Activity 10.3 Vendor Product Screencast
(1) Aver: AVerVision M50 Document Camera
(2) i>clicker: i>clicker
(3) Scholastic: Expert Space
Week 9
Activity 9.3 Using Learning Management Systems (LMS)
One communication tool I would use is announcements. Being a central access point, the LMS is a perfect place to post important information. It would be hard to miss, impossible to get lost, would reach all students regardless of attendance and easy to reference at any time. These are features of benefit to both the teacher and the students. Announcements posted on LMS also give the teacher the option to reduce time spent in class on announcements, which might be otherwise better utilized.
I would use assignment drop boxes as an assessment tool. This can enhance classroom time which does not have to be spent on the collecting of homework. Students don’t have to worry about last minute printer problems, and can submit at their convenience before it is due. It can help me with my tracking and organization of everyone’s assignments. I can immediately know who has missed the deadline. It can also mean I don’t have to carry a pile of papers home, as I can access them from any computer. Any name forgotten on an assignment will no longer be a problem.
A course calendar is an organization tool I would use which can display deadlines for students. Students’ use of the calendar can help in their learning of time management, a critical skill. It can help foster their taking on of responsibility for being aware of and meeting deadlines. The benefits had of using announcements are also had with the use of a course calendar. Students won’t have any worries about not knowing an important date or deadline.
Linking or embedding video is a content tool that I would use. It is another modality that augments material covered in class. It can be viewed when convenient for the student, and they have control over what parts are viewed fast or slow, or repeated. They can even view it with their parents. If I have more videos for the material than can be fit into the class time, having it on the LMS becomes a solution. Videos can also be used as teasers or openers for a lecture that students watch beforehand.
Week 6
Activity 6.3 Digital Citizenship Reflection
It is a prerequisite in the contemporary classroom for teachers to responsibly promote and model digital citizenship. When their students are young, teachers should be strong and frequent in their messaging and guidance before any bad habits have to be undone. The school is a safe and controlled environment where they can be molded, especially if they are reached at a young age. However, the first thing teachers need to remember is to lead by example; their example sends a powerful message (good or bad). Responsible modelling includes keeping a teacher’s personal life offline or securely private (e.g. not accepting Facebook friend requests from students, diligent privacy settings, keeping clean your digital footprint). Teachers should also be certain that their digital communications are always professional. Emails should be sent from a work address with a work signature and should not be sent late at night. Texting should be kept to pedagogical purposes. The teacher must never engage in any cell phone use that is disrespectful to the classroom environment, including personal texting, taking calls or game playing, which the teacher is trying to teach students not to do.
I would incorporate digital citizenship into my regular classroom instruction and activities that is ongoing and age appropriate. Instead of one-off curriculum, discussions should be peppered through the school year and tied in to other curriculum topics. I intend to be prepared for teachable moments, which can occur at any time. Case studies and scenarios are excellent discussion tools. Topics could include conversation boundaries, privacy and FOIP, digital security (e.g. anti-virus), and the ethics and laws surrounding copyright (e.g. illegal downloading, plagiarism), hacking, identity theft, pornography and gambling. Posters installed at strategic locations, such as beside the computer, can reinforce discussions and serve as timely reminders. There are numerous online resources that teachers can use, that offer a large array of videos, tip sheets and even posters. When social media is used in the classroom, I would ensure that responsible citizenship is being modelled and that all activity can be monitored to catch any behaviours requiring corrective intervention.
Week 4
Activity 4.3 Where am I now?
Philosophy of Teachnology
Because technology was rarely used when last I was in a classroom (before this semester), there are not many examples from which I can draw. But I do remember instances of very ineffective use of Power Point presentations. Much more material than could actually be covered during that class would be crammed into the slides. This gave the impression that material was being glossed over and left students left wondering what was missed. Usually I would be attempting to “get” all the material on the slides while unsuccessfully at the same time “listening” to what the teacher was saying.
One very effective use of technology in the classroom I’ve seen is the effective insertion of YouTube videos into the teacher’s discussion. These short videos were chosen either because it was a quality demonstration of a point made, presented a cited example (e.g. a cited experiment), or was to be a subject of discussion (e.g. news story), and they were inserted at just the right spots. Because of that, the videos were perfectly relevant, enhanced the rhythm of the presented material, and offered a variation for the senses (i.e. kept my attention). It is a bit of an art to master.
TPACK
Week 3
Activity 3.3 Learning and Technology Theories Reflection
Cognitivism best reflects how I learn. This reflects my own experiences in school, a combination of exposure to teaching styles (minor exposure to Constructivist and none to Connectivist practices) and of my own learning development and achievements. As a child it became clear to me that my learning style was dominantly visual. As I listened or read class material, my mind would commonly “see” the words and mentally organize them. I prefer hand written notes instead of typing notes in a word processor because I can quickly scribble arrows and organize concepts as I write. I was a much more interested student if the material wasn’t too easy such that it was boring, nor was it too difficult such that I was quickly left behind. I developed memorization habits that would involve regular breaks so that the material was chunked, a familiar theme in Cognitivism. In my studying, I would learn concepts in order, not skipping ahead until understood; however, I would keep in mind where the concept fit in the overall schema. Previously as a student, the material usually consisted of just the lectures and the textbook, instead of today’s classroom where a multitude of information sources are presented. Because of that, I was accustomed to the material being already focused and pre-processed to a higher degree.
Technology can be used by a teacher to help students learn with Cognitivism because it provides powerful tools for manipulating, organizing and presenting information.
Databases (e.g. Access) and spreadsheets (e.g. Excel) can compress knowledge into visual representations of the information. How information is organized and its layout is critical in the use of Cognitivism. Vast amounts of data can be transformed into visual graphs or organized into graphs, imbuing it with much more profound meaning. Computers have interestingly extended the reach of an “old-fashioned” teaching theory into another level.
Mind Meister is a graphic organizer that helps students learn concepts by again compressing knowledge into a schema or map.
Powerpoint and Prezi are presentation tools that can be used to display the graphic information produced by aforementioned tools. Minimization of text and use of graphics allow students to more naturally process the information simultaneously while listening to the teacher talking.
Following design principles that produce elegant and intuitive esthetics is critical in the use of these tools in Cognitivism.
Week 2
Activity 2.2 PLN
In this EDIT 202 activity, the social networking tool I chose to build my professional learning network (PLN) was Twitter. My username is @SophyYeung. I look forward to this learning experience, the varied opportunities to which I will be exposed, and the connections I might make!
Activity 2.3 Multimedia Reflection
Sophy's ePortfolio 