Connect.ed

The Connect.ed modules were very useful in allowing me to understand just how today’s students are using the internet and online tools. I do not use social media sites very often, and even when I do, my understanding of exactly how they work is limited. My two sons are only 5 and 2 and have not begun to live ‘virtual life’ yet, so I’m not really aware of what is happening out there in the digital world.

Although you hear of many sad cases of the effects of cyberbullying on children today, I didn’t understand just how wide spread it can be, or how easy it is for children to become a cyberbully or become a victim of cyberbullying. The case studies provided a snap shot into just how pressured children can feel in engaging in this kind of negative behaviour due to peer pressure.

I think that doing these modules, will certainly open up the eyes of many parents and teachers, even if they feel they ‘know’ what is happening in the digital world. A really valuable tool for anyone working with or living with children.

Google apps for Education

This three weeks of placement has been awesome. I have loved working in my Prep/Year 1 class and my mentor has been the best mentor I have had yet. I did, however, find it difficult and challenging to incorporate ICTs in a way that enhanced student learning. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, my placement school do not have much in the way of ICTs, and what is there, is rotated around the school, leaving one 50 minute session in the computer lab and one 50 minute session with the iPads each week. The classroom had two desktop computers, but only one worked and it was only used for an autistic student. There was also an IWB in the classroom, but it wasn’t interactive.

I had the opportunity to participate in a curriculum day on the last week of placement, which included a short ICTs session. I couldn’t believe my luck, how coincidental to be having this session while doing a prac linked to an ICT unit! The session was about the ICT overhaul the school is embarking upon. The new Assistant Principal is a strong believer in the benefits of ICTs in schools and is leading the way towards not only better and more equipment, but also a new system of using and incorporating ICTs in both teacher and learner environments.

The school, over a couple of years, is switching to Google apps for Education. I was particularly impressed with how it complements the school’s Cooperative Learning approach. Teachers, students and parents will be able to benefit from the collaborative and connected nature of this system. I know the teachers were getting excited about the time that will be saved in administrative duties, such as the doubling up of saving planning, reporting and assessment data to personal drives, school drives, etc. Teachers plan in unit teams and often end up with multiple copies of the same planning document, as they have to edit and re-save things individually and it gets confusing which document is the most recent, but Google apps, will allow teachers to make changes to the one document at the same time. Issues of losing data will be eliminated as everything is automatically saved every second or so. I would love to come back when everything has been in place for a while and see the difference it makes to teacher’s lives, but also how they have embraced it in the classroom, as at the moment, there are not many teachers doing so.

Here is a quick YouTube clip the tech guy showed us at the curriculum day session.

Mindful Meditation

Last week on prac, I took part in a PD session that was on Mindful Meditation. It was about teaching students how to meditate but be mindful of what is going on around them, acknowledging what they can hear or are thinking about and then let that thought go.

It was interesting and I found it particularly hard to switch off my brain and let thoughts go. This is something that today’s students have extreme difficulty doing. They have so many expectations and often even ‘relaxing’ activities, such as watching a movie, still require students to be actively engaged, if the movie they are watching is 3D, for example.

The session was aimed at getting students to let themselves relax and help with the hyperactivity and associated behavioural and classroom management difficulties faced each day. I thought it was quite funny as the presenter said that technology is a huge issue in students being over stimulated, yet she went on to say that there are many apps available from the apple store or play store for children to use to be guided through the mindful meditation activities. Bit of a contradiction! It was a good example, however, of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ that comes from technological advancement. In this case, the bad is the over stimulation in children, but the good is using technology to overcome the bad.

Of course, there are many other factors affecting behaviour and learning outcomes of today’s students, such as poor diet, inadequate rest, other commitments, family break downs, etc. This post from Pratima provides us with a good opportunity to really examine whether it is just the students that we should be focusing on when it comes to challenging behaviour, or whether we should be looking at ourselves, parents, and other outside and unseen factors. It reminded me of a student I worked with a while ago, who had shocking behaviour – physical and verbal abuse, inability to sit and focus on a task, refusal to work, etc. and was deemed a ‘hopeless’ case, a ‘bad’ kid. Although he did have some developmental issues, his diet was full of sugar and additives and when the parents finally agreed to reduce this type of diet and opt for a healthier alternative, his behaviour improved significantly. It just demonstrates that you need to look at a problem from all angles and never give up on what seems an impossible case.

