Interactive whiteboards

This week's literature circles was based on whole-class technologies and the class had to complete the reading of 'Reviewing the literature on interactive whiteboards, learning, media and technology' written by Higgens, Beuachamp and Miller.

Lorianna, Ariel and Alice had investigated the benefits and issues that come with the interactive whiteboards. A discussion had been raised based on the idea that 'students believe teachers had not been using it for its full potential' and I thought that this was true.

When the IWB was first introduced I was in year 8 and teachers at that time did not have a great knowledge as to how to implement the use of the IWB for classroom activities, which was expected.

However when I was on prac last year this was not the case as my Co-operating teacher had consistently used the IWB for mathematics and music lessons where she would allow students to come up to the board and answer questions. Where students were actually interacting and using the whiteboard instead of the case where teachers are the only ones interacting with IWB, which I experienced during High School. This, being a specific issue raised from the discussion from the girls that 'students should be interacting with the board and not just seeing what the teacher is doing'.

I personally believe that the IWB are an effective tool that sparks interest in the students as it is something much more unique than the usual method of the teacher talking and the students listening. Also, with assessment 2 of PE3 this allows us to actually develop a detailed lesson which implements the use of the IWB which is a great tool to familiarising  ourselves with the use of IWB which was explored in the tutorial.

Rebecca Vacarella's blog on the IWB!

My fellow classmate and good friend Rebecca had posted some interesting points about the IWB where she had stated she used http://www.atomiclearning.com/ which helped familiarised herself with the basics of the IWB. This particular website was also explored in detail by Maria who introduced to us various websites available for us to explore and use. Rebecca had also said that she had used the IWB during her prac with her kindergarten class and was a success in terms of it being a very useful tool in motivating in engaging students of the task at hand.

Have a look at the wonderful posts Rebecca has made throughout her experiences on profession experience 3.

http://becs-edu-blogosphere.blogspot.com.au/

References
Higgens, S., Beauchamp, G. & Miller, D. (2007). 'Reviewing the literature on interactive whiteboards, learning, media and technology' 32(3), 213-225.

E-Portfolios

This weeks reading was about E-Portfolios and in order to gain a better understanding as to what E-portfolio's was about I read Balancing the two Faces of ePortfolios  By Helen C. Barrett.

E-portfolios range could range from writing samples, pictures, videos or projects and in other forms. However, what Helen and Barret really focused was the two main factors of E-portfolios being: workspace and showcase.

Showcase is about the learning and reflection factor of a piece, whereas the workspace focuses on students taking responsibility and ownership of their own work and liable for the work the work they have done. Therefore, these two aspects are an essential part of a primary classroom as well as a secondary classroom. As, children need to have the ability to learn and reflect on their experiences dealt with in class.

In the discussion of Lit circles the question as to 'when on prac or when you have your own class would you use e-portfolios? why/why not? How often would you use them? was asked. I would personally consider the use of e-portfolios however the only aspect which may question my decision to use one is the difficulty for teachers to monitor students E-portfolios as well as blogs.

 

References

Balancing the two faces of e-portfolios. Retrieved from http:/eft.educom.pt/indext,php/eft/article/viewFile/161/102 

The influence of blogging in primary education

Blogging was something I have heard of in the past but never got into it myself. Professional experience has introduced  blogging as a whole and what it can do for us as student-teachers. Maria had brought the interesting idea that blogging allows us as teachers to express our experiences for the world wide web to view and comment. But also can be used within the classroom as a technological advance for student learning. I personally would like to attempt to use a blogging writing project for students to participate in. The purpose of this would be to vary the type of literacy students usually undertake with written assignments precisely and to introduce a new lifelong skill that students can use in the future.

In today's lit circles the girls had revolved a discussion based on Davis, A & McGrail, E article 'The influence of classroom blogging on elementary student writing'.  Sophie, Devashna and Rebecca had raised the question about the influences of classroom blogging on student writing. Concepts were brought about the idea that through blogging students could socialise with their peers through blogging. The reason for this is because students have the ability to comment or chat on each others blogs. It could be used as a tool to express the students emotions or posts about facts that they find interesting. 

I.e. the events that they had experienced in school or sporting events that they participated in over the weekend. As students are blogging about these certain possibilities, they are at the same time developing their social skills, cognitive skills and computer skills. This would ultimately benefit them in the future as they are familiar with the use of technology.

References

Davis, A., & McGrail, E. (2011). The influence of classroom blogging on elementary student writing. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 25(4) 415-437.

T-PACK

This was our second week back into uni, and today we had the first group complete their literature circles. The girls who presented went into a lot of depth into their discussion as it went for about 20 minutes. I thought the discussion was very effective as it gave me a greater understanding about instructional games and different forms technology could be implemented into a classroom. The girls made us form a small group to discuss among ourselves about a certain topic on instructional games.

The topic question the group had formed was how  instructional games effect students. Different ideas were discussed, a mutual agreement came when we all agreed that instructional games are a great way to motivate and spark interest in the students in any topic. Because students are easily interested in hands on activities/games.

We had also discussed a possible negative impact on instructional games. This was based on the idea that students may lose interest in the theoretical work required to be completed and would only want to play instructional games. With that said we believed that there should be a balance between instructional games as well as theoretical work. Also that games should be used as a reward system, for example once students have completed their worksheet they may have the rest of the lesson to be on the computer.

In the tutorial we had gone through a Youtube video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNoijjIrPT. This introduced us to T-PACK which stands for Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. What T-PACK pack provides teachers and student-teachers are the essential tools needed for teachers to integrate technology effectively in their teaching practices. Lee Shulman created the former model PCK (Pedagogical Content Knowledge).

Image from http://www.tpck.org/ 



References

Roblyer, M (2006). Teaching with instructional software. In M. Roblyer (Ed). Integrating educational technology into learning. (4th ed). Merrill. Prentice Hall. Columbus, Ohio. Chapter 3. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNoijjIrPT8

//www.tpck.org/