Week Five: Claymation

Week Five Blog: Claymation

As schools are heavily using computers throughout all educational levels, this has allowed stop motion claymation software within the reach of our current and future students. Through stop motion claymation students reinforce and gain new ICT skills and also integrate other curriculum learning domains. For example, students use and expand on their English skills through storyboarding, incorporate music so their claymation has an audio soundtrack and a plethora of other curriculum domains can and will be explored (Articlesbase, 2005 - 2010).

Through the incorporation of stop motion claymation teachers are able to recognise their skills within ICT and build and improve on those acquired ICT skills (Hawthorn Primary School, 2004). Stop motion claymation is something new that is being introduced to schools and I strongly believe that all schools should take the opportunity of exploring claymation with their students, as it provides a range of endless opportunities for students to scaffold and develop their academic learning (Clarke, 2007).

This week’s lecture was extremely interesting, particularly as the class was introduced to Claymation animations, something that all students should be exposed to during their school life. An example of an activity that could engage student learning through Claymation could be, dividing students into small groups of 3-4 and assigning them a task to complete over a term, in which they are to produce a two to three minute Claymation film on any particular topic they have chosen to explore. Students may choose topics such as friendship, happiness, a birthday or a plethora of others to explore in their Claymation film (Powell, 2010). Claymation characters are typically made from plasticine, with bendable wires on the inside, which will allows the students or film creators to manipulate the characters emotions and movements, which they may follow and film with numerous camera shots or angles.

Once all the shots have been taken and accordingly played as a continuous movement, this will allow the character looks to come to life as the characters begin to move. This procedure needs to be followed for all characters, movements and emotions expressed in a Claymation film. To create such a film is an elongated process which may take numerous years; however students in primary schools who are encouraged and exposed to making a Claymation film will generally learn the preliminary steps that film makers go through to create a single movie. The following website will allow students to gain a greater appreciation and understanding of the process film makers engage in when making a Claymation film. (ikitsystem, 2008 - 2009).

The www.abc.net.au/rollercoaster/rollermache/ web site allows students to navigate themselves through numerous Claymation creators including, Darcy Prendergast and Marissa02, who explain to the students using small and easy to follow steps how to create a Claymation film. The website also contains numerous videos about storyboarding, character development, props, sets, editing, sound and it also contains a gallery with images of various popular Claymation films. Through simply just browsing and watching films from the website, students will develop knowledge and various skills that are essential in creating a Claymation film, without having to film their own. The website is also very important in giving student’s a solid understanding of the behind the scenes work needed to create animation, characters and movies. Below is a picture of a claymation maker Darcey Prendergast:




During my first practicum, my grade 6 students were creating their own two to three minute Claymation film on a particular topic including tolerance, friendship, loyalty and numerous others. Each group was required to firstly, write their story. Following this they would create a storyboard, then the characters, props and sets for their film.
Before students were allowed to move on, approval by their teachers was needed to ensure they had stayed on track and met the required criteria standards. One day per week was dedicated for the students to complete their animations. During this time, Harvey Krumpet creator and Oscar winner Adam Elliot visited the Year 6 students to provide them with information and special techniques and information regarding animation characters. The students were amazed with the work and passion that Adam Elliot had dedicated to his film and to what he had done during his career and they were grateful to have an Oscar winner provide them with ideas and techniques to use in their film. Adam Elliot promised to return at the end of the school year to watch the students Claymations and to present each group with an ‘Oscar’ for Best Actor, Actress and Best Movie.

Through engaging in Claymation activities students further enhance their vocabulary, sentence structure, artistic skills and team work and communication skills through working as part of a group and sharing ideas. Fine motor skills are also developed as are problem solving strategies that promote fluency, flexibility, elaboration and originality, particularly as students must think creatively in writing, making and storyboarding their film (SSJP, 2010).

During today’s workshop we were introduced to a range of web links that may be of great use to schools and which are of great value to students. The web links provide students with endless opportunities to develop and enhance their Information, Communication and technological skills. More importantly the links allow students access to resources, which may encourage students to be creative and which may improve their language, speaking and listening skills, whilst teaching them how to research using the internet, vital skills which will be essential throughout every students’ school and adult life. (Travers, 2010).

