Wiki

This week's task came at the perfect time.  Since I am also studying Maths at the moment, one of our assignments for it was to create a wiki so i thought i could use it here also and kill two birds with one stone. 

Group assignments worked on from distance have always proven to be a difficult task.  Word documents, powerpoint presentations, images, videos, etc. were emailed to each member of the group so that they could then add their parts or comment on what had been done already then email it back out to the other members who would all be doing the same thing so before you know it each member has five emails of the same document with five different sets of changes / additions on it.  These then had to be collated by one member who would put all the documents together then email this new document out to all the group members so that they could add parts or comment on what ha….hang on, we've heard this bit already… and so on and so on, until the final document was produced. Phew! As you can probably already guess, keeping track of the 'final' or latest document was always a challenge.  Wikis on the other hand are a great way to work collaboratively.  A wiki is just like a word document BUT it is completely stored online.  The wiki is accessed for editing by using a password which can be sent out to all of the students in the group, thus enabling all members to alter and or add to the wiki.  A wiki can be referred to as a living document.  It is constantly evolving and can have any number of students altering or adding to it simultaneously.  This allows for a much more streamlined approach to collaborative works as members can always have instant access to the most recent document wherever and whenever they have internet access.

My Wiki PMI

PLUS	MINUS	INTERESTING
·        Easy to collaborate ·        Ideas can be submitted at any time ·        Easily altered ·        Create and edit pages collaboratively (Chao, 2007) ·        Fun and engaging way to learn	·        Some schools may block blogging sites ·        Work within a group can be deleted without the authors permission. ·        Internet connection can be an issue, dropping out / no internet at home. ·        Possibility of leading to cyber bullying. ·        Copyright infringements/ plagiarism	·        Users can see changes and comment on them ·        Students feel more confident when 'hiding' behind a keyboard and monitor. ·        Gives teachers an extra tool for teaching.

I found the process of creating a wiki quite simple.  The hardest task for me was choosing which background to use….  oops.  Always getting sidetracked on the unimportant stuff.   Anyway, creating a wiki was very similar to creating a blog.  The website (www.wikispaces.com) was well set out and the start up wizard is very easy to use.  It doesn’t take long at all to create a wiki.

Below is the link to my groups maths wiki.

http://maths-l1107.wikispaces.com/

TPACK

This is TPACK!!!!

TPACK is getting at something that we have failed to get at for many years which is the technological, pedagogical and content knowledge working together to support good teaching.  It combines the three main knowledges to help teachers develop and deliver great, meaningful lessons.

  

http://tpack.org/ 

Edward de Bono and his Hat Collection

Edward deBonos' thinking hat system consists of 6 'hats' which each symbolize a style of thinking.  This system provides a foundation on which both group discussions and also individual thinking can be based to provide constructive, intelligent outcomes. 

A brief overview of the hats and their meanings is below:

• Thinking (Blue) - thinking about thinking
• Information: (White) - considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
• Good points judgment (Yellow) - logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
• Bad points judgment (Black) - logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch
• Emotions (Red) - instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling (but not any justification)
• Creativity (Green) - statements of provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes

On the campus wiki I wrote the following under the Black Hat section:

"I think that mobile phones in the classroom are more of a hindrance than a help. By looking around the lecture rooms you can see the number of students that are distracted in lectures by their phones and these are mature students. If school children were to use their phones during lessons I think that they would distract both themselves and other students around them."

After reading a lot of other entries on the class wiki I found that I may have juped to conclusions with my first negative thoughts about mobile phones in the classroom.  After a bit more reading I ended up settling on the idea that mobile phones in the classroom and also out of the class can support life-long learning that is also, 'life-style' learning.  By this I mean they are learning when and where they want to .  The learner, with the use of their mobile phone becomes a discoverer of information and this discovery process can all be documented, stored and carried with them on their mobile phones. 

The constructivist learning theory basically says that learners should build knowledge and skills and that understanding comes from these rather than from other force fed data sources.  When I studied building design we had to create a visual diary which consisted of photographs and comments about buildings and general design ideas, placed in a scrapbook and handed in to the lecturer.  If mobile phones were used within that course we could have taken both photos and videos of interesting design features, then uploaded them into a blog or wiki and build a visual diary that is accessible anywhere and at any time.  This would make for a much more engaging task and students would not feel like the task was as large because they always have phones on them and could just take a quick 'snap' and add it to their visual diaries later.

Is that A Mirror?

So, I found week 1 quite interesting and fun.  I got to make my first blog and add to the course wiki.  I have to admit that until now I thought blogs were just for 'pretentious yuppie snobs' but now I think I can see how they can be used for things other than just rambling on about oneself.  Ok, back on topic, I learned a lot about myself and learning styles in general this week.  I found that some parts of my learning style were exactly how I thought they would be but others certainly were not. Then after getting involved and reading a bit more about e-learning on various websites like Wikipedia I began to get excited about the potential of technology within our classrooms.

I am looking forward to the weeks ahead in this course and have found the start not as daunting as first thought.

My SOSE WebQuest

Since I spoke of the benefits of WebQuests in my previous post I thought i would share the on i made for my SOSE assignment.  I found this task quite fun and hopefully I will get a chance to use it, or a variation, in my own classroom.
http://www.wix.com/itswade/energy

Learning Styles

Everyone learns differently.  I had never completed a learning styles test before doing this one and i found some of the results quite interesting.  The Felder and Soloman learning styles test helped me realize where my strengths lie when it comes to learning and thus, when it comes to teaching.  Ones own learning style does influence the way they teach as when someone is teaching it is quite easy to fall into the trap of teaching in the style that you learn best yourself rather than identifying the way in which your learner learns.  

From the results above I could identify the following about my learning style:

I am a moderately high active learner.  This means that I learn well when I am doing.  Hand on activities are great as I like to 'get in there' and 'try things out'.  This result was expected as I know one of my weaknesses when it comes to learning new things is that I am not reflective.  I need to try to improve this by studying in groups where others ask questions that makes me think deeper about the task at hand.

When it comes to the Sensing / Intuitive section I sit right in the middle.  From reading the explanation of the learning styles I found that this is actually a good place to be because if you are too intuitive a learner may miss important facts  / procedures but if you are too far on the sensing side then you may rely too much on previous experiences or memorization and not be able to think innovatively. 

I am a highly visual learner and this was not surprising at all.  For the last 8 years I have worked as a building designer for many different Architects, Interior designers and building designers here and in the UK.  I have a passion for design of all types and at the moment my fantastic fiancé and I are designing all of our wedding invitations, decorations, cake and even the jewellery for our big day.  Being a visual learner I find that I learn the best by seeing illustrated instructions for tasks, data presented in graphs rather than tables and diagram rather than trying to extract facts from written texts. 

I found myself lying right in the middle of being a sequential or global learner.  I feel that this is pretty spot on as there are times that I need to learn in a logical order to fully understand a  task but then there are other times that I have found that I think I know the general idea but I t takes a while for me to 'get' the  finer details.  

I found this a great help to assist in my future as a teacher.  By understanding learning styles I will be able to better structure my lessons so that learners of all different styles can benefit from what I teach.  Although it will be difficult creating a lesson with the right balance of written, spoken, and 'hands-on' tasks involved I think that a balance between these different learning styles throughout the course of a day or the week will benefit learners greatly. 

In the classroom I feel that webquests are a great way for students of all different learning styles to engage and learn a lot of new information.  This is because a properly designed/created webquest could include videos and pictures for visual learners, written sections for people that prefer facts from a text and also can include things like a 'Voki' which will 'tell' them the facts.  Links can also be made to resources outside of the actual webquest for learners who wish to develop a greater understanding of the task at hand.

Overall I feel that, having identified my own learning style, I will be able to be a better teacher as it will help me understand that nobody learns the same way that I do and I will have to create lessons that suit my learners, not myself.

Xbox Project Natal

I saw this and thought that is was an amazing new technology that could potentially be used for teaching in the future.

Pretty awesome gear!