Week 5 - Andrea Chicco

This week I learned about many technologies I can start to include onto my professional knowledge list, below are two resources I believe are engaging for not just students, me too! These resources introduced to us in ICT and Pedagogy are definitely contributing to the Digital Pedagogy Licence statement “I understand how ICT can support and enhance what students learn, how they learn, and when and where their learning takes place” (Smart Classrooms, 2011).

Digital Story Telling

Go Animate

Just like Zoo Burst we were introduced to last week, Go Animate is a fantastic resource to implement into the classroom to enhance an English lesson. Go Animate is an addition to regular storytelling as stories are usually told by writing in a workbook. This website allows consumers to digitally tell their story by creating their own animated characters, animated settings and storylines. It is an extremely attractive website and has simple navigations for consumers to use.

Additional technologies that include digital storytelling are podcasts, videos, other animation websites and Microsoft Power Point, just to name a few.

Apple Mac – iMovie

I thoroughly enjoyed learning how to use iMovie in the Mac Lab this week. Obviously I would like to spend more time exploring its features as for everything we are introduced to in this course, however it was good quickly going through the basics. This is an additional resource of students to digitally tell their story.

References

Smart Classrooms (2011). Smart classrooms professional development framework. Retrieved from

            http://education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms/pdframework/docs/scpd-framework.pdf

Week 4 Andrea Chicco

Augmented Reality

Week 4’s lecture/tutorial/workshop was an engaging session as one of the highlights was the introduction of Augmented Reality.  Yet again, this technology was a dimension I never had privilege of being aware of and I am extremely excited to learn this technology and implement it into my practicum classroom and future classrooms. This technology will definitely enhance the way students learn, especially when “visiting historical locations, doing field work, interacting with real-world objects, and even paging through books” (The Horizon Report, 2010). 

An excellent website Dr. Zagami introduced our class to, to promote Augmented Reality was www.zooburst.com It was great having a quick run through on how it actually works. I believe this website can be applied to the Year 4 class I have been placed at for professional teaching experience. Currently, the students are writing and completing adventure narratives as part of their English Unit. I believe introducing Zoo Burst to the students will enhance their writing. I am excited to sit with my Supervising Teacher to obtain her thoughts on including it as part of an ICT lesson.

Horizon Report

The Horizon report “identifies and describes emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education around the globe”. The report explains there are “six technologies featured and are placed along three adoption horizons that indicate likely time frames for their entrance into mainstream use for teaching, learning, or creative applications in the K-12 environment” (The 2010 Horizon Report).

These technologies are; cloud computing, collaborative environment, game based learning, the use of mobiles in the classroom, augmented reality and flexible displays. As mentioned, each of the above technologies have been given intense explanations and information on how they are likely to be implemented into classrooms within the next 12 months. As this report was realised in 2010, we can see some of these exposed into schools today.

References

The Horizon Report  (2010). The new media consortium. Retrieved from http://www.nmc.org/pdf/2010-Horizon-Report-K12.pdf

Week 3 - Andrea Chicco

GEMS

It was excellent to have the opportunity to contact Mrs M and her Year 2 GEMS via Skype. It is nice to see the concepts we learn in ICT and Pedagogy can actually be implemented into a classroom. When the GEMS were interviewed by the ICT and Pedagogy Uni Students, they were responding with terminologies such as "blogging" as a second nature to them. I was just learning these terminologies myself!

PRAC - Lead in Day 1

Well Well Well. I have been allocated to a school that implements a lot of ICT in the classroom. How did I get so lucky, especially whilst being enrolled in ICT and Pedagogy. The first ICT device I was exposed to and I was very curious about were devices that were sitting on the teacher’s chest attached to a lanyard. At first as I had not seen them in practice, I assumed it had something to do with a student who may have been a diabetic. Shortly after settling into my year 4 class, I realised this device is actually a microphone, which is has been integrated into each classroom of the school to deliver clear and concise lessons. The microphone looks like large USBs type devices.

The teachers I had informally spoken to about the microphones LOVE them as they do not have to raise their voice to ensure every student can hear. Additionally, when using the microphone in a teacher led lesson, during a whole class discussion, the teacher issues a student with the microphone to speak into to deliver their response.