The first web link provided to the class by Greg was http://www.dfilm.com/ . This link is a valuable resource, particularly as the activities within it encourage students to construct their own individual movies. Students may create their own characters, choosing from everything from humans right through to monsters and may select their own background layout, ranging from day to night, romantic and scary. Student’s may also accompany their layout with a range of music including, hip hop, classic, latin, 70’s and a myriad of other genres. This web link contains activities that allow students to devise their own individual movie. The excellent structure and directions provided on the site ensures that students are able to ensure their film is being made in a sequential and logical fashion that will be easy for the target audience to access it from the following link http://www.dfilm.com/ .



The second website we explored was http://www.buildyourwildself.com/ . The information and activities contained on this site allows students to create a virtual human version of them self with whichever colour hair, eyes and skin tone they choose. Students are also able to choose their own hairstyles from contemporary, conservative to extremely ‘wild’ and may select the clothes that they would like to wear. Once students have developed their virtual self they will be able to print themselves out and may also accessorise themselves to look ‘wild’ using unique animal body parts as parts of their own body. Students are also encouraged to give their ‘wild’ self a crazy name. Through this task students can write a story, create a poem or even print out a picture to use themselves as a puppet for a puppet show. Such an activity also enhances student’s sentence and paragraph structure, story writing, punctuation, layout and presentation. It also assists students with grammatical aspects of language such as grammar and vocabulary. This activity will also allow students to enhance their individual creativity through working in an environment that promotes creative learning through respecting and listening to the ideas of others and through individual thinking as well.

The following is my creation of my virtual human and ‘wild’ self.









The third web link provided was http://www.zimmertwins.com/. This site was similar to http://www.dfilm.com/ in that it also allows students to devise their own film. Through accessing this site students may add talk bubbles or captions including ‘announces, talks, thinks’ and etc. Students can also upload action clips within their movie. The action clips allow characters to float, fall, dance and celebrate. Moods may also be altered ranging from celebratory, bored and happy themes amongst others. Sound clips may also be added whenever there is a climax or tension within their movie. All these features allow students to add suspense to their films and this may encourage students to be creative in devising their own film. This provides further suspense within each student’s movie. Due to unexpected technological errors I have not been able to upload the video onto my blog, however I have included a number of photos taken to indicate what occurred during the film:

Scene One: Edga's Strange face

Scene two: Edgar's first strange facial expression

Scene three: Edgar's facial expression hasn't changed

Scene four: Edgar's friend is trying all sorts of funny movements but is unable to make Edgar's facial expression change

Scene five: Edgar's friend is now copying his facial expression

Scene six: The question remains why is Edgar's facial expression not changing?

I believe that the http://www.sketchswap.com/ website is an excellent and educational resource which allows students to freely draw pictures on the computer and to submit and disperse them world wide. As a result this means that the students pictures will be received and seen by somebody else and accordingly the students will be able to receive a picture from other students or person’s world wide. Allowing students access to a program such as skeptchswap.com does potentially have some consequences, including students receiving inappropriate pictures of for example, people smoking or using weapons. This program should be used when the students can be supervised in order to protect them from negative content that may adversely affect or disturb them. Students should also be informed that should an inappropriate picture pop up on their screen, that they should immediately report it to their teacher. To overcome such situations, school filtering programs should be implemented to block such content. Overall, however, this site provides students access to fantastic and stimulating activities which they may use to enhance their hand eye coordination skills and communication skills.


My Picture:


Received Picture:



A fantastic web site that is extremely suitable for the younger primary levels is www.storygames.com/Teach/ManPF/Rebus.html . It encourages students to create and develop stories, as well as using pictures to represent and accompany their captions. An example of this is rather than writing the word ice cream, a student may represent it with a picture of an ice cream. This process is known as Rebus. An activity such as this allows students to further develop and gain new language, spelling, grammatical, paragraphing skills and encourages their creative thinking.
This activity also integrates different learning domains, for example should a student write a story about habitats they may without even realising integrate English, Science, Mathematics and ICT. These activities also allow students to develop and broaden their academic capabilities in all curriculum learning domains.

