Students of the twenty first century cannot avoid technology. It is a highly technological world that we are living in that “is both technology-rich and information-rich”. (MCEETYA, 2005) MCEETYA, (2005) state that students’ lives are heavily influenced by their abilities to acquire, communicate, access and manipulate information using information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the creative action they take towards emerging technologies. It is obvious why educators need to become more familiar with the strategies to effectively implement ICTs in an educational context.
Marzano and Pickering, (1997, p.31) states, that "when students are highly engaged, they learn more". That is why it is important to use various engaging teaching strategies to enhance student learning. After reading Prensky’s, Engage Me or Enrage Me, What Today’s Learners Demand, (2005) it became evident why some students fail to concentrate at school. Students do not need to engage themselves in their video games or on the Internet because the technology does it for them. During school activities students rely on others to engage them in the learning content. Therefore learning experiences need to implement effective ICTs to promote students’ engagement in the learning, consequently enhancing their higher order thinking.
Kearsley and Schneiderman, (1999) suggest in their Engagement Theory, that for students to be engaged in creative, meaningful and authentic learning, students need to be provided with opportunities to collaboratively work with peers and conduct investigations to solve meaningful real-life problems. (Nick, 2010) (Post for Nick, 2010) Ames and Ames (1991, as cited in McInerney and McInerney, 2006, p.17) also agrees that learning in relevant real life contexts encourages students’ motivation. Harlow and Harlow (as cited in Brandler and Roman, 1999, p.2) discovered that when humans are in their developing years and do not experience group interaction they are more at risk of developing problems in functioning and suffering from social and psychological impairment.
Waterhouse (2003) believes e-learning is “using information communication technologies to engage, enhance and extend learning in pedagogically sound, flexible and innovative ways”. This course Managing E-Learning has encouraged me to experiment and devise strategies to facilitate ICTs in the classroom. The investigation of the ICTs has made me realise how relevant and appropriate these ICTs are to the education system and learning environment. The ICTs that I will be exploring are based at a grade seven cohort.
In the beginning of my e-learning journey I experienced difficulty setting up my blog. I was unable to navigate my way around the pages. I established a collaborative network of users, where I could discuss problems and receive ongoing support. Siemens (2004) suggests that individuals that cooperate in networking have access to more information as the network participants share their knowledge. This is evident in a response from Nick (2010) in The Creation of My Blog posting.
Nick was able to share his knowledge to help me through my initial navigation issues. Persevering and receiving this encouraging feedback enabled me to feel comfortable with using the blog and enhanced my feelings toward my e-learning journey. Educators will need to embed students with the Habit of Mind, Perseverance. Students need to be able to find appropriate help, experiment with different approaches to tasks, examine various viewpoints and compare to similar problems. These qualities will enhance students’ creative thinking. (Marzano and Pickering, 1997, p.288) These skills will assist their life long learning to continually develop and enhance their ICT skills. This will help them in their learning of the ever-changing technology throughout the world.
I believe blogs to be a great digital tool to present knowledge to an audience. It allows the user to post a blog of their thoughts that can then be viewed and replied to, by a collaborative network. This would be an effective tool for an online debating activity. The learning facilitator could monitor and edit discussions as students publish their thoughts and receive constructive replies. The learning journey has then been documented and provides a good platform to construct a persuasive essay or reflective journal. Students by the end of year seven ought to “search for data, information and digital content using a range of information sources including online communication tools such as blogs, wikis, RSS and databases”. (Queensland Government, 2009)
I am a great supporter of digital concept mapping. Marzano and Pickering (1997, p.62) suggest that concept mapping assists students to organise information. They state that the tool helps students with “identifying the important pieces of information and putting them together to see the possible relationships, or patterns”. (1997, p.61) The programs ‘bubbl.us’ and ‘text2mindmap’ were both examined and constructed an effective concept map. (Concept Mapping, 2010) The concept map when implemented as a class activity will provide students with different viewpoints on particular topics from their fellow class members. This will sequentially generate new ways of viewing situations for the students that are outside the boundaries of standard conventions. When students are prompted to think of new ways of viewing a situation they are enhancing their creative thinking skills. (Marzano and Pickering, 1997, p.288) The Queensland Government, (2009) states in Smart Classrooms, students by the end of grade seven must “use digital concept maps to plan research projects and curriculum tasks by analysing the topic and identifying key aspects to research”. Successful digital concept maps applied in the classroom will help students to visually consolidate and refine declarative knowledge.
A WebQuest is an investigation based learning journey that requires students to find information from the World Wide Web. WebQuests are a digital instructional tool of the twenty first century that is designed “to support learners’ thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation” (Dodge, 2001). These are the areas that Bloom, (1956) considered to be the higher cognitive levels of thinking. WebQuests are a great online inquiry based learning activity. It is an effective tool that supports Kearsley and Schneiderman’s, (1999) Engagement Theory, as it engages students by challenging them to work collaboratively in different scenarios to complete objectives. “A WebQuest is built around an engaging and doable task that elicits higher order thinking”. (Starr, 2000) To get students to participate in higher order thinking, the WebQuests need to encourage students to transform then formulate information and ideas to solve problems, gain understanding and discover new understandings. (WebQuest, 2010) In order for students to arrive at a conclusion they will need to combine information, facts and ideas to then synthesise, generalise, explain or hypothesise their thinking. (Education Queensland, 2002) Smart Classrooms (2009) states that students are required to “participate in online challenges or webquests” by the end of grade seven.
