Week 3: PMI chart to analyse the using Weebly

Here is my link of Weebly: http://joanqiongyu.weebly.com

Then again I was introduced to create a new account at weebly. To be honest, at the beginning, I was doubtful about such activity, why should we take so much time to explore different digital technologies since we have already known how to use at least one of them? Since one might be enough for teaching in a small group environment. Once I created my account easily by the following the instructions step by step again, I just didn’t know what to post on it for I don’t know weebly well know to comment anything.

After I posted my first page of self introduction, I couldn’t believe it that I couldn’t edit it as a author. Then what’s the use of such website? Once done is done, and no way to edit, revise, let alone to comment. I was again reluctant to use such new technology after one failure. Then out of sudden I think if my students were in my situation, would they give up as well for a new technology? How can I encourage them to continue, to try again and again?

So I tried again and came to realize that weebly is different from blog, or wiki. It is more author-centred, or teacher-centred if used in an educational environment. Therefore it is actually a good tool for teachers to give lectures or assignment, or even some announcement.

The following is my brief analysis of weebly use:

Plus (all the positives)	Minus (all the negatives)	Implications (the potential outcomes whether positive or negative)
•       No need worry about the change and editing or deleting •       Keep a journal •       Original records	•       No interactive •       No comment •       Once done is done, nobody can change inclusive of author •       Less flexibility •       Copy right	Negative

Week 3: PMI chart to analyse the using Wiki space

First time I, the digital immigrant, created my own wikispace. Actually when I was creating my new account at wikispace, I found it was not as difficult as I thought when I just followed the instructions step by step which led me to think that if I can give a clear, simple and direct instruction in my classroom, my students will find it easy to learn new knowledge or new technology. So the important part is not the knowledge or technology itself, it is me, the teacher, how to introduce it to my students. That is the art of teaching. The following is my brief analysis of wiki use in educational context:

Plus (all the positives)	Minus (all the negatives)	Implications (the potential outcomes whether positive or negative)
•       Flexible •       Active interactive •       Share information •       Share media •       Easy to make a decision or make a list •       Mutual trust •       Fastest communication •       Cost saving	•       Copy right •       No record •       No way to chase •       Abuse use •       Messy	positive

week 3: PMI chart to analyse the using blogs in schools

Plus (all the positives)	Minus (all the negatives)	Implications (the potential outcomes whether positive or negative)
•      Easy to build mutual trust •      Easy to share information •      Easy for teachers to post assignments •      Easy for teachers to check students’ comments •      Easy for parents to follow up children’s schoolwork •      Build a bridge among students •      Good collaborative activity •       Engage students •      Apply for different learning styles •      Improve literacy especially in writing	•      Copy right •      Hard to control •      Cost add •      Less physical communication •      Sitting all the time •      Eyesight	Positive

ICTs Assignment1 Term1

What is learning? Learning is the process to store knowledge, to use knowledge meaningfully to solve problems in an ambiguous situation; then what is teaching? Teaching is to guide, facilitate learners through a programmed, project based framework and activities to achieve positive outcomes; the what is ICTS? ICTS briefly stands for Information, Communication Technologies which is used for digital pedagogy which is identified by Education Queensland as being "a new way of working and learning with ICT to facilitate quality learning experiences for 21st Century learners. Digital Pedagogy moves the focus from ICT tools and skills, to a way of working in the digital world".

When I was first introduced into the course, I was so scared for it for ICTS is a totally brand new course and most of the time the course is flexible on line learning which means I have to learn at my own pace, do my own reading, write my own reflection, finish my own assignment without a teacher to teach in a physical, visible, traditional classroom. Therefore plenty of questions stormed into my mind at one time, what can I do if there is something unclear in my reading material; or if I don’t know how to use some new technology, such as wiki, blog; or if there is some computer, internet problem sometimes; if …with such questions, worried attitude, I went to week 1 Moodle. After finishing Felder and Solomon’s online questionnaire and Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence test, I am a little bit surprised to know my own learning style and where my smart intelligence at. As a active, sensing, visual, verbal and sequential learner, I will learn better if knowledge, information is presented by fact, data, chart ,explanation, presentation in both written visible words and auditory material, which supports the multimodal principle done by the Metiri Group of research who claims students using well-designed combinations of visuals and text learn more than students who only use text.