Below is a picture of a story that incorporates the use of Rebus:



Lastly, Greg engaged us in a fantastic game that required us to open a new word document with the cursor flashing. We, however, had to turn off the screen and were required to listen carefully to the dictation provided, which we were expected to type. When Greg read out the words we were required to comprehend them and work out in which contexts they were being used, following which we would then type them. At the end of the dictation we turned our screens on to see if we had made any mistakes or grammatical errors. In the final part of the exercise, as Greg started to spell each word, so that we could correct our mistakes, we had noticed that the manner in which he spelt them out did not correspond to what we had typed. This is as the activity involved homonyms; words that sound the same such as ‘plain and plane’, however, are spelt differently. This activity displayed to me the importance of teaching students to understand the context in which words are to be used, so that they may identify which is the appropriate way to spell them.

This is a great task to do on a weekly basis with your students from the commencement of the school year until the end. A task like this requires full attention on what the teacher is reading out. Such an activity allows students to comprehend which word is being used within the sentence. For example, ‘I went to the sea’ or ‘I went to the see’. Over the year students will become more proficient at this task as they develop their listening skills, ICT skills, and their comprehension skills are likely to enhance as a result. Listed below is my attempt of the aforementioned activity that I undertook as part of the ICT class workshop:

The Actual Copy:

I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue Miss steaks aye can knot sea.

My Attempt:

I have a spelling checker
It came with my PC
It plaining marks formy review
Mistakes I can not see.

Second Actual Copy:

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it to say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

My Second Attempt:

I strike a key and type a word
And wait for it to save and
Whether I sa wrong or rightIt shows me straight away.

List of other websites that we were exposed to during our workshop which are also fantastic for our current and future students to be exposed to and use these both within the school environment and within their wider community are as follows:

http://www.xtranormal.com/
http://www.reasonablyclever.com/
http://www.toondoo.com/
http://www.dvolver.com/

References:

Articlesbase. (2005 - 2010). Stop Motion Animation Claymation in Education - an exciting Learning tool for all ages, Retrieved 23rd October 2010 from, http://www.articlesbase.com/software-articles/stop-motion-animation-claymation-in-education-an-exciting-learning-tool-for-all-ages-640801.html

Clarke, B. (2007). Clay Animation is fun, but its education impact is also far reaching - week 5 La Trobe Lectures, Retrieved 23rd October 2010 from, http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/learn/yarraville-west-primary-school/story-e6frf7ox-1111113232320

Hawthorn Primary School. (2004). Clay Animation - Week 5 La Trobe Lectures, Retrieved 23rd October 2010 from, http://www.hthdeneps.sa.edu.au/clay/

ikitsystem. (2008 - 2009). Stop Motion Claymation Software Launch, Retrieved 23rd October 2010 from, http://www.ikitmovie.com/32/stop-motion-animation-education-software.htm

Powell, G. (2010). Week 5 Lecture, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

SSJP. (2010). Use of Claymation in a teaching program, Retrieved 23rd October 2010 from, http://group-ssjp.wikispaces.com/Claymation+as+a+Teaching+Resource

Travers, J. (2010). ICT in Schools Now, Retrieved 23rd October 2010 from, http://sites.google.com/site/whatdidtheylearn/ict-in-schools-now

Week Four: Education soundness in the digital age

Week 4 -Lecture: Education soundness in the digital age


The ‘Educational Soundness in the Digital Age’ lecture provided the class with valuable information regarding the evolution of technology and it’s constantly increasing presence, reliance and use in schools and society. The digital revolution has provided various learning opportunities for our current and future students. It enhances learning through allowing information to be accessed at the click of a button in a matter of seconds and also prepares students with various skills and knowledge challenges. Technological advances also allow students to question, investigate, analyse, synthesise, solve problems, make decisions and reflect on their individual learning (Powell, 2010).

The four learning principals of ‘Education Soundness in the Digital Age’ are:

• Learner focus- ensures the needs of all students within the classroom are addressed



• Content Integrity- is purposeful and authentic and is significant on the students learning providing deeper understandings of various concepts and skills



• Usability- the interaction that occurs between the students and the content providing an in depth meaning through the students learning.



• Accessibility- learning complies with standards for students with disabilities both in the rural and remote areas within Australia.

Through the four learning principals students enhance and further develop their individual knowledge, develop their skills and maximise their learning to enhance their academic performances (Powell, 2010).

