Throughout my eLearning Journey, I have seen a wide range of Digital Tool demonstrations and also tried a lot myself. ELearning digital tools can be used to support and enhance what, how, when and where students learn. Blogs, Aggregators and Wikis are all great recourse's for communication. They can be seen and used in the classroom for interaction with other classmates and to give and receive feedback on the information presented. These tools are also easily monitored by the learning manager and is easy to see where each student is at, and when they are posting.
Concept Mapping for learning is productive to consolidate and refine information. This exercise can easily highlight and allow the students to gain understanding of the 'Big Picture' of the topic your class is focused on.
When students are given the task to present their gained knowledge to an audience, it is likely that they will choose a simple Power Point presentation. This is why it is vital for Learning Managers to promote Higher Order Thinking for the students by demonstrating a range of movies, digital acts, blogs or Wikis for Collaborative Learning. A wiki will allow the students to give productive peer feedback and assist the Learning Manager to accurately track each students involvement to the assessment.
There are many different sites and programs available for Creating a Website. Creating a website or Webquest is a great project for individual or grouped students and can focus on almost all Key Learning Areas. Websites are created about anything and everything. For example, while the class are learning about Water Waste or Dinosaurs, the Learning Manager could also model to the students how to use a program such as Weebly.com. Towards the end of term the LM could assign the students a project to use everything they have learnt on the topic and present it as a website to teach others. An example of a Webquest I have created is on my Blog - Week 2 or click on the following link: http://www.water-wise.weebly.com/
A very useful presentation tool used by even the highest payed jobs is PowerPoint.
PowerPoint can be used simply to present graphs, images, test etc. The program can also get more complex, for example creating a question and answer game which makes sounds and uses hyperlinks to navigate the user to different pages. This is explained further in my Blog - Week 3.
Another great recourse to be considered in the classroom is Prezi.com. This website provides users to not only view movies and presentations that people have created on the site but also make their own. Basic step-by-step instructions guides the user to put everything together and provides new ideas for aspects to include, for example grouping and layering. Prezi.com would be great to use in classrooms from grades 4 and up, depending on the students abilities.
Learning Management Systems (LMS) is a software application for the tracking, documentation and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, eLearning programs and training content. LMS is used in the classroom to manage students subjects and exchanging information between each other. LMS's are more designed for the upper schooling such as high school and university, for example Moodle.
A focus for each LM is to meet our students individual learning needs and to develop students higher order skills and creativity. Images will assist most visual learners to connect and find relevance to a topic.
The Pedagogy of teaching with images is vital in eLearning as the rules are very different and often strict. Students enjoy copy, pasting, saving and hyperlinking images to their projects or activities, however it is important they are aware of copy-right and how to do so legally. I have explained further about great sites to access a range of free images and the rules of copy-right in my Blog - Week 4.
Podcasts are a series of digital media files which can include audio or video. These files are often downloaded from the web using a program, most popular being iTunes. Due to the rising popularity of the iPod, these days almost every students no matter what grade owns an iPod or evidently can use one. Because of this, it is vital that Learning Managers incorporate this recourse into the classroom and extend their knowledge. As I have explained in my Blog - Week 4, Podcasting is a great, legal recourse for downloading certain media files such as, documentaries which can be a great recourse for students and can cover almost all topics of discussion. Keeping 'up-to-date' with these programs is vital and will assist in our students to become Life Long Learners.
Digital Video is the type of videos we record and view most commonly today. It is important to mention to students that it was not always so easy to record and broadcast videos ten or more years ago. Once upon a time when you wanted to record a video, it involved inserting a large tape into a camcorder and not having many options when it came to adapting the finished product. This was called an analogue video.
Digital Videos allow the user options and is as easy as recording then uploading to a PC, with a connection cord, blu-tooth, USB or SD card etc. From there, we can personalise the video in programs such as Movie Maker and upload to the internet using the most popular site http://www.youtube.com/ , to name just one.
Broadcasting live video using WebCam is also possible with a website called Skype, and can be great for students to talk to, for example a soldier in Iraq.
When giving projects or assessments to students, it is vital to develop their Higher Order Thinking skills and creativity. The LM can scaffold this for the class by giving them a range of ideas, for example different and fun was of presenting. This is where a LM can introduce Animations and Simulations. I have given a great example of a Simulation using the website Voki.com in my Blog - Week 5. After viewing my example, it is easy to see that the LM would have gained the attention and interest of the whole class, which is a great way to start.
When presenting assignments of different information, it is great for students to know how to add an Animation. These can be added to PowerPoint's, word documents and hyperlinked to wikis and blogs. This is mentioned again in my Blog - Week 3.
The potential it gives students, is that not only should they take pride in the work they have researched but also in the presentation.
By far, the largest search engine used in the world is Google.com. They provide searches for many different categories such as web, images, maps, video, earth etc. Google Earth is an excellent recourse to be used in schools. It provides access to 3D images as if you were standing there and allows you 360 degree vision just about any where on earth.
Learning Managers can use this for a great range of SOSE activities for example, looking at how busy and commercialised the main street of Brisbane or Sydney is compared to New York or Tokyo. This will extend and support students who find it difficult to imagine how it looks from only verbal explanation.
Google Maps is an easy to use program which can show as much or as little details as you want. The program is great to use for SOSE, English and also Maths skills. They days where every student had to purchase a full colour Atlas at the start of the year is over. Students get much more enjoyment from hands on, interactive maps which also provides the option to zoom, show marks where different places are and calculate time and distance from one location to the next.
It is vital for students to become familiar with digital maps and how to navigate around and work them, as the days of a large 1metre by 1metre paper map are going out and 'Nav Mans' are coming in. Students will adopt a life-long learning approach to these new Digital Tools which they can also use to then teach others.
References:
Department of Education. (2010). Resourcing the Curriculum: Podcasts in the Classroom.
Retrieved on August 20th 2010 from:
http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/curriculum/ict/podcasts/
Queensland Departmant of Education and Training. (2004). Productive Pedagogies.
Retrieved on August 23rd 2010 from:
http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics/html/pedagogies/pedagog.html
Prenskey, M. (2005) Engage me or enrage me: what today's learners demand.
Retrieved from CQUniversity moodle, FaHe11001 Managing E-learning,
http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm
Waterhouse, S. (2005). The Power of eLearning: the essential guide for teaching in the digital age. Boston: Pearson Education.
Appendix: Comment Links
Please click on the following links to view my comments:
http://shannonselearningjourney.blogspot.com/2010/08/blog-post.html
http://belindaselearningjourney.blogspot.com/2010/08/vokis.html
No comments:
Post a Comment