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
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