Integrating ICT within the classroom provides optimal learning opportunities for all students, however, there are teachers who do not employ ICT on a daily basis and continually switch them off and have plastic coverings over them. Students can learn a number of various skills and develop their knowledge with ICT. Some of the benefits that ICT can provide to students and a classroom include(Tinio, 2000 – 2002:

• Creative and inventive thinking



• Higher order thinking is enhanced



• Fine motor skill development



• Fosters students problem solving and metacognition



• Students explore various technology programs and how they work



• Provides hands on learning for students



• Caters for a diverse range of student abilities

During our week four workshop, our lecturer Greg initially introduced the class to Aboriginal ‘Dream Time’ stories through providing a web link; www.abc.net.au/dustechoes. Greg assisted us navigating through the various links within dustechoes which were quite informative as they provide students and teachers with a range of diverse Aboriginal music, various images relating to Aboriginal culture, access to online Dream Time stores and also a study guide which can be downloaded by students which details a chosen Dreamtime story and which explains it in more depth. The study guides allow students the opportunity to clarify any unanswered questions they may have about their chosen Dream Time story and explains them in more depth, which can be accessed with ease at the student’s desire.

Through watching and listening to the stories students can take part in many follow up activities such as writing a story on what they have seen, participating in a sequencing task such as organising pictures in order form beginning to end or they can create a mind map using images to retell a story through a few key images. With dreamtime stories teachers need to be mindful as some stories go into great depth about deaths and some students may find the images and storyline confronting, scary and distressing. It is imperative that teachers ensure that each student’s chosen story is appropriate, informative and that it will not distress or upset a student.

As a class we watched the Dream Time story ‘Spear’ prior to discussing what we believed the meaning of the story was. As a class we collaborated ideas and concluded that a family mean was jealous of someone else’s spear, he attempts to steal it but is unsuccessful and is punished for his actions. After reviewing the Dream Time story, we then individually selected our own story to listen to and took part in a follow up task.

I chose the dreamtime story ‘Mermaid’ and initially studied it through analysing the key issues of the story. As I re-watched Mermaid for the second time, I took print screen shots of the main issues in the story prior to constructing a mind map in Inspiration that outlines the key ideas which re-tell the story. Below is my inspiration mind map of the Dream Time story Mermaid:

The second activity which we participated in was an M&M’s task. As pre-service teachers mostly all if not all of us have seen this utilised in classrooms, particularly when students undertake chance, data or other mathematical lessons. The class was encouraged to bring a packet of M&M’s to class and to divide them by colour in order to count how many of each colour there was. We used Microsoft Excel to collate our data and then we were encouraged to construct a bar, column, 3D or any other graph of our choice that would represent how many M&M’s we had within our packets. Below is my graph that represents the coloured M&M's within my chosen packet:

An activity using M&M’s allows for considerable group or whole class discussions, particularly centred about why certain colours are introduced, when they were introduced and why the company develops a range of colours rather than having a packet of chocolate with just one standard colour. It should also be discussed why certain colours within a pack are more dominant over others and student’s should be asked what their favourite colours are and for what reason. All of these issues can be discussed in class however; the students can research further information about M&M’s through accessing the following web links www.m-ms.com/us/about/mmshistory and www.m-ms.com.au/about/products/milkchocolates.html.

As teachers we need to be mindful about student allergies including anaphylaxis and as a result the aforementioned task can be modified to include vegetables, coloured confetti, coloured marbles, fruit or coloured elastics to cater to the diverse range of student needs in the classroom.

As teacher's we can also develop a worksheet that the students can collect their data on for the M&M's activity or for when the students are using other materials, as students may have allergies and the activity may need to be modified for the class. Below is an exampe of a worksheet that students can use to collect their data. This worksheet below was used within the M&M's activity:

The two activities explored within our workshop would provide students with hands on classroom learning, which may promote the engagement of and stimulate learning activities to scaffold individual student’s academic capabilities. Most importantly the activities explored can teach students valuable researching and mathematical lessons which can be applied to help them succeed and progress in their academic career and in their personal life.