 

Cooperative Learning

As I prepare for the second week of placement, I have been researching the Kagan Cooperative Learning approach. My mentor has introduced me to this approach, where the focus is on team building and using structures, or activities, that promote cooperative learning. What’s really great about this approach, is that it can be used for any subject area, at any year level. The structures are relatively short (from what I’ve seen so far), and help students to work cooperatively in an engaging and enhancing manner. 

It took a little while to get used to this learning approach, as traditionally, teachers require and enforce that students put up their hand to speak or make contributions to discussions. This cooperative learning approach, however, encourages teachers to either call upon specific students, have students just call out their response or use the structures to ensure everyone is engaged and contributing at all times, for example, one structure has students pair up for a discussion about the given topic, person A has a certain time to discuss their thoughts while person B actively listens, they thank and praise each other for their part in the discussion, then the roles are reversed and done again. This structure has everyone in the class actively engaged for the whole period, either as the speaker or as a listener. 

My mentor has just been certified as a trainer, and is introducing me to a whole range of structures and demonstrating how they have become second nature to the students. The students actually get a kick out of ‘teaching’ me how to use the structures. It is a whole school approach and most teachers seem to think very highly of this approach. 

Cool tools for school

While working on an assignment for another course, I came across this site called Cool tools for school. It’s a great site featuring Web 2.0 resources for all learning areas and year levels. There are resources for collaborative work, creativity, music, mapping and presenting. I was looking specifically at writing resources and a found a ‘cool tool’, Zoo Burst –  for creating 3D pop up digital books, where students could design their own books by using preloaded or uploaded images, create text and speech bubbles and then view the books (or embed a link on a blog or website) and if they have access to a webcam, the image apparently looks like it actually comes out of the page (haven’t tried it like this yet)!

Another great site is Splash ABC – features a range of games, videos and more for a range of learning areas and year levels. I especially liked the story map tool – where students are guided by a cat to follow the steps in order to create a story map. They are able to either draw (similar to Paint) a picture in each of the sections or scribe key words or a sentence. While this can be done with pen and paper, it can be difficult to get around to all the students in the class to guide them through the process. Using this tool, the students are guided through the process, with a quick explanation about what each step is and why it’s required. 

Hopefully these links will prove useful and help generate some creative and interesting uses of ICTs. 

Three down…

So day three is over, and as yet I’m still a little concerned about how I’m going to implement ICTs into my lesson plans. This week has been a write off, in terms of being able to plan my own lessons and think about ICTs. This week is Education Week and Life Education Van visits, so the week has been spent doing follow up activities from the Life Ed van and lots of cool science stuff for Education Week. I’ve been able to take lots of little sessions and introduce and run some of the activities. I’ve certainly learnt this week to be super flexible, as plans seem to change each day, and to think on my toes. We did have an ICT session this week, but these sessions are used to familiarise students with using various programs like Paint, as part of their ‘Digit Bear’ program.

I’m hoping next week will settle down, and I can begin to work out how I’m going to use ICTs. We have an interactive whiteboard, but it’s misbehaving and is not interactive, so that limits what students can do with it. Our ICT sessions aren’t going to be overly useful for the purposes of this prac and the assignment and I believe we have the iPads for 50 mins per week, but because they are continuously rotated around the school, I haven’t had a chance to look at them and figure out how to use them (I have never actually used an iPad or tablet, so have no clue really what to do). We have two classroom computers, but one is usually used by an autistic boy, and I’m not sure how I could run a lesson where all students could do something on the computer, ARGH!

This prac and assignment really have me feeling a bit flustered now, as we are coming to the end of week 1 and I still don’t know what to do. I’m hoping the light bulb will flick on very soon!

Digital Citizens

Here is a link to School a to z, a site created for parents by the NSW Education and Communities department. It is a useful site which includes a variety of information, links, reports, etc about using technology, cyberbullying and cybersafety. In the Digital Citizens section, there is information which includes digital literacy, digital rights and responsibilities, and digital security, topics that have been included in the focus of the week 10 learning path.

