I have just set up a basic website using Weebly. This is all very new to me, but I must say I am pleasantly surprised at how quick and easy the process was.
Thursday, 15 March 2012
Wicked Wikis
I recently
posted about blogging and the potential applications of blogs in the teaching
context.
Wikis are
another example of a digital technology suitable for educational use, and are
essentially basic websites that can be edited by users. This is an important
difference between wikis and blogs, although there are a number of other
conceptual) and technical differences.
In contrast
to a blog, which essentially facilitates chronological reflection by a single
user (with comments able to be provided by others), wikis are much more collaborative
and open-ended. They are conceptually very simple, a ‘blank page’ which can be
viewed, edited and overwritten by users. This is an important consideration for
both teachers and the students using the wiki. A SWOT analysis of wikis is
provided below.
<><><><><>
<><><><><>
<><><><><>
Strengths
|
Weaknesses
|
Opportunities
|
Threats
|
· Constructivist tool that encourages learning through
social interaction.
· Wikis facilitate collaboration and group interaction more
effectively than blogs.
· Teachers and students a great deal of flexibility in how
the wiki ‘looks and feels’.
· Wikis allow you to easily link between different pages on
the same wiki, as well as to external content (websites, youtube videos
etc.).
· Entries can be tracked and date stamped.
· Create positive peer pressure.
· The level of complexity in a wiki can be tailored to
students’ age level.
|
· Although wikis allow group interaction, they do not allow
authors to change content concurrently.
· The multi-user nature of wikis means that a set of rules
are necessary to manage responsible use.
|
· Huge range of applications – teachers can creatively adapt
wikis to serve a range of purposes.
· Using wikis provides teachers with an opportunity to
integrate behaviours across different contexts (e.g. a set of rules about
rights, responsibilities, respect, netiquette etc. may be relevant to the
classroom, wiki use, blogging and other social medias that are used at home).
· Can provide feedback/insight for teachers about student
learning and the effectiveness of their own teaching methods.
|
·
Risk that students accidentally delete or write over
others’ work.
· Parents/families may not embrace the use of wikis at home
for a variety of reasons.
·
Students have differing levels of technological competency
and attitudes towards using technology.
|
In order to
get my head around the technical affordances of a wiki site, I experimented
with my own wiki by setting up a ‘fake’ learning activity for a group of students.
The very
basic activity I created on my wiki would allow students to participate in a
group debate. I created a number of pages on my wiki to support this online
activity, including a main Debating Chamber and a number of debate-related
pages, each of which elaborated on the core activity in some way (i.e. Debating
Rules and student Debating Glossary). The Debating Chamber introduced the
concept of debating and defined the topic (“it is better to read a book than
see a movie”). Similar to the Mobile Phones wiki activity in Week 2, the
activity culminated in students entering their debating
arguments/rebuttals into a table. The Debating Chamber contained links to the
other related pages within my wiki. I was also able to add a hyperlink to
another website which features a video of real primary students engaged in a
debating competition. The wiki activity contained an embedded youtube animation
introducing the debating process.
As a (very)
novice wiki user, once I familiarised myself with the wiki functions, I was
able to set up this activity relatively easily. I could also have provided
links to appropriate sites for research, uploaded various images and created
pages for students to prepare their debating material or discuss approaches. The
debating activity could have been further scaffolded by use of a thinking tool
like de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.
Given the
success I had in setting up this basic wiki activity, I can see the potential
for incorporating wikis into learning. A wiki would be a fantastic epicentre
for a class, serving as an information hub, communication resource and platform
for educational exercises and extension work. Wikis provide an easy way for
students, parents and teachers to communicate. There are a huge number of educational
resources and wiki examples available online.
Wikis can
be tailored for different learning types and to help students move from lower
to higher order thinking, according to Bloom’s taxonomy. As an example, wikis
can support the following types of activities:
- Knowledge – answer recall questions based on a text, remember the wiki rules, define relevant terminology in a glossary;
- Comprehension – understand grammatical/semantic rules for a correction competition;
- Application – modify the end of a choose-your-own-adventure story, solve collaborative maths tasks, group authoring;
- Analysis – scaffolded PMI activities to compare and contrast;
- Synthesis – compile a new class textbook; and
- Evaluation – critique a text, participate in a class debating activity and research projects.
Something
that I came across this week in the course of my research into wikis was the
'flipped classroom’.
The idea is that teachers create a digital library of
learning resources which are used in place of traditional lecture style
classroom teaching. Classroom time is instead used for active learning and
class collaboration (hence traditional school learning and homework are
‘flipped’). Wikis would be an ideal tool for use in this context.