At the same time, we are introduced to create profile and blog by reading instructions step by step. Later we are required to look for a compatible partner to study with. Such activities are just applying what we have learned into our real study world. Profile and blog provide a broad platform for different learning style people to work independently, or to communicate with others effectively. As for interpersonal smart people, they are given better chance to liaise, talk, communicate with people on line no matter how distance they are; for visual/ spatial smart people, as the saying goes, ‘ a picture is worth one thousands words’. They are better equipped with pictures, chart, forms, drawings. As for partnering, with the basic introduction in profile, wiki, and blog, we have got a rough idea of who our classmates are, then it is easier for us to choose our partners in common which connect with collaboration and networking in our week two’s task.

Collaboration is not a 21st century skill, it is a 21st century essential. In Greg Kearsley & Ben Shneiderman’s engagement theory, it says engagement theory is that students must be meaningfully engaged in learning activities through interaction with others and worthwhile tasks which involves three learning act ivies: 1. Occur in a group context (i.e. collaborative team); 2. Are project-based 3. Have an outside(authentic) focus. In week 2 what we are asked to do is exactly reflecting this theory. We are working with our partner to contribute our ideas about learning theories  on line; “mobile phone in education’ debate is scaffold by de Bono’s  six thinking hats to contribute collaborative team work which activity I think works most effectively and fruitfully. Within a team environment, even though I choose red hat to state my emotional instinct idea, I benefit a lot from other different opinions  contributed by other team members. I am fully engaged in this activity, with such positive attitude, my posting about this activity in blog is so far the most instructive, interesting and longest among all of my other postings. Now I come to realize how important to engage learners into their learning context. Since in our modern society, technology is anywhere and anytime. And our students are no longer the same as 20 years ago. They are digital natives (Prensky (2001)) which means mobile phone, TV, radio, mp3, ipod, computer, internet, webcam, GPS, skype, twitter, Vyew, You Tube, blog, wiki etc are part of their life. Our traditional teaching methods, such as students sitting quietly in the classroom listening, context written on blackboard, doing what they are required to do  and a textbook  explaining all, are no longer students’ interest. We teachers, the digital immigrants have to adapt ourselves into their digital world to engage our students with what we expect them to do in a real life study context.

As for engagement theory, learning activities are project –based. Only  in a real, worthwhile task, learners are tempered to engage it through remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating then creating to solve problems in novel situation which leads me to see the alignment with Bloom’s Taxonomy which consists of three learning stages, cognitive (Knowledge) affective (attitude) and psychomotor (skills). As it says, without remembering, we can’t understand; without understanding, we can’t apply. Each step sequentially leads to next step to make learning extended, deepened.  As for my learning experience, without remembering what  one of the thinking routine of six thinking hats are, I can’t understand them; without understanding them, I can’t apply this routine into Moodle activity debate; without  analyzing, evaluating, I can’t creatively use it as my own learning design. As in a small group of 10, I may not use these six hats, instead I can choose only use three or four hats to optimize the study time and still achieve meaningful outcomes.

In conclusion, as speaking of our three weeks course’s activities: the profile, the partnering, the learning theories wiki and the mobile phones wiki, our designer deliberately chooses each activity through different scaffold to support different learning preferences and modalities. In such real study environment, I start to realize that the course is leading me to different theory territory which apply the knowledge to solve study problem I encounter during my own learning experience.
I understand now that if I want to make a better  learning design, I need apply diverse thinking routines such as PMI, thinking hats, SWOT to adapt different learning theories with the  consideration of  different learning styles and multi intelligence. My learning design should aim to increase students’ lower order thinking skills to higher order thinking skills.