Other ICT devices or programs the school implement that I had been exposed to on my first lead in day were; Interactive White Board (IWB), laptops per student (hired out from library, see below image) and instead of using a bell to distinguish break or class times, they utilise popular music through the sound system.

  

Week 2 - Andrea Chicco

TPACK FRAMEWORK

As one of the readings for the course, there is an article “What Is Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge?” Written by Matthew J. Koehler and Punya Mishra. It explains the definition of TPACK as three components. These are content, technology and pedagogy. The article explains that the TPACK “framework builds on Lee Shulman’s construct of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) to include technology knowledge” (Koehler and Mishra, 2009). I commenced reading this article and found the concept difficult to absorb, however after analysing Figure 1 (below), the graph assisted my understanding on how each framework is set out. Additionally, this article enhanced my knowledge as the writers explained each title displayed in the graph in detail.

GOOGLE PROGRAMS, BLOGGER & TWITTER

In week 2’s workshop, we continued on creating each of the above programs. I must say how mind boggling it was for me as we only had a quick flick through each programs features. As I did not have the time to explore and ask as many questions as I would have liked to about these new technologies during the workshop, it did not sink in as much as I would have liked it too. We were jumping from Google Reader to Google Groups, then from the Google programs to Twitter, then back to the Google programs to blogger. I felt as though I had kept up with the class, however, when sitting down opening these programs the following day, I realised it did not mentally stick like I hoped it had. I thought I should open all these programs all at once and begin to explore their features and try to work out what I had to do in each. The first problem I encountered was how would my blog on http://www.blogger.com/ be available for my peers and Lecturer to view as I did not have any followers or connections on that website. I decided to utilise the Google Groups website to ask for assistance via a discussion post. As Google Groups is not an 'IM' (instant message) website, I did not expect to receive an instant response after posting my question. I logged into Griffith emails and utilised the 'IM' feature to converse with a online friend who is also enrolled into ICT & Pedagogy. After explaining my issue, Jessica diagnosed my problem by addressing the fact that I did not post my “blog ID” address on Google Reader like everyone else had. Once I had subscribed myself, I encountered my second dilemma, I posted my blog without proof reading it. I remembered in the workshop, Dr. Zagami advised there was an editing function should one make an error. I used this editing tool to rectify my mistakes.

After using these programs whilst at home, I felt a little more comfortable navigating myself around the site. However, I was not able to navigate myself around Twitter as I do not understand its ways of working.

Reference

Koehler, M.J., & Mishra, P. (2009). What is technological pedagogical content knowledge? Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 9(1), pp. 60-70.

Week 1 - Andrea Chicco

As an elective for 2011, I have selected to enrol into is ICT and Pedagogy 4001EPS. Lecture/Tutorial 1, Monday the 28 February 2011, WOW! Did I get blown away! So many types of technologies, programs, terms and devices I have never heard of before! I thought I was in tune with technologies! Obviously not! When Dr. Zagami explained common technologies that are currently out in the world, I was amazed, intrigued and most of all overwhelmed on the amount I needed to become familiar with.

Some topics Dr. Zagami included in the first weeks Lecture and Tutorial that I have had not been familiar with and found interesting were the following:-

• 1:1 - Computing - one computer per student
• OLPC - one laptop per child
• Book Readers - the ability to read books digitally via ipads etc.
• Cloud Computing - uploading any type of data from your home, work or uni computer online. This data is then saved onto a computer in a giant warehouse. The warehouse is operated by a company such as Google or Facebook (to name a few) and these computer warehouses are all around the world.
• Google Icons - There are so many I did not think I would ever use, such as Google Reader, Google Groups, Google Documents just to name a few. I have used Google Sites last year, for the course Technology Education. I learnt the basics of this site such as entering text, backgrounds, pages and Youtube Clips to show off my Claymation video.
• Collaborative Computing - Writing a part of a story at the same time.
• Wii and Xbox consoles - used in classrooms as a learning approach.

The above technologies are just a small collection of technology I learnt during lecture and tutorial 1. I have pages and pages of notes that explain even more technologies I learnt.

I believe learning these technologies will be beneficial as I can take my experiences into the classroom to educate students now and in the future. 

I am looking forward to using all the above technologies and also the ones I have yet to blog about or still need to learn about.