GoAnimate

Tonight I was playing around with GoAnimate and created this short clip. This is a great website, it could be used for a range of student activities including, short stories, recounts and to create social stories for students with ASD. 




GoAnimate.com: My blog by SarahMay2

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Digital Video

The following video is a short presentation I helped my daughter create to show one of the benefits of having a uniform policy at school. This video was made using iMovie. 

During the year, I supported a student, with a disability, in Yr 11 English to create different presentations using iMovie. One presentation, "This is me, and my community", showcased the student's link to various places in and around the community. The benefits of recording included, time to rehearse and view the video, trimming sequences to eliminate pauses between speech and the use of overlays, images and music. The final presentation was fantastic and the student proudly presented the video to the class. We also included a bloopers section of out-takes. 

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom’s taxonomy is a framework which involves lower order and higher order thinking skills. Lower order thinking skills include, remembering, understanding and applying while higher order thinking skills include analysing, evaluating and creating. 

Within Education Queensland there is a focus on schools including higher order thinking in their curriculum. In reference to Queensland teachers aligning with the National Curriculum, Queensland Studies Authority (2010) states, the Learning P-12 approach includes “content and achievement standards and assessment that focus on depth of learning and higher order thinking based upon high expectations and standards for all students.” 

The following information is from Think, Organise, Write, a book from Quill and Townsend, who describe the different levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy and the skills involved. They also suggest a range of graphic organisers for students to use to plan and write at each level of thinking. 

Remembering

Remembering - This is the easiest thinking level where you need to show you have remembered or learned information. Skills at this level involve describing, identifying, listing, retrieving, examining, matching, retelling and naming. Use the following graphic organisers to plan and write at this level of thinking:

• Note-taking table
• Story Map
• Time-line

Understanding

This type of thinking activity shows that you understand what you have learned. Skills at this level involve summarising, classifying or comparing.  Graphic Organisers:

• Concept Map - Spider Map
• Concept Map - Hierarchical Map
• Table

Applying

Applying means to transfer something learned to a new situation i.e. to make use of information in some way. skills at this level involve implementing, constructing, examining, classifying, illustrating, solving or completing. Graphic Organisers:

• Flow Chart
• Persuasion Map
• Storyboard
• Y - chart

Analysing

Analysing is to examine something in detail in order to discover its meaning or essential featured, to break something down into its components. Skills at this level involve comparing, contrasting, inquiring, surveying, grouping, arranging, interpreting, investigating or finding. Graphic Organisers:

• Venn diagram
• Ranking ladder
• Sociogram
• For and Against
• SWOT analysis
• Cause and effect organiser (Fishbone Map)

Evaluating

Evaluating/judging is justifying a decision or new course of action; making judgements and thinking hard to support your opinions. Skills at this level involve interpreting, critiquing , judging, hypothesising, monitoring, measuring, appraising, rating, scoring, assessing or testing. Graphic Organisers:

• PMI chart
• Balance Bar/ Scale of Bias
• Effects Wheel
• Reflective Questioning
• Socratic Questioning

Creating

Creating/producing generates new ideas, ways to design products or new ways to do things. Skills at this level involve composing, integrating, proposing, arranging, planning, designing, assembling, constructing, inventing, substituting and speculating. Graphic Organisers:

• Reframing Matrix
• SCAMPER Chart
• Lotus Diagram

References

QSA. 2010. Transition to the Australian curriculum: Frequently asked questions. Retrieved Nov 28 from http://www.qsa.qld.edu.au/12474.html

Quill, A & Townsend, A. 2009 Think, Organise, Write. Farr Books. Wilston, Queensland.

April James, posted some interesting information about Bloom's Digital Taxonomy, created by Andrew Churches. Follow the link to find out more:

http://aprilljames.blogspot.com/2010/11/andrew-churches.html

Engage Me!

I came across this clip on youtube which basically sums up the reasons for studying E-learning, to engage students and create positive learning experiences using tools they are familiar with.

Powerpoint

Powerpoint is commonly used by students in the classroom for presenting their work. Their presentations can be saved as a movie WMV file and uploaded to their blog. This is a quick example of what can be achieved.

Website

I have created my website which will include the unit of work for Assessment 3 of this course. I am very excited to be able to create my own website and add files, pictures, videos and links for the students to use in the classroom all in the one, easy to navigate, location.

Wikis in the classroom

Wikis are websites that allow accepted users to add, edit and update information. The teacher can control the wiki regarding the input and access, they also have the ability to track who is contributing to the wiki. There are many uses for wikis in the classroom most of which incorporate collabarative learning.

One interesting point I have seen from the use of wikis is the need to use organising frameworks so learners have an opportunity for inquiry and higher order thinking. For example, the Expert Jigsaw where students focus on a segment of material or part of a topic, or using the thinkers keys to engage students in a range of creative thinking tasks encourage higher order thinking. (Kruse, 2009) 

50 ways to use a wiki

References

Kruse, D. 2009. Thinking Strategies for the Inquiry classroom. Curriculum Corporation. Carlton South, Victoria.