Reference list:
•    Education Queensland, elearning for smart classrooms, Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms/pdf/scbyte-elearning.pdf, p3
•    Barbara A. Soloman and Richard M. Felder, retrieved from http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html
•    2002 - 2011 Birmingham City Council, retrieved from http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks1/ict/multiple_int/what.cfm
•    Material made available through Moodle: Cisco article on multi-modal learning design, Multimodal Learning Through Media, Retrieved from CQUniversity e-Courses, EDED20491, ICTs for learning design: http://e-courses.cqu.edu.au
•    Andrew Churches, http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom%27s+-+Introduction
•    Greg Kearsley & Ben Shneiderman, http://home.sprynet.com/~gkearsley/engage.htm
•    Material made available through Moodle: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html#cognitive, Retrieved from CQUniversity e-Courses, EDED20491, ICTs for learning design: http://e-courses.cqu.edu.au

Mobile Phones in Education

Just read two materials about Mobile phones and student learning in secondary schools? And what do we know about using mobile phones in education? Since we are introduced to use Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to scaffold our reflection, my first instinct is to choose Red Hat which means I use my direct first handed emotion to express my idea the similar way for me as to choose teaching as my career for my emotion, passion towards students.

Yes, undoubtfully mobile phones are good and make our lives easier, more convenient while most of mobile phones users are adults or at least older teenage or children who have a basic theory what is wrong, what is right? What is dangerous? And what is harmless? As for young children at their growing age with which their own view of the world is growing and who are not mature enough to distinguish possible danger, the use of mobile phones will definitely affect their lives including study of course. Just mention how they can use mobile phones in classroom to help their study, curiosity is their nature, especially at their young age. Once they turn on their mobile phones, they are quickly taken way by the various functions and can’t help trying all which means they are totally distracted from their classroom. Take another example, just a message sent by a mobile phone can spread to everyone at school instantly, not to mention someone who has evil intention to lure or kidnap children outside of school wall. Young children are necessarily needed our protection and care. As a good teacher, I believe without using mobile phone in classroom, he/ she still can draw young students’ attention to their study, still can meaning fully engage students’ to planned study activities to achieve expected outcomes.

Language Education

  
As the world’s economy development and closer cooperation, it becomes more necessary to master a second or third foreign language. I, a native Chinese girl, born in China, grow up in China, just immigrated to Australia at the beginning of 2010 after living in Thailand for almost 1 year. Following is my personal opinion about the language education in these three countries:
   

Australia:
Most schools have only Japanese as their second language say, in Yeppoon, in Rockhampton. There might be other choices in big cities, say, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane. 
Referring to my personal experience, I wrote a letter to most of Yeppoon schools to express my enthusiasm to be a volunteer Chinese teacher 1 month ago but so far I got no reply.
As for Japanese language which is taught at most of schools, most students still can’t talk or understand the language and forget it after they leave school.
As for language training centre, there is few in the market. What you can find is just one to one personal amateur traning.
   

China:
English is a compulsory subject from junior school, senior school to university. Some students can’t graduate just because they fail in their English examination, even though they might have no chance  to use it in their future life.
Recently more and more kindergarten and primary schools have introduced English into their daily education as well.
Thanks for China’s revolution and open to the world policy, more and more adults feel it necessary to learn a foreign language. Therefore there are many big training centres/ companies in the market and create a huge profit industry.
  

Thailand:
Most of government –run schools have English education. While Chinese language education is added in most international schools besides their native Thai and international English education. They call it tri-language advantage.

If you have something to say, or you want to learn English, Chinese, Thai or German please feel free to contact me at horsehorseyu@hotmail.com

Frameworks About Digital Pedagogy

At week2’s reading, we focus on digital pedagogy which simply means the ways that we design learning using digital technology so that our learners come to know what we know, and in the ways that we know it.
To make it detailed, we are introduced to the following three main frameworks about digital pedagogy.

TPACKThe Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge framework adds Technology (ICT) to the Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework of Shulman.
Knowing how to use technology in pedagogically sound ways for the learning of specific content is the basis of the TPACK framework.
So in short, you MUST have technical skills.
You MUST know your content
You MUST know how to deliver your content so that your students learn effectively.