References:

Lewis, T. (2007). Ancient Stories, New Voices, Retrieved 23rd August 2010 from, www.abc.net.au/dustechoes

MARS Nutrition. (2010). M&M's History, Retrieved 23rd August 2010 from, www.m-ms.com/us/about/mmshistory

Microsoft Office. (2007). Microsoft Excel 2007, Australia

Powell, G. (2010). Educational Soundness Learning Federation: Thinking Curriculum Tools and I.C.T- Week Four lecture notes, La Trobe Univeristy, Melbourne, Australia

Tinio. L, V. (2000 - 2002). ICT in Education: ICT for Development, United Nations Development Programme, Bureau for Development Policy, New York, pg 1- 34

Week Three: Protection of students schools, acceptable use policies (AUPs) Ethical Issues

Week Three Blog: Protection of Students Schools: Acceptable Use Policies (AUPs)Ethical Issues:


This week’s lecture taught us how to protect our current and future student’s online. As teachers we need to inform student’s to be aware of the many dangers that the internet can pose on our students. Students need to be made aware of how to behave responsibly online and how to behave safely online as this will protect our students from cyber bullying, paedophiles, strangers, physical threats and a myriad of other dangers that exist in cyber space.
Student’s need to be taught to protect their privacy such as keeping personal information to themselves, including never giving out security passwords, contact numbers and not providing information to anyone about yourself or immediate family. Explaining to students not to talk to strangers, as people may not be who they say they are and students should not meet in person with anyone from the internet, as they can pose a threat to our students and their familes (Nemours, 1995 - 2010).

When students use the internet within school grounds, teachers need to be aware of what websites students view and access by appropriately planning for example, making a list of the websites you want your students to use although, as a teacher you can’t stop your students from doing their own individual Google search so by providing support and constant observation this will help minimize inappropriate websites. However, if they do pop up or are accidentally clicked on students will require guidance and plenty of one on one interaction, as they may feel embarrassed or scared of what they have seen and done. During this time the student/s will need to be reassured by the teacher that everything will be all right. Students need to be taught that when an incident such as an inappropriate website opens up, they will need to immediately locate a teacher to handle the situation professionally and appropriately. For example, speaking to the school principal to make sure that inappropriate websites are blocked within school grounds therefore, not having a re-occurrence of the same issue down the track. The student’s parents will also need to be notified about the incident although need to be reassured that their child handled the matter appropriately and will receive a class award for their bravery and the way they handled the situation. Use of internet filters may also assist in minimising the access of restricted or inappropriate material (Powell, 2010).

At home parents need to also discuss and educate their child/ren about online protection and safety precautions. Each and every household should enforce computer and internet rules that both the parents and child/ren obey. Some rules that parents can set up within their homes are as follows (Hughes. R, D, 2001):

• Do not allow your child/ren to use chat rooms, as these are seen as a playground for sexual predators


• The computer needs to be placed in an open area where parents can frequently observe what their child/ren are doing on the internet


• Know your kids online friends and consistantly speak to our child/ren about their online friends


• Use internet filters to minimize exposure to inappropriate material


• Parents should also spend time along side their child/ren when they use the internet to observe what they take part in


• Monitor the amount of time your child/ren spend on the computer and internet and what time of day they use the computer


• Discuss with your child/ren to never meet face to face with someone who they may have met online and


• Do not permit your child to have an online chat or social space to meet people, as they may give out personal information putting themselves and their family in danger
  

Within our workshop we covered what design briefs are and what process is involved within a design brief. Below is an example of the steps:

• Investigate



• Design



• Produce



• Analyses/evaluate

Design briefs allow our students to develop their thinking processes and skills, which will allow them to become creative and unique individuals. A design brief is a process for skill development, getting students to collaborate with each other, allow you to share collated information with the whole school not just your class and most important assists in developing higher order thinking within all our students.

Our first task was to create a frog that jumped using only a piece of cardboard, a picture of a frog, a rubber band and a piece of sticky tape. This encouraged all groups to create their own frog toy that had its own unique jump. As each group demonstrated their frog jump, no groups jump was the same as other groups within the workshop. This made the task unique, creative and very engaging. Below is a picture of the design brief template used within our group task:

Our second task we took part in was creating our own unique online games that anyone world wide can view and play. The web link used to create your own online games is

www.quia.com/web

At first Greg took us through on how to set up an account with a free thirty day trial. We all firstly created a quiz on any chosen topic; mine was related to our Solar System (www.quia.com/quiz/2511806.html ). After all students had completed we walked around taking part in our peer’s online quizzes. This was another creative yet enjoyable task to undertake part in. For the last forty minutes we played on the quia website creating as many online games activities such as word searches, hangman, jumbled words and quizzes for ourselves and people world wide to view and use.

