Learning Area Assignment

Even though it is for a different subject (ICT learning area) I thought that this assignemnt was well worth sharing.

My partner Brendan and I made a website which could be used as a learning tool for students or a teaching resource for teachers. These kind of interactive ways of expressing information are fantastic for engaging students with content.

In this case we focused on Marketing.
Here is the link:

www.wix.com/paddy_23_4/marketing

Teaching with ICT

Through teaching with ICT I have become passionate about using screencasting as a way to not only engage students, but as an additional way of explaining information. The more times this information is explained to students the more likely they are to respond in effective ways. Above are a couple of screencasts I have created for Photoshop beginners.

Assignment 2

Voki as a Learning tool

An interesting video about the education system. As an ICT teacher I find that showing students these videos in class is a great way to generate discussion. Not to mention that for Visual Learners video is a great way to demonstrate something.

Wireless Educational Technology

Check out this link:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/7933705/how_wireless_educational_technology.html?cat=4

What do you guys think?

I tend to believe that any technology that aids the learning process is good technology. Something like the Ipad should (and in some schools already is) be trialled as a way to advance education and keep the interest of students. Of course the problem arises that most schools won't be able to afford an Ipad for every student and this is a valid and difficult argument to overcome but I feel that the schools that can afford it should try it out and see just how well it works. My only fear is that if students can access any article online and having such a reliance on technology, soon we may see the end of the good old fashioned book.

ICT and VELS

‘ICT provides a rich and flexible learner-centred environment in which students can experiment and take risks when developing new understanding.’

Teaching ICT there are numerous VELS that can be related so I will just focus on one particular example.  I was teaching a year 7 ICT class and the students were to use Game Maker to create their own games. To incorporate the use of technology and give students further explanations I created a series of screen-cast tutorials that demonstrated how to make the game of each particular type (so first there was a Pac-man style game then Space Invaders and continuing on in difficulty). This worked fantastically in the classroom for a way to reinforce their learning from what I verbally taught in the class and also allowed students to easily catch up with work if they were away. I also made demonstrations for each class using a projector to give the students as many chances as possible to comprehend the explanations. What resulted was a working environment where a large percentage of the students would come to class having already watched the video tutorial that they were going to be working on in class. It quickly became a case of finding a way to extend each of the students learning as they progressed through work that I thought would take them weeks in only a few days.

So what I tried to accomplish through the use of ICT was giving the students as much of the information that they needed, simply presented in different ways. This enabled the students to apply information from the example that related to them the most. From the foundation created in the explanations the students would be able to explore the software of Game Maker on their own to come to a greater understanding of the software. Because there is differentiation between learners and some students respond better to technology in the classroom than others creating this variety in the way explanations are presented gives more students to become engaged with the subject matter in the class.

This isn’t just limited to the subject of ICT but using technology to present the subject matter in different ways (such as using screen-casts) works well for any subject to create a diversity in the way that it’s presented.