Engagement TheoryA framework for technology-based teaching and learning
Engagement theory is that students must be meaningfully engaged in learning activities through interaction with others and worthwhile tasks.
These three components, summarized by Relate-Create-Donate, imply that learning activities:
1. occur in a group context (i.e., collaborative teams)
2. are project-based
3. have an outside (authentic) focus
Focus of engagement theory on meaningful and real-world learning activities is consistent with a more general trend in education. Engagement theory is presented as a model for learning in technology-based environments which synthesizes many elements from past theories of learning. The major premise is that students must be engaged in their course work in order for effective learning to occur. The theory posits three primary means to accomplish engagement: (1) an emphasis on collaborative efforts (2) project-based assignments, and (3) non-academic focus. It is suggested that these three methods result in learning that is creative, meaningful, and authentic.

Bloom's Taxonomy
There is more than one type of learning. A committee of colleges, led by Benjamin Bloom (1956), identified three domains of educational activities:
o Cognitive: mental skills (Knowledge)
o Affective: growth in feelings or emotional areas (Attitude)
o Psychomotor: manual or physical skills (Skills)

Bloom's Revised TaxonomyLorin Anderson, a former student of Bloom, revisited the cognitive domain in the learning taxonomy in the mid-nineties and made some changes, with perhaps the two most prominent ones being, 1) changing the names in the six categories from noun to verb forms, and 2) slightly rearranging them (Pohl, 2000). This new taxonomy reflects a more active form of thinking and is perhaps more accurate:

The reality is that the most effective designs for learning adapt to include a variety of media, combinations of modalities, levels of interactivity, learner characteristics, and pedagogy based on a complex set of circumstances. So in my opinion, no matter which framework you prefer, the main purpose to use digital pedagogy is to facilitate learners to achieve preplanned, optimizing, meaningful outcome to make learners engage, solve problems in their normal social lives and hopefully create their own thinking towards the changing world.

reference:
•    Material made available through Moodle: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html#cognitive, Retrieved from CQUniversity e-Courses, EDED20491, ICTs for learning design: http://e-courses.cqu.edu.au

Multiple Intelligence Test

From the above test, I am not surprised to find that I am extremely poor at music smart which explains why I failed most of my musical test at primary school. While at another hand, I am doing good at linguistic that is why I want to become a language teacher. So far, I can proudly  let you know my multi languages level, native Chinese, fluent English( partly because my husband is a typical Aussie, haha), basic Thai and German.

EDED20491 - ICTs for Learning Design

1. What is your learning style? What sorts of learning experiences would suit you
        best with your learning style?

From Felder and Solomon’s online
questionnaire test, I can tell that my learning style is active, sensing,
visual and verbal and sequential. In such case, group discussion and do it type
works better for me than just sitting in a classroom to think alone; and the
well established facts, data, formula will be easier for me to memorize and to understand;
and it seems that I am fairly well balanced on the two dimensions of visual and
verbal so that any information that can be seen or heard, eg, pictures, films, charts,
graphic stuff, video, tape, CD, presentation and explanation will suit me well;
and at the same time, I am the sequential style which means anything logically
connected and relevant will be easily understood.

2. In a traditional classroom of 25 students, how would you support the range of
        learning styles each lesson?

When I prepare lesson plan, I will consider different learning styles, that is to
say, eg, instead of using writing on whiteboard and explanation methods all the
time, I will engage students into pair role play, group discussion to entertain
both visual and verbal learning styles.

3. With your current knowledge of ICT, how could your design and digital pedagogy
        support your learners better?

This question is a little similar to Question 2. With consideration of wide range of
learning styles, video and audio material will be used in my lesson plan.
Instead of just giving students an answer, I will ask them to use different
solutions to reach the same result or even a different answer which will suit
both sensing and intuitive learners.

4. What sorts of profiling questions would you be asking about your learners to
        ensure you cater for everyone's preferences?
1. Would you like to study with classmates or alone?
2. Would you prefer doing something with your hands to
         listening, watching quietly?
3. Which one is more interesting for you, watching
         pictures or listening to music?
4. Are you satisfied with
   one answer to one specific question or do you prefer to look for
         possible different answers?

5. How does ICT support differences in learning styles?

Since information and communication technologies have covered a vast range of
sources, for active learners, they can use video camera, chat room, blog to
join in group discussion; for verbal learners, they can find more auditory
material and discussion platform to deepen their knowledge etc.