The Sixth week

In the Lecture

In our sixth week we began to look at the roll of a teacher in the 21st century. We began the lecture by looking at a part of speech made by Rupert Murdoch to the Foundation of Excellence in Education Summit on October 14, 2011 in San Francisco, California:

"We need to tear down an education system designed for the 19th century – and replace it with one that’s suited for the 21st...You don’t get change by plugging in computers to schools designed for the industrial age. You get it by deploying technology that re-writes the rules of the game by centering learning around the learner."

He is saying that the old system isn't going to be of much benefit to modern day students and if you are to get the most out of the students then schools and teachers must be willing to move with the times and to teach with tools that will help children to learn. Even though this may seem pretty obvious I agree with the point he is trying to make, you must cater to your students' needs and ways of learning to the course you provide, by making the education system as applicable to as many people as possible then great educational benefit will come to the future generations.

After this we looked at many ways that teachers in the past have tried to cater to use new technologies and teaching styles to help students learn. Most of these weren't of much benefit as they didn't engage with the learner, one example of this is what was called a 'teaching machine'. These machines showed a problem which the student would have to answer and then the answer would be revealed to the student. This seemed like a good thing at the time but it only taught students how to answer the problems, most of the students didn't understand the principles behind what they were learning or the benefit to real world use. If students don't understand the importance of what they are learning then most of the time it is pointless that they are even learning it.  

We looked at the idea that learners will learn better by using higher order thinking skills such as creating and evaluating than lower order thinking skills such as remembering. By immersing students into topics where they can spend a lot of time focussed on that subject, rather than having periods where they jump from subject to subject, they will become more engaged with the topic and have a much greater ability to understand what is being taught. It was discussed that the teacher has 3 main roles which are to cause greater achievement , cause greater interest and to cause greater confidence. It is important to not focus on just one of these though but you must incorporate all 3 things in order to be effective. As a teacher we need to focus on creating a good learning environment, this can be done with technology but we will need to ask ourselves some questions first:

• What does the student do?
• Who uses the technology?
• How long does it take?
• Is there collaboration?
• Is there a polished product?
• Is there a showcase or forum for the product?

If the student is the one using the technology and are getting involved, working alongside other students and creating a product that they can be proud of and display, then this will be the best way to help children learn.
Children will be able to create an understanding of the knowledge if there is authentic learning guided by cognitive tools and being undertaken is a participatory environment.

From Lecture Six
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B47FoXFf0TRzdGhGcktJOFRGcUE/edit

How to Lecture

In our how to lecture this week we looked at ways to present our how to instructions for task two. We were shown different resources for making both screen casts and screen shots. One such technology was called Jing, which is helpful for both screen casts and screen shots. It is easily downloaded and accessible easily on your screen once downloaded, it allows for video or images to be captured instantly which you are able to then use.

The Workshop

In our Workshop this week we continued on with task two. We were searching for technologies we could use. I had previously decided that I was going to base my site on a holiday to England. I began by searching social networks for travel on Google and came across a blog post from Budget Travel in it which suggested many possibilities that I could check out. These recommended sites included the likes of TripIt, Dopplr (Which no longer exists), and TripLine. I had a look at the sites that were still active and made accounts for them, I explored them and tried to play around and learn what the sites had to offer.

I found that TripLine was difficult to use and I could not understand how to use it, so I decided that this site wasn't going to be good for me to use. When I used TripIt, the features that it had looked promising for the task as I could add details for accommodation and flights and other travel related information, however it was quite difficult to allow people to have access to you details and add input, thus not making it very good for this task.
I researched TripIt in detail with a classmate, as we were both doing something travel related I let him know about the site while I was researching it, together we checked the capabilities of the social nature of the site. We discovered that to allow people to have access then email confirmation had to be given. I decided that this feature would be difficult and annoying for the person who is going to follow my instructions to do what I ask of them. I decided that this site wasn't going to be good for me and later in the week found the site I ended up using - Gogobot.

Gogobot profiles were simple to create and anyone is able to find you and provide you with detail about the location you plan to travel to. From what I have managed to discover about the site, it seems that it is limited to providing recommendations to fellow travellers, I decided however that the social nature and capabilities of this site were excellent so I ended up using this site.

My Gogobot Profile - http://www.gogobot.com/user/jarrod-trigg

Overall Thoughts

This week was beneficial for me as I discovered new tools I had never heard of before and started using them, this has broadened my horizons and I may be able to use the tools in one of my classrooms in the future. As for the lecture information, this was interesting information to learn and it really made me think about the importance of the role the teacher plays in the education of a child. If you do something wrong as a teacher and a student is not able to learn adequately then that child may lose chances in life that they may otherwise have. In understanding this, it makes me realise that teaching is probably one of the most important careers in the world and you want to make sure that you are up for the challenge when undertaking this course.  

http://pixabay.com/en/plate-school-blackboard-empty-106588/