ICT Integration

As part of Curriculum and Methodology course in university, we were required to post a discussion every week to answer the provided question. The purpose of this task wass to explore the ways in which we can effectively use ICT to support learning, assessment, teaching and the management of information and communications. The questions and required answers are posted here.

Week 1

Question 1:How would you use Edmodo in your classroom?

Edmodo is a premier social media and learning platform for the staffs and students. It is also known as "Facebook for school" where it can turn out as one of the best means of teacher-student interaction. It helps the class to stay connected at anytime through posting announcements, sending messages and replying to the notes. There are unlimited ways to apply Edmodo when it comes to teaching our students. In this post, I would like to suggest 2 ways of utilising Edmodo in our classroom.

1. With lots of international background students studying in schools these days, Edmodo can be used as an opportunity to exchange their culture. We can suggest the students to create groups to study different aspects of, for example, Korean culture. Furthermore students could focus on one aspect and, as an exchange, teach other students about it.

2. Edmodo can also be used to communicate with parents. Not only interacting with the students, but we can keep parents up-to-date on what is happening in the classroom through Edmodo. By sending a message to students and parents in the classroom every week, we can update achievements and events of our class. This would possibly provide a way for the parents to contact us for one-on-one counseling or discussion.

ICT Integration Week 2 Learning Platforms

Week 2

Question 1: Do we have a Digital Duty of Care?

Question 2: Content Curation versus Creation?

Question 3: Should the curriculum be limited to the walls of the classroom?

1. Today we are connected as never before, tomorrow even more, hence 'duty of care' which permeate our relationships may benefit all what are interconnected. Among the duty of care in school we have, providing a safe environment for students and staff. Where with the rapid increase of digital technologies, teachers might be considered to have a duty of care extending beyond the child's time at school. Schools and teachers need to be clear about where their duty of care in cyber bullying begins and ends. Furthermore as educators, we need to learn about online world and cyber bullying and must amend and update policies to take cyber bullying into account.

2. Content creation can be described as the process of writing, recording, or publishing your own materials for your audience. Where 'Content curation' is the process of gathering and collecting contents from previously written materials and sharing it with others. As we are moving towards knowledge collection and social constructivist learning styles, yes, we do need to shift our lessons to include more content curation. For teachers, it is great to curate learning resources for students. However, isn't it the students that we are expecting to do this deeper thinking and reach enduring understandings? So why not allow the students to be the curators? The role of adequate content curation can help the students to construct knowledge. As teachers, we can present the problem, design the learning plan, ask essential questions and then let the students to do the learning. This step may work out as a critical process of assuring that students take ownership of their learning. Furthermore, students may develop themselves with a crucial 21st century skill, information literacy.

3. Australian school's achieving enhanced education outcomes is liked to the pace of digital education uptake. As investment in digital education is helping the students to learn through powerful tools, schools should be encouraged to see how learning and teaching can be improved through such tools. The curriculum should not be limited only to the classroom wall. Instead, with the adequate use of technology, learning can be extended beyond the school to encompass the parents and home. In order to maximise the benefits from digital education, school learning and teaching plans need to reflect the nature of digital learning and reach out to broader community and relevant experts. Hence by working with experts, students and teachers will be able to clearly relate their learning to their community and become more motivated and engaged.

https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/deag_final_report.pdf

Week 3

Question 1: Presentation from the past?

Question 2: Presentation in the present?

Question 3: Presentation in the future?

1. Back in my high school, technology was not an essential part of our lesson. Not many teachers were familiar to the technology and we were mostly taught by the written materials such as work sheets. When it came to the use of technology in the classroom level, the most frequently involved presentation tool was Microsoft Office PowerPoint. I do think PowerPoint is a powerful presentation tool and do not mean to critise it. However, it does put me in inconvenience that they could have tried using different presentation tools.

2. Presentation is all about being prepared and organised for it, confident with what I am going to present and keeping the audience interested. To make my lectures more dynamic, I will first captivate students from the beginning through starting each lesson with something short and interesting to settle the students and engage them with the lesson. Organisation is another critical part of the presentation. Spending time thinking about the contents of the lecture can provide me with the opportunity to evaluate the information that needs to be included. I will provide more question time. An interactive lecture includes and encourages student participation. By involving students through questioning, it will maintain their attention as well as re-vising the content at the end. Furthermore, I will actively involve technology into my presentation. Not only focused on just PowerPoint, but utilising adequate educational videos, and virtual learning environments such as Moodle.

3. With many presentation tools introduce, I would like to talk about PollEverywhere and how it can be used in the classroom. PollEverywhere is an online service which allows teachers to ask their students a question. It is a very effective learning tool which provides access for any students to respond at anytime/where. Teachers can use PoolEverywhere to find out where students stand in regards to the subject matter or important issues. In addition to above, PollEverywhere supports students to interact with their teachers about timely or sensitive topics. Such as, how the students think about their lessons, how they are finding the upcoming and important classroom decision and what they do not understand about what has been taught. PollEverywhere can also help the teachers to structure effective classroom. It does not only benefit the students, but also the teachers by helping them to keep track of student progress, checking their students' understanding after a difficult lesson and assigning the students with homework questions.

Week 4

Question 1: Should ICT be considered as important as the 3 R's?

Question 2: Program Review

Question 3: Shift in Pedagogy?

1. Should ICT be considered as important as the 3 R's?

When we were young, teachers often focused on the "Three Rs": reading, writing and arithmetic. These three basics were the mainstay of the education. However as technology progresses, more schools are undermining such basic principles and focus on extending to further learning. Education has always gone beyond the "Three R's". However, education will need to take account of "Three R's" as they will act as tools with which a student can achieve more knowledge in any subject. If a student can read and write, he/she will be able to plan and complete a research project as well as learning to type. If a student can understand the basics of arithmetic, he/she can also learn to program complex algorithms or study science.