With children using and sharing information digitally, it is absolutely vital that we as teachers are ensuring students are aware of the issues faced in the digital world and provide them with strategies to protect themselves and others and use the internet and other digital tools in safe and appropriate ways. While students may be more proficient than us adults in using some of the technologies, they don’t yet possess the understanding of how some of the decisions they make can be detrimental to themselves and others, now and in the long term future.

Cyberbullying resources

I have to admit that although I was aware that cyberbullying is an issue faced by our young people today, I didn’t realise just how widespread and mean it could really be. The connect.ed modules really opened up my eyes. It has concerned me both on the professional front, but also as a parent of two young boys, who are going to want to be a part of this digital world in a few years time.

In the Friendship social networking site in the connect.ed modules, I felt quite frustrated and angry at Sam with how he was treating Billy. There was a lot of pressure put on Ned to be ‘cool’ and accepted by Sam by continuing to comment on Billy’s crying as well as Ned trying to be a good friend to Billy. Sites like this really do allow people to be quite vicious fairly annoymously, yet reach a huge audience. Having not experienced or witnessed this type of bullying before, I didn’t realise how bad the problem could be. Even though the connect.ed simulation wasn’t real, I felt very sad for Billy, and as Ned, I felt a bit hurt by the comments Sam made when I tried to stick up for Billy.

I found a useful site which contains a huge range of information about cyberbullying in schools. It has a couple of video clips, for both primary and secondary students, about the effects of cyberbullying and strategies for how to stop it. There are also resources and links to other cyber smart topics, such as eSecurity, sexting and online reputations. It is not an Australian site, yet it still offers useful information on these topics that can be shared with students or used to inform your teaching practices.

So you think you have limited ICT resources?

So a few days ago, I blogged about the limited resources at my placement site. After having just read a post from Anouk I have realised that my situation could be worse. Anouk found a way around the very limited resources she was provided with by bring some of her own, an iPad, digital cameras and laptop. I am lucky that my school does have access to digital cameras, computers and iPads (even though they are only available on a very strict schedule).

Anouk’s blog post was very inspiring, as she has listed a few activities she was able to conduct with the limited resources at hand. Some of the activities included: taking digital photos and creating a digital story, skype calling to her mentor’s previous school in Hawaii and creating voice avatars to enhance English language (as she is teaching in China).

It is clear to see, that with some flexible and creative thinking, there are lots of ideas out there that can help students enhance their learning. Anouk’s use of ICTs also seem to include activities that feature on the upper end of the SAMR model, clearly demonstrating that even with some basic tools, great activities can be devised. Anouk’s post has really got the creative juices flowing now, it’s almost been like a challenge.

Issues of Digital Ownership

Digital Ownership is something that is always going to be of concern. While the sharing of information on the web is an excellent way for people to learn, there are always people out there who are willing to claim the work of others as their own.

I believe that when sharing work, knowledge and learning online (and it would also apply to the non-digital world), it is vital that the work of others be used to enhance your own learning or understanding. If you use or wish to comment on the work of others, it is imperative that you acknowledge your use of their work clearly. If people are re-blogging posts, it should be done for a particular purpose which is clearly explained or demonstrated. Their work should be used as an inspiration for your own or for supporting your own work. Demonstrating how the work of others has been used not only benefits your work, it also acknowledges their work.

In regards to Christina’s post about Digital Ownership, I believe she is right in her belief that we lose control of our work once it is posted online. Unfortunately there are people looking to use the work of others without consent, or acknowledgement of it, for the sole purpose of claiming it as their own. I think this is why it is so important, as teachers, that we ensure students are aware of the consequences of claiming the work of others as their own. We need to ensure students understand that by not acknowledging the work of others, even if it is not copyrighted work, it is actually stealing.

If we teach students to reference their work from very early on, which may be as simple as listing the site it came from for younger students, and explaining how and why it has been used or referred to, it will allow teachers to see how students are building their own knowledge and understanding through research and networking with others, but also establishes good ethical behaviour, effective research behaviour and respect for the work of others. Perhaps this will help with addressing the issue of losing control and ownership of work?