guidelines apply. It is expected that all teaching staff comply with the guidelines provided to students to set the correct example and reduce the chances of students doing something that breaches the guidelines.

References

A Global Imperative: The Report of the 21^st Century Literacy Summit. (2005), Retrieved from http://www.nmc.org/pdf/Global_Imperative.pdf

  

Department of Education.(2013). Podcasts in the Classroom. Retrieved from http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/curriculum/ict/podcasts/

Fasso, W. (2013). EDED20491 - ICT's for Learning Design: Study guide. Rockhampton, Qld: CQUniversity, Australia

 

JISC Digital Media. (2013). Practical Ways to Use Digital Images in Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/guide/practical-ways-to-use-digital-images-in-teaching-and-learning/

Kearney, M & Shuck, S. (2006).Spotlight on authentic learning: Student developed digital video projects. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 22(2), 189-208. Retrieved from http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet22/kearney1.html.

 

Podcasting in Education. (2013). Retrieved March 24, 2013, from http://podcasting-in-education.wikispaces.com/

Thibault, M & Walbert, D . (2003). Reading images: an introduction to visual literacy. Retrieved from

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/675

Young, C.( 2004). Top ten uses of video in education. Retrieved from   http://www.videoaktiv.org/index.php?id=200

 

Week 3

Digital Technologies 1

Creating a Blog

Over the last three weeks we have been introduced to many new concepts and technologies. After having some problems getting my blogger account up and running it has been pretty smooth sailing. Blogging allows us to summarise and reflect on the week’s engagement activities along with adding videos, images, web links, etc that enhance our learning. Being a distance student the biggest advantage blogging provides to me is the ability to read other peoples thoughts on the activities, which increases my knowledge on topics and to note points that I may not have considered myself. Blogs are a great tool to be utilised by university students however there is also potential for their use in the classroom with school students. In order to examine the effectiveness of blogs in the classroom a PMI (plus, minus, implications) chart will be used.         

Blog facts

·         Generally maintained by one person

·         Entries are displayed in reverse-chronological order

·         Includes text, photographs, links, videos

·         People that view the blog can leave comments (Fasso 2013)   

PMI chart – The potential use of blogs with primary school students 

Plus (all of the positives)	Minus (all of the negatives)	Implications (the potential outcomes whether positive or negative)
Motivate student input and learning	Requires internet connection – some students may not have access at home	Students can improve on their learning with the feedback of others
Receive feedback from people all over the world	Students could publish nasty or non constructive comments  about another student or their work	Improves students ability of summarising and writing reflections
Gets students to reflect on what they have learnt	Some students may not be computer literate enough to use blogger effectively, hence missing out on learning benefits	Entries are displayed in reverse-chronological order, making it easy to follow
Easy to use		If the blog is updated regularly then students can go back to something they have previously learnt to review the topic
Cost = FREE		Informal learning
Students can select a template, font type, size and colour making each blog individual		Student centred
Add links to images, videos, web pages, YouTube clips and much more		Teachers can scaffold blog activities to enable students the best learning outcomes
Able to be accessed from school, home or anywhere with internet connection		Students can view their peers blogs to seek different opinions on a topic and to increase their knowledge
Students are not going to lose their blog like they may lose their homework that is on a sheet of paper
No one else part from the author (you) can edit or delete your work

After completing the PMI chart it can be seen that there are many more positives than minuses for using blogs in the classroom. A person’s blog can be referred to as a reflective journal. In the case of school students they can share their school work with their classmates, parents and teachers seeing them end the school year with one big summary on what they have learnt and achieved thought-out the year long learning process (WestEd 2013). The feature of commenting on other people’s blogs provides teachers and peers to give constructive feedback on the students work. For parents concerned about the safety of their child and their child’s work being displayed on the wide open web, there are actually privacy settings that only allow other students in the class, parents and the class teacher to view the work (WestEd 2013). The use of blogs in the classroom sees the learning become learner centred instead of teacher centred. Most blog activities are very cleverly scaffolded by teachers to coach the students learning in the correct direction. When blog activities are taking place the teacher becomes a facilitator more so than the knowledge tree (Fasso 2013).