Below is a list of my online games created:

http://www.quia.com/hm/667929.html (Direct link to my online web games)

http://www.quia.com/jg/1991079.html

http://www.quia.com/jw/386837.html

http://www.quia.com/profiles/ckarouzakis

http://www.quia.com/profiles/ckarouzakis

http://www.quia.com/quiz/2513176.html

References:

Hughes. R, D. (2001). Rules 'N' Tools, Retrieved 5th August 2010 from, http://www.protectkids.com/parentsafety/rulesntools.htm

Nemours. (1995 - 2010). Internet Safety, Retrieved 5th August 2010 from, http://kidshealth.org/parent/positive/family/net_safety.html

Powell, G. (2010). The Protection of Students Online- week Three lecture notes, La Trobe Univeristy, Melbourne, Australia

Quia. (1998 - 2010). Online Games, Retrieved 12th August 2010 from, http://www.quia.com/web

Week Two: E-Portfolio

Week Two Blog: E-Portfolios


During this lecture we were introduced to e-portfolios, which according to Roblyer (2003) and Barrett (2000) state that "a purposeful aggregation of digital items- ideas, evidence, reflections, feedback, data etc- which 'present' a selected audience with information about the subject of that e-portfolio" (Roblyer, 2003 Barrett, 2000, cited in Powell, 2010). We were informed by Greg that an e-portfolio is an important tool for meeting the needs of established and emerging pedagogy and approaches to learning.
Each individual’s e-portfolio allows them to present information in an electronic form, encouraging us to use and expand our knowledge on ICT, which allows for new learning opportunities. E-portfolios allow us as teachers to turn information into knowledge, assessment into an integral part of learning and turn failure into areas of successful learning. E-portfolios are modern and can easily be updated through just the click of a button. E-portfolios hold examples of students work, maintain rich content, allow both students and teachers to reflect and self-assess and most importantly allow teachers to make further improvements that will benefit our current and future students learning (Powell, 2010).

In the latter part of our workshop Greg went through some of the important aspects for when applying for teaching vacancies. Firstly, our curriculum vitae must be updated regularly and presented in a professional manner; including being printed on glossy paper and providing up to date contact details such as mobile phone numbers and e-mail addresses which will allow a potential employer or individual to contact a candidate at a present or future date. We were informed that once your curriculum vitae is shortlisted you will be called back for an interview with that particular school. To be adequately prepared for an interview it was recommended that we research the school over the internet or from another source and familiarise ourselves with the schools philosophy and various programs they offer staff and students and to understand the schools expectations. Such background information may ensure that during an interview that as a candidate we do not talk about ourselves for the majority of the interview and rather to also discuss aspects of the school to indicate to the interviewer that you have done extensive research and preparation and that you are a hardworking and dedicated individual who is keen to be apart of their school community program.

On the actual interview day a candidate must demonstrate that they are punctual and reliable as this will show the school that you are keen to become a member of their school community and will also make a good impression towards the interview panel. If the school provides you with a set of criteria questions, in the short amount of time you have before the interview starts, you are encouraged to take down notes as it will slightly ease your nerves within the interview and you will also be encouraged to refer to the question sheet for guidance and support. If you hold a first aid or anaphylaxis certificates or have coached a netball team, proof of these achievements will display to the panel that you are responsible and always enjoy becoming involved in community events and can interact socially.

We were introduced to Microsoft Publisher which is one of the programs that we can utilise whilst developing our e-portfolio. Greg initially allowed us to play around with the various functions as we created our own brochure/pamphlet about our 'favourite all time destination'.

Below is my brochure about Greece and Australia:









Towards the end of our session we begun our own individual e-portfolios and created our links on what each individual student wants to include within their electronic portfolio. Within my e-portfolio it will include, my philosophy on education, my curriculum vitae, life achievements, practicum photos, practicum reports and most importantly referees that will provide future schools with beneficial information on my skills and attributes that I can bring into the school that I may potentially be working for.

