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 21st 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
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
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