Audrey Watters,
in her Hack Education blog,
describes the work of Reich and suggests that although wikis are designed to
facilitate collaboration, they are not frequently used in this way. As with any ICT tool, I think it’s critical
that the use of wikis in the classroom is accompanied by clear learning goals
as well as technical and pedagogical competency.
Monday, 12 March 2012
A Blog about Blogging...
With (limited) experience now under my belt, this is essentially a reflection about blogs and educational blogging. I should begin by indicating that by educational blogging, I am really referring to blogging that is scaffolded by a teacher with the aim of supporting/enhancing classroom learning. Clearly blogging and a host of other social media activities can also occur outside of the classroom and without any involvement by teachers.
To facilitate this reflection, I have started by completing a Plus, Minus, Interesting (PMI) thinking routine.
<><><><><> <>
Plus
|
Minus
|
Interesting/Implications
|
|
|
|
As the practice of educational blogging becomes more popular, a wide range of practical examples are freely available online.
I like the idea presented by Downes (2004) of separating blogs into different 'spaces' (e.g. public, personal reflections able to be shared and private spaces to facilitate teacher feedback).
The phenomenon of instant online publishing and feedback not only takes the focus off the teacher as the 'expert', but also provides avenues for feedback/assessment additional to traditional teacher feedback. Through online comments and functions such as 'likes' and 'dislikes', students are provided with self-assessment opportunities provided by their own community of learners.
Applications of blogs are numerous and are only really limited by the imagination of teachers. In the context of my own teaching practice, I see blogs as offering advantages in the following key areas:
- Tool for information exchange between the teacher and parents/families/school communities (e.g. through a classroom blog which pages for calendar, information/annoucements for parents, class rules, homework - http://mrbaldock.edublogs.org/).
- Tool for information exchange between the teacher and students (e.g. relevant links, assignment information, class rules, homework, class news, reminders, extension exercises).
- Tool for information exchange within classes/areas of the school. This link provides an example of a library blog, which is relevant to all students at the school.
- Tool for archiving and publishing student work (http://tlpsart.edublogs.org/).
- Tool for scaffolded individual/group reflection and collaboration within a class or wider online networks.
- Assignment construction point (e.g. 'expert jigsaw).
The below video provides a great summary of the benefits of blogging in the teaching context.
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
Reflection on Wiki Activities
Image courtesy of CDA (2012)
As
part of the engagement component of the coursework for EDED20491 this week, I participated
in an activity on the campus wiki. This built on last week's introductory activity in which I added my blog and wiki hyperlinks to the Blog and Wiki URL's wiki.
This week's activity involved the EDED20491 cohort
being divided into four groups and making contributions via an online wiki
about the topic “mobile phones – should they be used in the classroom?”. The
wiki activity required learners to consider and respond to this topic using de
Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’ (Kurwongbah State School, undated).
This
reflection examines a range of learning theories to determine which are most
relevant to the design of this activity. I also reflect on the scaffolding
techniques used, the value of collaborative learning and the lessons I will
take away for designing my own learning activities.
Learning Theory
The instructional design of this
activity included only limited ongoing involvement by the teacher. Given the
lack of reinforcement of target behaviour/s and the open-ended structure which
lacked a pre-defined end result, I do not consider that this forum was
reflective of behaviourist theory (Fasso, 2012). Behaviourist approaches
typically target low-level content and routine skill development (Fasso, 2012).
Cognitivism seeks to
understand learning in terms of inner mental activities (Learning Theories Knowledgebase,
2012). Although I think cognitivism goes a way
towards explaining my mental processes in transferring the information presented
in this activity from the sensory register to working memory, I don’t believe
the design of the activity is cognitivist in nature. A key tenet of cognitivist
theory, ‘meaningful effects’, refers to the linkage of information to prior
schema, making it meaningful and therefore easier to remember (Mergel, 1998).
Cognitivist learning design is heavily focussed on helping learners connect new
material to existing information in order to help them memorise the content
(e.g. concept maps) (Lein, n.d.).
In contrast, the purpose of the wiki
activity was to develop higher order thinking skills. Constructivist
theory is underpinned by the notion that learners construct meaning based on their
perceptions of social encounters and experiences. The design of the wiki
activity was constructivistic in nature in that it aimed to stimulate social
interaction between members of a learning community and encourage learners to
actively share their personal interpretations of the topic. The experience of
sharing (or ‘negotiating’) these interpretations, is what resulted in the construction of
knowledge.