Studying primary school teaching, one of the ways in which I would use blogs is for the student’s homework. As we all know most children despise doing their homework, therefore by having to write their homework answers on their blog and possibly find some images that relative to their homework children would be more willing and keen to do their homework.   

Another example of using blogs in the classroom is to get students to write a story on their blog. Before writing the story a PMI chart or mind map could be used to induce the student’s critical thinking skills and get their thoughts following to provide a basis for their story. The PMI chart or mind map can up uploaded to the student’s blog as a draft to their story to allow the teacher to understand what each student is thinking. When it comes to writing the actual story students are more motivated to produce their best work if it will be published on their blog where their peers and possibly parents can view and comment on their stories. If a similar activity is provided to students throughout their schooling year the previous stories will have been archived in their blog, therefore teachers are able to go back through each activity to see how the student’s styles of writing and critical thinking have improved over the year (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill 2006).As well as teachers, students can also revisit previous work to justify, elaborate by entering their newly learnt knowledge (Fasso 2013).

Legal, safe and ethical guidelines for working in blogs

·         10% of a work can be copied for educational purpose

·          All material that is not your own should be referenced appropriately. This includes text, images, video and audio  

·         Public access should not be allowed to student blogs to prevent stranger danger

·         Password protection is a must   

·         Cyber bulling is not acceptable and will not be tolerated

·         All schools should have a content filter in place on students computers to prevent the risk of children being exposed to inappropriate material e.g. pornographic, violence or illegal practices   (Fasso 2013)

The legal, safe and ethical guidelines for working in a blog are similar to that of working in a wiki. All students must be aware of these protocols before being allowed to work online. After going through the guidelines with your students this online quiz would be a great way to test their awareness of cyber bulling, stranger danger and viruses that can occur online. 

Creating a Wiki

After conquering blogs I set out to set up my own wiki space. After setting it up I played around with a number of different tools to familiarise myself with how it works. If you visit my wiki space you can see some of the tools I explored, including adding text, pictures, YouTube videos, creating a new page and changing the look of my wiki. Wiki spaces provides you with many more tools such as adding slide shows, polls, spreadsheets and Google docs to name a few. The wider range of tools available in wiki spaces compared to blogs allows students to be more interactive and creative with their work. I found the site ‘50 ways to use wikis for a more collaborative and interactive classroom’ which had some great ways of incorporating wikis into lessons. In order to examine the effectiveness of wikis in the classroom a PMI (plus, minus, implications) chart was used.            

Wiki space facts

·         Type of website

·         Allows the author and visitors to add, edit and remove content

·         Users can contribute whenever they like from any site with internet access (Department of Education 2013)

PMI chart – The learning potential of students with the use of wikis in the classroom

Plus (all of the positives)	Minus (all of the negatives)	Implications (the potential outcomes whether positive or negative)
Increases student input	Students work can be on purpose or accidently deleted when another student is adding to the page	Can be used for group activates – everyone in the class can add their own part of a task to one page
Engaging and interactive	A group page can only be edited by one author at a time	Information can be edited, modified, added or removed from a page
Has more functions and is more interactive than blogs	Potential for bullying to occur among students using a group wiki	Students must have etiquette, be respectful and follow class rules when working in a group wiki
Students can share ideas, experience and knowledge with their peers		Functions include slideshows, polls, spreadsheets, Google docs, YouTube clips, photos and many more
Great ICT for collaboration		Brings out the creativity in students
Teachers can scaffold group activities, however most activities become student centred which is great

As seen in the PMI chart above there are many more positives than negatives for the use of wikis in the classroom. Wikis allow students to be actively involved in building their knowledge making them very effective in helping students learn content (Department of Education 2013). When allowing students internet access for their learning it is essential that the teacher explains the legal, safe and ethical requirements so that the students do not get done for plagiarism, delete other student’s hard work, add non-relevant content or use the class activity to bully other classmates (Department of Education 2013). To develop good habits in student’s online learning teachers need to set out strict protocols for participation in each wiki activity. When editing a group wiki students should be taught to check what material is already present, add their work and check everyone else’s contributions are still present after saving their own work. Material can be deleted by accident in which case students should get in the habit of saving all of their work that they put in the wiki in a word document to prevent total loss of hard work (Fasso 2013). For students to achieve effective learning through the use of wiki spaces the activity should be monitored regularly and scaffolded by the class teacher.      

