Week 6 - Andrea Chicco

Group work – The First Stages

As part of learning adventure 1, a professional development (PD) video has been created aimed at existing teachers to address them of technologies they can be implemented into their classrooms. The chosen technology is called Webspiration Classrooms. 

Webspiration Classroom is an "online writing, visual thinking and collaboration tool for students and teachers". This online resource improves writing and thinking skills and allows a teacher to inform their students the necessary concepts and skills to help them write effectively, evaluate, synthesise information and improve performance for assessment (Webspiration Classroom, 2011).

To support this technology, samples from the English content area have been selected to present in the video. Other content areas such as Maths and Social Studies had been considered as they are also offered on the Webspiration Classrooms website, however our group believes English was most beneficial to showcase in the PD video as Webspiration Classroom offers numerous amounts of English activities and examples to enhance English lessons. The predominant activities/examples demonstrated in the PD video were narratives, character comparisons and descriptive writing.

To support these online activities/examples, Queensland Studies Authority’s (QSA) Essential Learnings were researched. The year level the activities/examples were aimed for, was by the end of year 5. After analysing the QSA (2007) document, the following knowledge and understandings were selected to coincide with the chosen Webspiration Classroom activities/examples:-

·    'Literary and Non-Literary' as Narratives have structural features such as the orientation, complication, resolution.

·   'Language Elements' as it describes settings and characters through figurative language.

·   'Writing and Designing' as the purpose is to entertain, inform and describe.

To view this document in detail, please select the following link:

http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/downloads/early_middle/qcar_el_english_yr5.pdf

A pedagogy was also required to include in this video to correspond to the English content and Webspiration Classroom. It was easy to select the pedagogy 'collaboration' as it meets hand in hand with Webspiration Classrooms. Webspiration Classroom states (2011), “improve writing and thinking skills with Webspiration Classroom service, the online writing, visual thinking and collaboration tool for students and teachers".  How could we decide to select an alternate pedagogy when collaboration is clearly demonstrated as one of its attributes? Additionally, Perkins (1991) believes that collaborative learning demonstrates the notion of distributive intelligence, which states that accomplishment is not a function of one person, but rather a group in which each contributes to the achievement of desired goals. I believe this statement is evident with the use of Webspiration Classroom.

Additionally, Webspiration Classroom engages students and extends learning time through collaboration and student-teacher interaction, anytime and anywhere. Students assignments are always available to access from home or school and is automatically saved and securely stored online (Webspiration Classroom, 2011). The above statement “securely stored online” articulates that Webspiration Classroom is an additional program to fall under the umbrella of 'cloud computing' which Dr. Zagami taught us in the week 1 lecture/tutorial.

References

Perkins, D. (1991). Technology meet constructivism: Do they make a marriage? Educational Technology, 31(5), 18-23.

Queensland Studies Authority. (2007). English: Essential Learnings by the end of year 5. Retrieved from http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/downloads/early_middle/qcar_el_english_yr5.pdf

Webspiration Classroom. (2011). Improving writing and thinking skills. Retrieved from http://www.webspirationclassroom.com/info