Week 7 - Andrea Chicco

This week, the lecture commenced with a PowerPoint presentation displayed on the Interactive White Board. This presentation was created by students in Grade 1. Students went around their school with digital cameras and captured images of what activities they accomplish during a school day. The students created a storyboard of their accomplishments and uploaded their captured images into a PowerPoint Presentation. The students edited their presentation by inserting scrolling text to enhance their presentation. As I mentioned in my second sentence, these students were in grade 1 and they had the confidence and ability to do all this! I can’t wait to see it in my own classroom!

Adapting to Change in Education

Activity Cards

Dr. Zagami split us up into six groups and issued each group with content cards on future education. Dr. Zagami asked us to organise the cards into a diamond shape and followed by organising the cards into most important topics at the top of the diamond and the least important topics at the end of the diamond. As a group, we believe the most important topic was “What sort of education do we want in the future? This card was selected as you always need a focus point of what you want in the future. The last card we chose was the celebration of learning as once students have completed their work, they would celebrate it.

Dr. Zagami gave us another set of cards to categorise. The set questions fell into the columns of 'present', 'with major change' and 'irrelevant'. As a group, we took 5 cards each, studied and sorted them into the relevant topics. We entered our answers into the classroom’s online document therefore to read our classmates answers they suggested. Subsequently, individually we selected a card from our pile to respond to extension questions. I selected the question, "What if most learning was collaborative?" The extension questions were:-

• Enabler/Opportunity
• Resistance
• Partners
• Actions to overcome
• Measure of success
• Benefits

I was able to extend on the following:

Enablers/opportunity: for those students that fall behind in lessons and do not understand the subject, can take the opportunity to learn from their peers when working collaboratively. 

Resistance: students who do not like working collaboratively.

Partners: teacher’s aids and parent helpers to assist in the lesson.

Actions to overcome resistance: Help students overcome and build on low social skills and to work collaboratively.

Benefits: group work, the lessons are not always teacher led and collaborative learning will build social skills.

It was beneficial to break down these questions as a lot of the time we oversee the reality of implementing some strategies.