The
wiki activity presented a realistic setting and in this case, qualitative
assessment was integrated through this reflection task (Merrill, 1991, in
Smorgansbord, 1997). The direction of the wiki was quite flexible and able to
be influenced by the participants, another characteristic of constructivist
learning design. This was evidenced by the different material presented across
the four groups for the wiki.
The role of the teacher in this
activity was to really only to provide initial scaffolding. This is typical of
constructivist learning design, which is generally more facilitative than
prescriptive (Mergel, 1998).
Although
the activity was instigated and set up by the ‘teacher’, the content was
contributed by the group of learners. The teacher scaffolded the activity by
providing:
- an introduction to learning theories;
- a framework for collaboration (i.e. online wiki);
- webconferencing tutorials;
- a description of what should be learned through the activity;
- groups of learners;
- a suitable tool (i.e. de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats and a table template to structure responses by learners);
- a series of leading questions and required ways of thinking to guide the direction of reflection about the activity; and
- selection of discussion forums to enable personal and interactive reflection (e.g. blogs).
The
scaffolding provided the context for the wiki activity and supported the
particular way learners thought about the topic. For example, by providing links
to information about de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats, the teacher ‘set the scene’
for the wiki by making learners aware that they should use a range of thinking
modes to come up with a range of perspectives. By introducing wikis and
providing instructions on how to edit the table displayed in the wiki, the
scaffolding facilitated the collection of the perspectives offered by the
learners.
Constructivism
and Collaboration
As
a mode of learning, the online wiki supported thinking and participation by:
- allowing learners to ‘own’ their responses to the topic;
- encouraging collaboration between learners; and
- encouraging learners
to provide a range of perspectives through use of the six hats.
As
I was participating, I was aware of the fact that de Bono’s thinking hats were
encouraging me to consider wider perspectives than I would typically, and the
collaborative nature of the wiki took this one step further by listing even
more perspectives.
The
participation provided by the wiki makes the activity ‘fun’, as a learner, it
reminded me that we were talking about a real issue with real implications. I
found it interesting to read about what my classmates were thinking and
exciting to contribute to a group discussion.
The
activity challenged me and sustained my interest, allowing me to synthesise
responses from the diverse ideas for each ‘thinking hat’. Some of the ideas
added by my colleagues then prompted me to think and read further by raising
new related issues.
I
felt like I was able to learn about my peers and gauge some sense of their
personality through reading their responses. By either aligning myself with
their position or questioning their ideas, I felt like I was constructing
meaning about the content but also about myself and my colleagues. I also found
that the collaborative wiki helped me to articulate and solidify my own views.
There
can be no ‘correct’ response to the topic, and responses will be subjective and
heavily influenced by one’s particular context and definition of the question. The
activity encouraged problem-based higher order thinking, a move towards the
most complex categories of Bloom’s Taxonomy of the cognitive domain (Big Dog,
Little Dog and Knowledge Jump, 1999).
The Productive
Pedagogies project, stemming from the University of Queensland ’s Queensland School
Reform Longitudinal Study, identified productive pedagogies from observations
of classroom teaching (Department of Education and Training, 2002). I think
this learning activity reflected strategies within the productive pedagogies,
including (Fasso, 2012):
Wikis
- Benefits, Issues and Drawbacks- the facilitation of deep knowledge through higher order thinking;
- the facilitation of collaborative learning in which conversations are important;
- learning that is owned, controlled and managed by students; and
- learning that is socially supportive and
engaging.
Although participating in wikis like these has a number of benefits, there are also some drawbacks as identified in the graphic organiser below.
Plus
|
Minus
|
Interesting
|
- equips learners to effectively deal with real life scenarios - in the real world, individuals are continually confronted with new situations which require them to acquaint themselves with other people’s realities in order to negotiate solutions
- develops the ability to appreciateand understand others’ views
|
- as pointed out by Mergel (1998), there are situations when divergent thinking is not desirable or appropriate
|
I intend to use my understanding of the learning theories and my observations/conclusions about this wiki activity to inform my design of learning experiences to maximise learning gains.