Overall, I found that the group wiki on mobile phones that we participated in earlier in the course was very beneficial in introducing us to the workings of wiki spaces. It allowed us to participate in an activity while demonstrating the problems that can occur when a group wiki is not monitored by a nominated person/teacher and there has been no protocols put in place for an activity. At the end of the day our students will own their own wiki spaces with their learning experiences guided by us, their teachers.        

Creating a website

The third and final digital tool to create and analysis this week is websites. We created our own website using the program Weebly, which is free and has many great tools and features. Websites allow you to add many features including text, images powerpoints and videos (Fasso 2013). Please have a look at my website to view the tools that I have experimented with. After creating and adding to my website I used a PMI chart to analysis the effectiveness of websites in the classroom as a learning tool.   

PMI chart – The learning potential of students with the use of websites in the classroom

Plus (all of the positives)	Minus (all of the negatives)	Implications (the potential outcomes whether positive or negative)
Anyone can make a website	Expensive if free site is not used	Can insert powerpoints, images and videos (YouTube clips)
Free sites e.g. Weebly	Not interactive or collaborative for class activates	Link from one page to another
Visitors cannot alter or delete information from your site	Students cannot get instant feedback or comments on their work	Could be used for individual student assessment –e.g. creating a website on planets
Exciting for students to build their own
Many tools available when creating and adding to your site
Site can be published and updated at a later date

 
As seen in the PMI chart above, websites have some diverse features in comparison to blogs and wikis. A teacher can use a website to provide frequent updates of student’s progress in the classroom to their parents. If the parents know how their children are progressing in the classroom, the parent-student communication can be improved and parents can become more helpful with homework and general class activities. Along with student progress, teachers can provide parents with assignment due dates so that students have limited excuses for not having the work done by the due date (HubPages 2013). Informing parents by the web reduces the amount of paper schools need to use and is a more reliable transport of information in comparison to giving a child a note to give to their parents.  Websites can also be used by teachers to provide students with helpful course materials such as assignment task descriptions, links to good learning resources and their homework tasks. If homework is available online students cannot use the excuse of leaving it at home or they were not at school when it was given out (HubPages 2013). A website would also allow teachers to put their student’s grades and report cards online for their parents to view.  

Teachers can make day-to-day classroom activities available on a classroom website where students have the option to read, listen or view a diagram of the activities instructions. By providing instructions that would engage the different types of learning styles could see a better response and interest to activities.       

The other two digital tools that have been explored, blogs and wikis created collaborative learning activities with student-student interaction working together and helping each other build on their knowledge. Websites are more of an individual activity that could be used to assess student’s knowledge without the input of their classmates to provide the teacher with each individual’s progress. The teacher would help students develop their websites and then provide them with a question or statement, such as ‘Create your website based on what you have learnt this term on the different cultures around the world’. Giving the students free rein with the topic in mind would allow them to demonstrate their knowledge and creativity within the same activity.     

Looking forward to learning about the new digital tools next week!

 

References

Commonwealth of Australia. (2013). Cyber smart. Retrieved from http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/Kids/Have%20Fun/How%20cybersmart%20are%20you/Kids%20Quiz.aspx

Department of Education. (2013). Wikis in the Classroom. Retrieved from http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/curriculum/ict/wikis/

Fasso, W. (2013). EDED20491 - ICT's for Learning Design: Study guide. Rockhampton, Qld: CQUniversity, Australia

Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. (2006). Education Up Close. Retrieved from http://www.glencoe.com/sec/teachingtoday/educationupclose.phtml/47

HubPages. (2013). 10 Tips for an A+ Classroom Website. Retrieved from http://karelia.hubpages.com/hub/10-Tips-for-an-A-Plus-Classroom-Website

WestEd. (2013). Blogger in the Classroom. Retrieved from http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//educators/activities/pdfs_GTA/CribSheet.Blogger3.pdf