I really enjoyed creating an avatar using Voki. I found it to be very simple and rewarding. The effectiveness and versatility of this digital tool in the classroom is immense. Sometimes it is difficult to find an expert on a topic to come into the classroom and speak to the students. As citied in Nick’s Voki blog (2010), an avatar can be custom made to play the role of any specialist. The avatar can be programmed to transmit information for students to acquire new knowledge. Educators can add Voki to their repertoire of tools to engage students. Marzano and Pickering (1997, p.31) states, that students are more engaged when tasks are related to real life outside of school as students can see the relevance and use of the tasks. If students identify where this knowledge is relevant in the real world, they will have a higher connection to the content. Hannah (2010) also agrees that students who are engaged in the learning will internalise more information. I agree with Hannah that the avatar would be a great tool to use as a hook. I believe if an avatar was introducing the learning content at the beginning of an activity, students will be more inclined to engage in the lesson. In addition, if you allocate an avatar to a particular subject it will trigger students to start preparing for that subject. The avatar could also be implemented in assessment as a presentation tool or even self-evaluation tool. Not all students are public speakers. Some children do not feel comfortable delivering oral presentations in front of their peers. These students could create their own avatar and record their voice for the avatar to present their information to the class. Students could also use Voki as a tool to check their writing and grammar. They can easily type their passage of writing into the textbook and the avatar can read it back to them. Students are then able to reflect on their writing and grammar skills. As the avatar reads out what they have written the students can self evaluate the speech, correcting grammar along the way.
It is very important to ensure that all students using e-learning tools are working safely, legally and ethically. The educator needs to monitor discussions and chatrooms to ensure students feel a sense of comfort and no evidence of cyber bullying. Marzano and Pickering (1997, p.13) believe “when our attitudes and perceptions are positive, learning is enhanced; when they are negative, learning suffers”. In order to maintain a positive classroom climate, teachers need to “be aware of malicious teasing or threats inside or outside of the classroom, and take steps to stop such behaviour”. (Marzano and Pickering, 1997, p.26)
The Queensland Government, (2009) created the Student ICT Expectations document. This document is targeted to assist students to develop and enhance their ICT knowledge, understanding, ways of working and skills that are required to survive today’s digital world. The Student ICT Expectations are divided into five areas: Inquiring with ICT, Creating with ICT, Communicating with ICT, Ethics, issues and ICT and Operating ICT. The Student ICT Expectations are to be implemented within the curriculum areas rather than discrete lessons. (Queensland Government, 2009)
Bloom, B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of educational objectives, handbook 1: Cognitive domain. New York: Addison Wesley.
Brandler, S and Roman, CP (1991) Group Work: Skills and Strategies for Effective Interventions. Routledge
Dodge, B. (2001). FOCUS: Five rules for writing a great WebQuest. Retrieved August 23, 2010, from http://babylon.k12.ny.us/usconstitution/focus-5%20rules.pdf
Education Queensland (2002). A guide to Productive Pedagogies, Classroom Reflection Manual. Brisbane, QLD, Australia. The State of Queensland (Department of Education)
Education Queensland. (2009). Student ICT Expectations. Retrieved August 24, 2010, from: http://education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms/pdf/student-ict-expectations.pdf
Kearsley, G., & Shneiderman, B. (1999). Engagement Theory. Retrieved August 23, 2010, from http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm
Killen, R. (2006). Effective Teaching Strategies . Katoomba, NSW, Australia: Thomson Social Science Press
Marzano, R.J., & Pickering, D.J. (1997). Dimensions of Learning – Teacher’s Manual. Alexandria, VA, USA: ASCD
McInerney, D.M., & McInerney, V. (2006) Educational Psychology: Construct Learning. Frenchs Forrest, NSW, Australia: Pearson Education Australia.
Ministerial Council on Education, Employment Training and Youth Affairs (MCEETYA). (2005) Pedagogy Strategy: Learning in an Online World. Victoria: Curriculum Corporation.
Prensky, M. (2005, September). Engage Me or Enrage Me, What Today’s Learners Demand. Educause Review, p. 60-64.
Siemens, G. (2004). Connectivism: A learning theory for the Digital Age. Retrieved August 24, 2010, from http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm
Starr, L. (2000). Meet Bernie Dodge -the Frank Lloyd Wright of learning environments. Retrieved August 23, 2010, from http://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/chat/chat015.shtml
Waterhouse, S. (2003). The Power of eLearning the past, present, and the future. Retrieved August 22, 2010, from CQUniversity e-courses, FAHE11001 Managing E-Learning.
Online Collaboration Links:
http://s0175690.blogspot.com/2010/08/webquests.html?showComment=1282871443387#c4425524199475660603
http://nicklunn.blogspot.com/2010/07/voki.html?showComment=1282730744856#c5821916142135794993
http://s0173788.blogspot.com/2010/08/podcast.html?showComment=1282187025420#c1474109870302707006
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