Big
Dog, Little Dog and Knowledge Jump (1999). Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html#cognitive
CDA (2012). Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats Revisited. Retrieved from http://cdainspired.com.au/edward-de-bonos-six-thinking-hats-revisited/
Department of Education and Training (2002). Productive Pedagogies. Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/public_media/reports/curriculum-framework/productive-pedagogies/html/about.html
Fasso, W. (2012). EDED20491: ICTs for Learning Design (Term 1, 2012). Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses, EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/course/view.php?id=19580
Kurwongbah State School (n.d.). Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats. Retrieved from http://www.kurwongbss.eq.edu.au/thinking/Hats/hats.htm
Learning Theories Knowledgebase (2012). Cognitivism at Learning-Theories.com. Retrieved from http://www.learning-theories.com/cognitivism.html
Lein, K. (n.d.). Cognitivist Approach. Retrieved from http://elearningpedagogy.com/cognitivist.html
Mergel, B. (1998). Instructional Deisgn & Learning Theory. Retrieved from http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/802papers/mergel/brenda.htm
Merrill, M. D. (1991, May). Constructivism and instructional design. Educational Technology, 45-53.
Soloman, B. A. and Felder, R. M. (n.d.). Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire. Retrieved from http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html
Smorgansbord, A. (n.d.). Constructivism and instructional design. Retrieved from http://hagar.up.ac.za/catts/learner/smorgan/cons.html
Monday, 5 March 2012
Technological pedagogical and content knowledge - a definition
In
order to describe technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK), it
is useful to first define pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).
PCK essentially refers to the combination of the following three types of knowledge, which allows teachers to effectively transfer knowledge to learners:
PCK essentially refers to the combination of the following three types of knowledge, which allows teachers to effectively transfer knowledge to learners:
- knowledge about the
subject matter or content;
- knowledge about
teaching principles; and
- knowledge about
context.
Thursday, 1 March 2012
My Learning Style
Today I completed Soloman and
Felders’s Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire to get an indication of my own
preferred learning style/s.
The results indicate that I am:
- a strongly reflective (as opposed to active) learner;
- fairly well balanced sensing and intuitive learner (possibly with a slight preference towards intuitive learning);
- slightly more visual than verbal learner; and
- a slightly more sequential than global learner.
Overall, I would say the results
were quite accurate. However, I wouldn’t have described my preference for
reflective learning as being ‘very strong’. Despite preferring to think quietly
first about new information, I don’t always like to work alone.
My learning style suits learning
experiences like individual reading, reflecting, summarising, strategies like
PMIs, SWOT analyses, etc., rather than group work or active experimentation.
Being a visual learner, I tend to learn well from visual learning experiences
including videos, images, powerpoint presentations, graphs, flowcharts and mind
maps. I also tend to learn well when information is provided sequentially, in
steps which build upon each other or can be pieced together logically.
I find it interesting to think that
a single learner may have different preferred learning styles at different
times. I wonder after years of university study with learning primarily
delivered through teacher-centred delivery methods, whether I might have
developed stronger sensing and verbal learning styles than I would otherwise
have preferred?
Profiling learners in order to cater for learning
styles/preferences
Given the
likelihood that a single classroom will comprise learners with a diverse range
of learning styles, teachers will never teach in a way which suits everyone all
the time. I have found it valuable to understand my own learning style and to
recognise the diversity in learning styles even within the EDED20491 cohort.
In order to
cater for the diversity of learning styles in a class, I would profile students
by:
- establishing rapport with students;
- observing their responsiveness and engagement in various learning experiences; and
- asking them questions designed to highlight their learning style (e.g. adapt existing examples like Soloman and Felder’s Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire to suit the age group of the learners).
How to support
the range of learning styles in a traditional classroom of 25 students
I guess the
important thing as a teacher is to utilise a diverse enough range of pedagogies
that learners are offered a balance between those styles which allow them to
learn most easily (meaning they feel comfortable and included) and those which
they find more challenging but which allow them to build on their adaptability/flexibility.
Obviously, a narrow teaching approach will benefit only a small number of
learners and will risk the other students becoming disengaged. Resonates well
with this quote by Eistein:
"Insanity: doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting different results".
In a traditional classroom of 25 students, I would design
my lesson planning to include strategies which suit the various learning styles.
I would use the results of the learning styles profiling exercise to inform my
planning.
Examples of how I might support the range of learning
styles include the following:
- Instead of doing group work or individual work in isolation, I might ask students to reflect individually on a topic by answering/posing a set of questions, then have them form small groups to brainstorm further before discussing as a class. This would engage both active and reflective learners.
- I would use visual aids when presenting orally to the class and include exercises like constructing diagrams, charts, mind maps etc. to engage visual learners.
- I would attempt to include optionality in my lesson planning where appropriate. For example, after doing a group activity, I could give learners the choice of doing an oral presentation or a written presentation.
