question 1

The components of an interesting blog are varied. I like to see:

Pictures (above) of the things being talked about, as visual cues are a great associative tool. They can be personal events, or they can be mind mapping tools that trigger wider associations:

Games (below) are also an interesting blog item, as they create a feeling of fun and enjoyment, and can offer an insight into the blogger.

Movie (below) inserts are interesting, as they can be personal or just on topics of interest, and audio visual triggers are a strong aspect of todays society.

These are an important component of blogs because they utalise the richness of blog technology. They help to create a fun and multidimensional personality, that we create of our inner selves and share with others. If we do not take advantage of these tools, then we are doing little more that writing on digital paper.

In an educational envirnment they create new and multilayered ways of communicating with students in an envirnment they can connect with and understand. But if we want them to engage in the blog, it simply has to be as interesting as we can make it, which means appealing to the view/student in as many ways as possible.

Club Penguin Make friends and play games in wonderland that is Club Penguin.

Play this free game now!!

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question 2

ON: DIGITAL NATIVES, DIGITAL IMMIGRANTS

MARC PRENSKY
If children’s brains have indeed changed, old teaching methods are not only boring, but useless.
How to learn what is relevant takes over from what to learn. Analysis, logic and filtering become the learning essentials as information bombards the student from multiple sources. “Legacy content” is as essential to this kind of learning experience as it has been to older methods of teaching. What is required is new ways to experience this type of content, and for this we need to develop teacher understanding and usability of “Future content” learning methods.

This is fundamentally uncomfortable for the “Digital immigrant”, but essential if they are to remain relevant in today’s teaching environment. Knowing how today’s students learn is an essential part of today’s teaching. Being a “Digital Native” may seem chaotic to the “Digital Immigrant”, but adapting is essential if teaching is going to be relevant in today’s society. If games are today’s learning, then teacher’s need to learn to have fun with it.

question 3

On line learning is an essential part of teaching today. For the new "digital native" students old sage on the stage methods are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Students can access far more information than most of their teachers will ever be able to get through. Our job becomes one of showing them how to critically examine what they are recieving from their multimedia environment.

Multimedia has it's place in so many teaching theories: It creates and even broader zone or proximal development for Vygotsky: It is a great scaffolding technique, especially with games and webquests: It is connectivist in that it connects learning with students cultural understanding, language and identiy: It can cater for more forms of intellegence like audio/visual, mathematical/logical, and kinesthitics. And is is what today's student relates to.

If we do not use ICT in schools, then schools will become irrelevant for many of today's students. This will mean that they will miss out on the other important aspects of school, such as learning about socialisation, codes of conduct, how to relate to the broader world, and what our past can teach us.

ON: CULTURAL CHANGE NEEDED TO EXPLOIT ICT IN SCHOOLS
DR ALISON ELLIOTT, INFORMATION AGE

Old “sage on the stage” models of teacher are no longer relevant to today’s students. They are accustomed to gaining information for themselves, and from many different sources. Teachers are no longer the knowledge source, but rather the knowledge filter. How to sift, verify, and analyse the incredible amount of knowledge at their fingertips, becomes essential for today’s student. Teacher’s need to understand how these sources work so that they can teach students how to verify what is relevant to their subject. This means an entire new learning experience for teachers.

Teacher’s need to be in at the planning and development stages of all ICT implementation, so that they thoroughly know what they are teaching and how to adapt these teaching models as new ICT develops. Set information must give way to fluid learning for both teacher and student.
Like any new learning, there is fear. Teachers need to know that they will be given the time, not only for training, but also for exploring the world of ICT as an ongoing experience. It has to be a regular, integrated part of teacher work scheduling, they cannot just be expected to take a personal interest, or do it all in their own time.

question 4

Lev Vygotsky

& Hyprlinks

Vygotsky saw development as an ongoing process that was in and of the child’s personal, social and cultural environment. Vygotsky saw development as a contrast between what is already known, and what a learner has the potential to know through collaboration with peers and instructors. He called this “The Zone of Proximal Development”

Learning levels should be structured at just above the individual level of the students to a group possible, the level of developmental process rather than the stage of development attained, with the teacher there to facilitate learning.

In the late 1970’s I went to Annandale Public (primary). They had 3 experimental classes that were k-6 inclusive. In these 3 classes there were circular styled desks and any group project would have children from all the different age groups. This was to encourage an exchange of learning between the children. The younger ones where guided, while the older learned to teach as well as learn, with the teacher overseeing the whole. It was effective as a learning environment, and allowed for greater socialisation between the age groups in the playground as well as the class room. The teacher was also able to structure learning on different levels, rather than on pre-set ideas on developmental stages.

With the continual development of ICT the range of collaboration is now so much greater: “…collaboration and peer instruction was once only possible in shared physical space, learning relationships can now be formed from distances through cyberspace…”

Hyperlinks offer an effective and easy way to access information from a global population, not just a classroom. This effectively broadens the "Zone of Proximal development" out into a world of proximal development. The important issue will be to be able to seperate the good infulences from the bad - but this has always been the stuggle humans have faced in any situation.

References:

Elizabeth M. Riddle, Nada Dabbagh, Lev Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory 3/8/99 https://portal.nd.edu.au/http:/ps.nd.edu.au/portal/dt?JSPTabContainer.setSelected=NDmyUnitsTabPanelContainer&last=false

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vygotsky

Jean Piaget

Pictures:

Piaget observed that children and adults thought and reacted differently to stimuli. He developed the idea that knowledge is constructed sequentially from base motor skill, to abstract thought, through the interaction between heredity and environment. He classified these stages as four distinct developmental progressions, the first three of which, are egocentric:

The Sensorimotor Period (birth to 2 years): A child build on base motor reflexes, to grasp “...more sophisticated procedures,” through physical interaction with the immediate environment.

Preoperational Thought (2 to 6/7 years): A child “can consider more than one perspective simultaneously.” Can understand concrete thought, but not abstract.

Concrete Operations (6/7 to 11/12 years): “... can use these representational skills only to view the world from their own perspective.”

Formal Operations (11/12 to adult): “… are capable of thinking logically and abstractly. They can also reason theoretically. Piaget considered this the ultimate stage of development,”

However more recent research show that the brain continues to develop through teenage years, at which time it also begins to gain emotional intelligence. Although these four stages are useful tool in recognising that there is no point in trying to make a learner over reach their developmental capability, it is a limited. Multiple intelligence and Digital Native theories suggests that different types of learning will affect the levels of cognitive maturity in different learners, and could make these cognitive periods less defined, and possibly eventually in need of redefining.

Using pictures with text it is an effective way for children to learn to contextualise the written words. For younger children in the early development stages, pictures help to give basic names to objects. As their development progresses, the pictues become iconic representations of concepts, like justices being pictured as blind.

References:

Pam Silverthorn, “Jean Piaget’s Theory of Development”, EDIT 704, Summer 1999
https://portal.nd.edu.au/http:/ps.nd.edu.au/portal/dt?JSPTabContainer.setSelected=NDmyUnitsTabPanelContainer&last=false

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_intelligence

BBC UK TV: Science and Nature: Human Body and Mind http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/emotions/teenagers/rebellion.shtml

Gardner, H. A Multiplicity of Intelligences: A Tribute to Professor Luigi Vognolo, 1998/2004. https://portal.nd.edu.au/http:/blackboard.nd.edu.au/courses/1/S-ED4236/content/_66601_1/Gardner_MI.pdf

Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

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Preview MI After Twenty Years
Howard Gardner and video links:

“Multiple” intelligences should not be in and of itself by an educational goal. Educational goals should reflect ones own values, and these can never come simply or directly from a scientific theory. Once one states one’s educational goals, however, then the putative existence of our multiple intelligence can be very helpful.

If we know what we wanting to teach, then knowing that learning occurs in many different way and on different levels will help us to develop teaching methods that will allow us to teach a specific subject/idea more effectively. By using multiple teaching methods, we can cater to multiple intelligences, getting our specific point across to a greater range of students. It effectively levels the playing field as more individuals have access to academic knowledge through multidimensional instruction.

Multimedia and Multiple Intelligences
By Shirley Veenema and Howard Gardner

“According to multiple intelligences theory, not only do all individuals posses numerous mental representations and intellectual languages, but individuals also differ from one another in the forms of these representation, their relative strengths, and the ways in which (and ease with which) these representations can be changed.”

Also the way an individual learns is set very early in that individual’s cognitive development and trying to change the way an individual learns is, at best, very hard, and probably a waste of learning time. With this in mind, to be optimally successful as teachers we need to understand our student’s individual cognitive approaches and try to use multidimensional teaching methods to cover as many expressions of learning for optimal and more universal achievement.

Using video links offers a much grater variety of learning input, it gives audio/visual cues, as well as intrapersonal and interpersonal learning oportunities. In this audio/visual age it is one of the most significant ways of increasing students learning environments and capabilities

“The idea that there exists a singular perspective is surprisingly hard to change.” As the field of “experts” increases exponentially with ongoing exposure to ICT, the role of the teacher as a guide becomes crucial. Teaching of filtration and analysis, takes over from the dispensing of information as the primary teaching mode.

John Hattie: Games

Club Penguin Make friends and play games in wonderland that is Club Penguin.

Play this free game now!!

Games are a great educational tool.


This particular game is quite good for young children, my 7 year old loves it. It teaches children a number of real life concepts: they can chose a character and inhabit their space; they must do specific "jobs" to earn money to buy goods; they must save what they earn to afford the more expensive items in the catelogues; they must feed and care for their pets, or they run away! ; they can meet their friends in specific meeting places. The kids get together and discuss at school where they are up to and how to achieve tasks.

According to Hattie, teachers are able to exert a 30% influence on their student’s ability learning (students themselves = 50%). In this light, a teacher’s ability to teach effectively is extremely important for a student’s progressive development. Hattie found expert teachers showed “…16 prototypic attributes of expertise.”

These 16 attributes distilled into “Three dimensions”: Expert teachers set challenges. By setting challenges for my students I can engage them in the learning experience. This allows students to bring their own unique perspective to the challenge, and shows respect for the student’s ability to learn. I would foster an environment of communication so that opportunities and flexibility can be developed as instruments of deeper learning skills, rather than detailed information regurgitation.

Expert teachers continually contextualise their lessons for deep representation. According to Fabio’s research web based mapping techniques facilitate interactions and exchange of student/teacher experiences to make information relevant to the syllabus and the student’s deeper understanding.

Expert teachers focus on problem solving, both in the immediate situation and in the future. Through monitoring outcomes and giving/gaining [feedback] they are able to recognise current and potential areas of difficulty in learning and behaviour, in classes and individuals. As a teacher I need to continually ask what I can do so they achieve the desired educational outcome.

Structured learning games are a great way to contextualise learning in a way that is easily accessible to students, and it is an effective method of monitoring progress and gaining and giving feedback. By monitoring the students progression through each stage of the game, it is possible to see how, why and when they achieve certain goals. It also allows the student immediate feedback - they will not progress to the next level and the next set of tasks until they have mastered the current level. It is also an ideal form of scaffolding, as it requires self-motivated learning and mastery to achieve the next learning goal.

References:

Hattie, J. “Teaches Make a Difference: What is the research evidence?” Australian Council for Education research Annual Conference on: Building Teacher Quality, Distinguishing Expert Teachers from Novices and Experienced Teachers University of Auckland, October 2003.
www.acer.edu.au/workshops/documents/HattieSlides.pdf

Fabio, J. Facilitating Deep Learning in the Adult Online Learner, 2005.
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EDU05072B.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feedback