Blogs in the classroom

Blog’s are online personal journals used for personal views and information intended for public view. Blogs contain a series of entries posted by the author. Blogs can cover a range of various topics. They can include links to websites and documents, and videos and images can be embedded. The author of a blog is often referred to as a blogger. Comments can be made on each posting.

There are many uses for blogs in the classroom. Given that learning itself is an inherently social activity, and we know that the digital native has significant experience in the use of technologies outside of their formal learning, it has tremendous potential. (education.edu, 2006) Some uses of blogging in the classroom include:

      • an online journal to record information from investigative science reports/experiments.
      • writing chapter summaries from a novel, adding pictures and images to support the understanding of the story.
      • Homework, students can reflect on new learnings from the day’s topics.
      • Information for parents, upcoming events

References
Education Services Australia. (2006) Blogs, Wikis, RSS and there's more? Web 2.0 on the march. Retrieved from http://www.educationau.edu.au/content/blogs-wikis-rss-and-theres-more-web-20-march

Welcome!

Get a Voki now!

Inspiration

Concept maps are a great way to organise information. In my learning environment I support students with learning difficulties/disabilities and we encourage the use of Inspiration 8IE to create concept maps for a range of learning activities. Unlike pen and paper concept mapping, in computer generated models subheadings can be rearranged and formats altered to suit the information being organised. Inspiration 8IE can transform the concept map (Figure 1) to an outline view (Figure 2) with headings and sub-headings. This organisation of ideas is useful for students when starting reports, investigations or narratives for example. Students can add images from the library, add hyperlinks to web pages and upload images all supporting the visualisation of information.

The Inspiration 8IE program also allows teachers to create a pro forma that maps the concepts of the topic or text, with key headings for students to add the relevant information under. Providing scaffolding is an important process to the learning development of students. Scaffolded instruction was developed from Vygotsky’s theory and his concept of Zone of proximal development (ZPD). McInerney and McInerney (2006, p.59) explain that “To place learning in the zone of proximal development, an appropriate level of difficulty needs to be established. This level must be challenging but not too difficult. The educator then needs to provide for assisted performance.” As the student becomes experienced in summarising and identifying key ideas for their topic, the scaffolding may be removed for students to independently organise the information into their concept map.

References

McInerney, D. M., & McInerney, V. (2006). Educational psychology: Constructing learning (4th Ed.). Australia: Pearson Education. 

Figure 1

Figure 2

Concept maps

text2mindmap

Another website which is easy to navigate is http://www.text2mindmap.com/  There is a text box on the left hand side of the screen to add text, you can use the tab button to indent the information which creates branches. Once all the information is entered the text can be converted into a mind map. Editing includes changing the colour, the text size and the bubbles can be rearranged around the centre title.

Concept maps

Bubbl.us

http://bubbl.us/ This is an easy to use website to create concept maps. Each bubble has it's own editing function which can take a little time but is very effective for colour coding and grouping information.

Learning Theory

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

“Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.”  (Prensky, 2001)

Comic strip credit: Fitz & Pirillo Blaugh.com

Definition 

Digital Natives refers to people who have grown up in the digital world using technology as a way to communicate, record, educate, and understand society. 

Digital Immigrant refers to those who were not born into the digital world but have embraced the use of new technologies.

The term “digital natives” was introduced by Marc Prensky (2001), who suggests “the arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last decades of the 20th century has lead to a discontinuity among todays learners. Although, the first mention of this theory is attributed to Don Tapscott who describes the future learners as the “Net Generation” (Helena Bukvova, 2009).

Characteristics of ‘digital natives’

• a distinct new generation with characteristics that separate it from the past generations.
• have had extensive contact to technology, particularly the Internet, throughout their upbringing. They are used to employing ICT under all circumstances.
• posses a high level of media literacy.
• certain characteristics are common to the whole generation of digital natives, characteristics directly influence the way they learn e.g. quick absorption of information, networking, work in teams, attention disorders
• the digital natives feel uncomfortable in the existing educational system. 

Applying the ‘digital native’ theory to today’s learners

Pluses 

Students are confident and familiar with using technology.

Learning activities can be presented in engaging and stimulating ways.

Minuses

All students have varying degrees of access to digital technologies, literacy skills, and participation within their peer culture.

Adapting teaching methods and incorporating new technologies requires professional development for learning managers not familiar with technology.

Availability of resources eg. hardware, software, internet connection and availability within the learning environment.

Interesting

As the same way migrants embrace and adapt to life in a new country, digital immigrants can change to include new methodologies.

“Today’s teachers have to learn to communicate in the language and style of their students. This doesn’t    mean changing the meaning of what is important, or of good thinking skills. But it does mean going faster, less step-by step, more in parallel, with more random access, among other things.”

(Prensky, 2001)

“We may never become true digital natives, but we can and must begin to assimilate to their culture and way of thinking.” 

(Rupert Murdoch, April 2005)

References

Prensky, M (2001) On the Horizon: Digital Natives Digital Immigrants Vol. 9 No. 5, MCB University Press. Retrieved 7 November from http://www.marcprensky.com/default.asp