The use of ICT is changing teaching in several ways. With ICT, teachers can create their own material and thereby have more control over the material used in their classroom rather than what they had in the past. Unlike some scholars claiming that ICT is producing more deskilled teachers, it seems that technology is requiring teachers to be more creative in customising their own material. It is not that we are getting away from teaching the basics, it is that ICT is becoming important as the technology progresses.

2. Program Review

The program I am going to review is Mathletics. It is an online math practice system for grade K-12. It is divided into variety of sections including: Full Curriculum, Live Mathletics, games, Rainforest Maths, printable resources, video tutorials, and a reporting system.

To briefly comment on few sections, the section "Full Curriculum" contains all topics for a given school year and examples of how problems are to be solved. Students can answer 10 questions to receive a gold bar in that topic. This can work out as an adequate revise section for students after completing each topics. In "Live Mathematics" section, students can race with arithmetic questions against other students around the world. This can provide a good opportunity for the students to familiarise themselves with arithmetics.

Overall, Mathletics is an useful math website, offering variety of contents. It is possible for students to practice math from books and worksheets alone, but a technological environment like Matheltics can motivate students to practice and learn. It will further benefit the students through developing a positive attitude and self-confidence towards math and in their math skills, respectively. Not only it benefits the students, but it will allow the teachers to break the 'common' teaching routine of doing the drills and checking simple calculation problems.

3. Shift in Pedagogy?

In Industrial Age societies, people required more abstract kinds of knowledge, 'know what. Teachers were asked to deliver this kind of knowledge to the young, and mass education began. In the Industrial Age, teachers packaged 'know what' knowledge into a controlled, logical, and cumulative sequence. Students were required to receive this knowledge all together, in the same order, at the same pace.

However, Information Age people are different from Industrial Age. They also need 'know what' kinds of knowledge but also required more than this, which is 'know how' kinds of knowledge. Today's teachers are set to train students who are able to locate, assess, and represent new information quickly. They will need to communicate and work productively in collaboration with others. They must be adaptable, innovative, creative, and need to be to think and learn for themselves, often without the help from external authorities. To grow such adequate learners for Information Age, teachers are required a new mindset and role. This cannot be done simply by adding these skills into the existing curriculum. Hence yes, teacher's role has changed and brought a shift in paradigm since the Industrial Age.

Week 5

Question 1: Collaboration WITHOUT technology?

Question 2: Collaboration WITH technology?

Question 3: Feedback?

1. Collaboration WITHOUT technology?

Collaborative learning is based on the view that knowledge is a social construct. It is has four basic principles: Primary focus of instruction is the learner or the student, Working in groups is an important mode of learning, interaction is the primary importance, and adequate approaches should be incorporated to develop solutions to real-world problems. An example of collaborative learning could be the case study. First, teachers need to create four to five case studies of similar difficulties. Then divide the classroom into groups of four or five to work through and analyse their case study. Students will be provided with an adequate time to finish their cases. Whilst having students on the cases, teachers could walk around and address any questions. To end with, call on groups randomly and have the students to share their analysis and ideas.

2. Collaboration WITH technology?

New technologies have changed teaching and learning in a number of ways-from graphing calculators to online lesson and simulated dissections. Educational technologies can help students to access contents in new and often in exciting ways. Supportive technology is often described as interactive technology. It engages children and gives them exciting opportunities to learn. Mobile is one of the supportive technologies used in the classroom. Using Poll and students' cell phones, teachers can track instant answers from all of their students. For example, teacher can use Poll and cell phone to summarise a literature covered in the classroom. He/she can text the short summary and link it on the smart board. Also, students can instantly answer or make comments on those summaries through Poll and sending it to the smart board screen.

3. Feedback?

One thing which I personally think could be improved is engagement. The podcasts that we are currently watching does not really seem to have much of audience engaging activities. Listeners are more likely to be engaged if they can gain valuable knowledge from well-respected people. For next year's podcasts, maybe try finding the right guests for some of the lectures. Also to involve the listeners, it is a good idea to solicit questions from them with a simple survey form.

Week 6

Question 1: Countries of the world challenge?

Question 2: Learning objects?

Question 3: Gamification?

Question 1: Countries of the world challenge? The game seems as an useful resource for the students to practice their knowledge on countries of the world. Students will be able to learn the names of the countries and where they are located. If there is a room for improvement, it would be better to provide more time to finish the game. I have played it for 10 times and for every attempt, I was able to improve from the previous result.

Question 2: Learning objects? The website I chose was Scootle and the learning object from the website is called 'Trig degrees:cosine to 360'. This resource demonstrates how cosine is defined in the unit circle. Teachers can connect this definition with the right-angled triangle definition which is commonly used in right-angled triangle trigonometry. This learning object is one in a series of nine objects. Three objects in the series are also packaged as a combined learning object. Students will learn the basic definition of cosine in the unit circle, and link this to solve right-angled triangle trigonometry.

Question 3: Gamification? Teachers can use a variety of extra incentives to keep the classroom interested. Students can play games with: group or team competition, small prizes depending on age (stickers, stamps, reward points etc), using dice to determine amount of points, use fake money or play cards as point system (every time a student answers correctly he/she receives a card or note). Students could be handed a sticky ball to throw at vocabulary words or grammar structures that are written on the board. Then they could be asked to use those to build sentences. Or alternatively they could answer a question and throw at a target on the board to win points. Small whiteboards can be used in spelling competitions and be sent around in the team.