References:

Roblyer, 2003 Barrett, 2000, cited in Powell. (2010). ePORTFOLIOS for Teachers and Students use in the Primary Classroom, Week Two lecture notes, La Trobe University,Melbourne, Australia

Powell, G. (2010). ePORTFOLIOS for Teachers and Students use in the Primary Classroom, Week Two lecture notes, La Trobe University,Melbourne, Australia

Week One: Learning Technologies Introduction

Week One Blog: Learning Technologies Introduction:


In our first lecture we were introduced to ICT in the education era of the 21st century. As pre-service teachers, we were informed by Greg of the importance of ensuring that we encourage our student's to use technology including computers, cameras and a plethora of other devices on a daily basis within schools. Use of such technology may develop higher order thinking and problem solving skills of our students an may entice student motivation, attitude, interest in learning new skills. Most importantly this assists in preparing our student's for the workforce and later life (Powell, 2010).

I strongly believe that the evolving use of technology within primary school classroom's provides endless opportunities and growth for all student's and teacher's. when students make use of various forms of technology they take on an active role rather than a passive role whereby the information is not transmitted through the teacher, textbook or etc. Through the use of technology students are actively thinking about a range of information, making choices, gaining knowledge and skills, making and defining goals, making decisions about various design layouts and being able to self-eveluate their progress within using various forms of technology. This allows the teacher to freely rotate around the room as he/she observes what the students are taking part in, having one on one interactions with the students about their work progress and discussing various tools and programs that students can use within their work. Furthermore, technology tools and programs are updated very frequently and as our current students grow and enter the work force environment, technology would have changed but due to the exposure to various forms of technology out current and future students would have acquired endless knowledge and gained sufficient skills on how to use technology (Archived Information, 2010).

During our first workshop Greg assisted each and every student through taking us through the steps to set up a blog account. We were given approximately ten minutes to familiarise ourselves with the various functions on Blogger, which allowed each student to develop and enhance new ICT skills. We were encouraged during our workshops to type up notes within our blogs which would allow us to write weekly reflections on what we had learnt during the ICT workshops.

As a class Greg introduced us to a wonderful program called ‘Inspiration 8’, which allows student's to use various applications to create concept and mind maps. This program allows for student creativity and for the brainstorming of ideas and to complete class projects. Greg demonstrated how to use this program to our class by constructing a mind map called healthy foods and from the initial idea arrows branched off with labels of fruit and vegetables. Greg then showed us how to upload pictures to go under the correct heading, label them appropriately, enlarge or decrease the size of the picture and to use the name of the fruit or vegetable as a link to a web page which talks about that food item in much more depth.

We were given approximately an hour and a half to familiarise ourselves with Inspiration 8. Initially I found it quite difficult to use the program, however with the more time I spent using it and exploring new tools, my confidence, familiarity and use of the program improved significantly.

During the session I worked with my partner and we both supported each other as we embarked on a new journey through Inspiration. I assisted my partner in altering background colour and the thickness of arrows, whilst she assisted me and taught me how to cut and paste our concept maps from inspiration into our weekly blog posts. Helping each other made both our learning experiences more positive and interesting and it was beneficial in having someone reinforce my ideas and support me with areas that I had little previous exposure to.

I created two concept maps with Inspiration. The first covered various Zoo animals and a brief description of each animal. I used the names of each animal and attached a link to a web page that provides an in depth description about the physical and characteristic features of that animal. My second concept map was based about various forms of transportation including cars, water travel, air travel, trains and trams. This concept map allows students to further develop their knowledge of different vehicles that they may come into contact with and utilise in their daily lives, including driving to work or travelling on an aeroplane to travel interstate or overseas.

The two concept maps that I created within inspiration are as follows:




References:

Archived Information. (2010). Effects of technology on classrooms and students, Retrieved 30th July 2010 from, http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/EdReformStudies/EdTech/effectsstudents.html

Inspiration Software Inc. (2010). Inspiration 8, Retrieved 30th July 2010 from, http://www.inspiration.com/Freetrial

Powell, G. (2010). Learning Technologies (ICT) and Twenty First Century Education, Week One lecture notes, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia