I have to say – I feel alot less cynical about technology than I was at the start of the semester.

Since all my learning in the subject itself, and the readings that I have done for my blogging, I have come to realise that the need for technology in the classroom is increasing. I now feel that digital stories are a fantastic way for students to publish recounts or narratives, and the iMovie is a great way to edit a video made by the class and can incorporate involvement from every single student.

After working on my webquest with Loren, I can now see how useful they can be in a classroom, and how easy they are to make. Now, if I needed to, I could create a webquest for my classes in the future, and tailor the webquest to suit the needs of specific students.

I was very proud of my digital story. So much so, that after I had presented to my class, I emailed it to both sets of grandparents for them to view and to see what I’d done in class today… and that is exactly what my students can do with their work. Who’s to say that they couldn’t email their work on the computer to their parents or grandparents or extended family anywhere in the world??? It would showcase what they had done and felt proud of, and at the same time, reassured their parents that the kids were actually learning and paying attention in school.

So, all up, I think I really enjoyed my time in this subject, much to the surprise of myself, and possibly my readers. The Lover as a Cynic is not so cynical anymore!!!

On prac I experienced one lesson in the computer lab. It really wasn’t anything flash. It was similar to the computer lessons I used to have in the computer lab in my primary school days. The students sat in front of their computers typing out the information reports on Australian animals that they had been working on for a few weeks prior to this one. They had to use a header and footer, they had to use an image from the internet, and they experimented with WordArt… acutally, it sounded somewhat familiar to the requirements of the Word document component in eSkills……

After most of the students had completed their reports, my cooperating teacher wrote a sentence on the whiteboard for the students to proofread (it was about the circus), and then they were to select a circus picture from clip-art and then import it into the new word document that contained the edited sentence.

After all that I’d learnt that schools were doing in eLearning, it was a bit of a let down, really…

Also – I didn’t see a single smartboard in that school. Alot of my friends commented on the use of smartboards in their prac schools, but I didn’t see one.

I just read John Waters’ article entitled ‘Face Time’ from an American educational magazine, T.H.E. Journal. It opens with a really fantastic classroom project called ‘The Monster Match’.

The project started in 2005, and many schools throughout the Central Texas Region partake in it every year around Halloween. Each class that participates creates a monster out of common classroom materials. Check. Then they write out instructions for making the monster. Check. They upload this information onto a wiki on the Monster Match website for another class in the district to access. Check. The other class makes the monster according to the directions. Check. And finally, both classes confer via a video conference to see how well they followed the instructions for making the monster, and how much the monsters look alike. The process is repeated in reverse so that the class that originally made the monster can make another one based on the instructions they receive from their buddy class.

That sounds somewhat exhausting.

But how cool does it sound??? I would so do that in my classroom. That is a great way for students to develop communication skills and there is a huge emphasis on 2.0 web access, which is apparently a big thing these days.

Have you noticed that I have become less cynical? I have. I think I’ll go and check my temperature.

I recently read Nisbet’s article titled “The Right Support”, which I found in the 2008 Spring edition of Scottish educational magazine, ‘Connected’.

The article was about the introduction and implementation of ‘Adapted Digital Question Papers’ to assist students with learning difficulties during their exams. The Scottish Qualifications Authority will be the first UK examinations board to use this marvellous resource this year. Up until now, students with learning difficulties or disabilities who request assistance or special provisions in exams are usually assigned a reader or a scribe (these are the most common special provisions. Other types include braille exam papers for blind/visually impaired students, etc), which can start to get annoying after a while, not to mention that these students have to rely so heavily on another party during the exam.

The Adapted Digital Question Paper is a fantastic way for students with learning difficulties to gain more independence and confidence in their learning. Students who use these digital papers can also use the paper-based copy to write, as the digital version of the exam is identical to the paper version. If students have difficulty writing, they can use the question-answer digital paper to type their answers as well as read the questions, and for students who may suffer from dyslexia or require a reader in exams for other reasons, the text-to-speech feature will be endlessly helpful to them.

I say good on Scotland for implementing this resource for exams. I doubt it will be long before other countries follow suit, and I am sure that in the future (and possibly while I am still teaching), all exams will be attempted via computers, and paper-based examinations will become a thing of the past.

I created a vodcast with my colleauge, Loren about the mathematics website ‘Rainforest Maths’. Check it out and tell us what you think!

Rainforest Maths Vodcast

I recently read Bernajean Porter’s article in ‘The Creative Educator’, and article entitled “The Art of Digital Storytelling”.

I thought it was a fantastic article that demonstrated a new way for students to express their ideas and opinions. Porter talks about the importance for a digital story to be compelling and relevant to an audience, and in order to do that, one must involve the audience in the emotions and thoughts of the storyteller. It is important to give the audience such an insight, and to ‘emotionalise’ the information conveyed, rather than just to describe to the audience an experience or an event.

I was most interested by this article because I recently created my own digital story, which is available and can be viewed on my blog. I think that Porter is spot on in her musings, and I do agree that digital stories are a fantastic way to teach narratives and other facets of the English curriculum to students.

So. I made a podcast. I would like to share it with you….

emilyjpodcast

 This podcast has similar themes to that of my digital story, and as you would have noticed, depicts my passion for performance and my dreams of appearing on television (these dreams, sadly, will probably never come true). I believe that my story does have an educational context – Playschool is one of the first educational television programs that Australian children watch, and I personally learned alot from that television show as a child.

So, I’ve been reading. More to the point, I’ve been reading Papert’s 1980 speech about Constructionism vs Instructionism.

I think that there are some interesting issues raised. The purpose of the speech is to enlighten the Japanese scholars to which he was speaking the ways in which technology can influence and revolutionise the way in which children learn maths (note: NOT the way that mathematics is taught – which I thought was interesting… how is it possible to change the way our students learn and not change our teaching strategies?)

Students mentioned in the speech were using computers to construct pictures on a computer. This involved programming a computer, and therefore, instructing the computer using mathematical descriptions and terminology to form shapes, curved lines and so on (I know what you’re thinking: “that’s crazy!” I don’t believe that I’d be all to good at doing something like that, both in a technological and mathematical sense).

But I can’t argue with it. That is no doubt a totally revolutional way for students to learn mathematics and to consolidate their learning. This speech is over twenty years old now, but its ideas are still fresh and applicable in education today. All learning that students experience in schools should be both relevant and enjoyable. If it is important enough to learn in the first place, it should be important enough to be remembered for the rest of the student’s lives.

I’ve been getting some questions about the title of my blog, “The Lover As A Cynic”.
No one knows what it means.

Well.

While I was in Year 11, my English class studied some of John Donne’s poetry, specifically ‘The Flea’ and ‘The Sun Rising’. Both the poems are spoken by ‘the lover’. Throughout the poems, the lover takes on different personas, and this, essentially is what we studied – the personas of the lover. There were a few personas, but the persona that was probably most prominent was the cynical lover. My essay was about the lover as a cynic.
And because I’m often cynical and critical in my blogging, I just thought that it would be a clever idea for a blog title.

So there you have it. Bet you weren’t expecting a short lesson on 16th Century poetry when you logged on today, did you?

I’m full of surprises.

Ok, so in the time that I’ve been neglecting my lovely blog (again, I’m sorry!), I had another assignment in eLearning. I’ve been a busy little munchkin!!!

I made a webquest with my favourite eLearning buddy and fellow blogger, Loren.

The webquest was designed totally by us, and we’re both very proud of it. The webquest focuses on classroom management theories in casual teaching.

Feel free to check it out, and hey, if you happen to be in a group of four people huddled around the computer, give it a go and let me know how it goes!

www.emloz.wikispaces.com

Ciao!