Week Two

Our second lecture was titled Learning to be a teacher (with technology). From the very beginning I was learning new terminology, being introduced to the term 'Pedagogy' (Ped-uh-goh-jee). I discovered that this term according to the dictionary meant 'the function or work of a teacher; teaching' or 'the art or science of teaching; education; instructional methods', or my understanding of it - 'how a teacher teaches'.

From here we were then introduced to Authentic Learning which was classified as a 'pedagogical modal'. I discovered that while, from the title it may seem like a simple concept, it was in fact quite detailed and made up of 9 elements, which I won't go into detail about but will list:

• Authentic context
• Authentic activity
• Expert performances
• Multiple perspectives
• Collaboration
• Reflection
• Articulation
• Coaching and scaffolding
• Authentic assessment

While in this lecture I realised that I had probably been taught with this sort of approach in my Primary School days. I remembered one task in particular that I did which would have used some of these aspects - particularly authentic context and authentic activity. I did this task in around year 3 or 4 and was required to make a shopping list and estimate the prices of a list of particular items, from there we had to go to the shop next door to our school and actually go and buy these items. I believe this was an authentic learning task as it had real world relevance while teaching us about estimating and working with money. This task had benefits both mathematically and economically as it also gave me understanding of the value of money in a real world environment.  

This Authentic Learning approach in my opinion seemed very thorough and beneficial to a child's education, as it had worked for me in the past I could see that it would be a useful modal to base tasks I create for my future students.

After we learnt what authentic learning was, we then discussed how it could be done in a technological environment; using tools such as websites, power point presentations and, videos to do these tasks. We were shown an example of a task where a principal had asked the students to prepare a report of how water was used in the school and ways that water could be saved. Through a process of collecting data, writing reports and presenting information, technology could be used in so many aspects of the task and could really be beneficial to how a child learns. 

In our How To lecture we were given more information on how to go about making our websites and blogs and one person was even given the chance to start theirs then in the lecture, in order to show everyone that it was not an overly difficult process. Seeing this helped even more to calm some of my fears that I had about this task. 

This unit tries to show then benefits of using technology is a learning environment, however in this lecture I saw that there is also a downside to using technology in the classroom. This came about when we were using a question sheet that updated live on to the projector at the front of the room. We were required to post questions we had about completing task one, however some people thought they were funny and were posting inappropriate comments such as 'for a good time call (insert number)'. Not only are their negatives for using technology, but technology still has its limits. While I was making this blog post I typed the word 'blogs'; ironically enough while in a blog it tells me that this word is incorrect and puts a squiggly red line underneath it. While technology is not always perfect and can be misused in the wrong hands, it can be extremely beneficial to those who want to learn.