- I might form groups for particular exercises based on the learning styles profiling and develop specific activities best suited for each learning style.
- Ensure that the physical structure of the classroom is conducive for different learning styles (e.g. by placing visual learners close to the front, providing a visually stimulating environment, creating ‘shared’ spaces for group work etc.).
How does ICT support differences in
learning styles?
Pedagogies that incorporate ICT have
the potential to engage learners with various learning styles. This is in part
due to the multimodal nature of ICT, which frequently combines audio, visual
and tactile stimuli. ICT describes a vast array of technologies and tools
which, each of which has different functionalities and applications which can
be tailored to a particular purpose.
Although ICT can be used to support
particular learning styles (e.g. social networking is well suited to active
learners, blogging is suited to reflective learners etc.), I think it is
important that all learners are competent in accessing and evaluating digital
information in a range of different ways.
References
Soloman, B. A. and Felder, R. M. (undated) Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire. Retrieved from http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html.
Reflection on Connectivism
In
reading the material on connectivism and the work of Siemens (2004), I did found
it slightly disconcerting to have my assumptions about knowledge and knowing
challenged. I have been encouraged throughout my formal education to only seek
and trust information provided by ‘experts’ and to avoid referring to any
sources which offer unsolicited opinion not written or peer reviewed by
academics.
However,
when I look back at what I learned and what I have found useful in everyday
life and my professional career, I can’t help but think that the truly valuable
lessons were more about processes and methodologies than about content. Content
knowledge and factual information can be found easily enough using a variety of
media (e.g. web searches, print media, blogs etc.), but critical thinking and
evaluation skills are what have allowed me to make sense of the vast array of
informaiton available at the click of a button.
Although
some content knowledge is invaluable, it seems that our assessment of students’
recall is designed more to facilitate easy marking than to assess true understanding.
As an exercise in connectivism, it would be interesting to encourage learners
to move the focus away from empirical knowledge (or finding ‘the’ right answer)
to developing a network of information sources and evaluating the
usefulness/application of each source.
Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism:
A Learning Theory for the Digital Age. Retrieved from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm.
Reflection on Prensky’s Ideas
I
find the concept of digitial ‘singularity’ proposed by Prensky (2001, p.1) interesting. More than
ever before, there seems to be a mismatch between the learning paradigm held by
teachers and the world that learners live in.
Although
I find it difficult to believe that technology has induced a physical change in
learner’s brains, kids these days do seem to think and process information
differently. They are definitely socialised into technology, although software also
seems to be becoming increasingly intuitive.
I
(unfortunately) consider myself a digital immigrant, so this course and indeed
my future as a teacher who integrates ICT into my pedagogy (with any luck) will
be a steep learning curve. I read Prensky’s papers with a slight internal cringe,
as I recognised my own strong ‘accent’! Undoubtedly, I will have the
opportunity to learn a lot from my students over the coming years!
Much
of the learning dogma from my own school days (e.g. delayed gratification, one
step at a time, practice makes perfect) I realise is now relatively outdated in
today’s fast-moving information age. One thing that is still the same, however,
is that learning should be fun. As to the validity of the “engage or enrage”
argument, I guess in the noisy, sensual overload that is today’s technology, it
is critical that teachers make the educational experience something worth
paying attention to. As surmised by Margaryan and Littlejohn (2008), I suspect
that many children don’t comfortably fit within the ‘kids that tune us out’
category painted by Prensky (2005, p. 60), and realistically sit anywhere on
the continuum between technologically illiterate to digital genius. In
practice, the reaction of modern students to outdated teaching methodology is
more likely to simply be disinterest or frustration, rather than rage. That
said, the last thing I would wish for is to be seen by learners as a ‘dinosaur’
they cannot relate to.
What
will this mean for me as a teacher? Well I think it will mean keeping an open
mind, being flexible and adaptive. It will mean challenging my own preconceptions
about the nature of knowledge and the relative value of some types of knowledge
or sources of information over others. It will also mean accepting that there
are many more ways of knowing than what I was taught through my formal
education. The focus will become more about the process than the end product.
Essentially, I will have to be the old dog that learnt a new way of doing its’
tricks!
References
Margaryan, A. and Littlejohn, A. (2008).
Are digital natives a myth or reality?: Students use of technologies for
learning.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Natives,
Digital Immigrants. On the Horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
Prensky, M. (2005). “Engage me or enrage
me”: What today’s learners demand. Educause Review, September/October
2005, 60-64.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)