Week 17 – Task 1 – Salmon’s Model

June 11, 2009 by

Just a few notes on the activity after my reading of Salmon’s model and the key principles.

I think the model is very straight forward and ultimately comes down to common sense. The model in itself is a building block – start off small and increase the amount of access, information and work required. This allows confidence to increase without the feeling of pressure in the first instance.

The differences described in each stage are made easier by the cartoon and from this you an easily add your own annotations for your own situations.

The five stages are easy to map onto my own students – I can see where this would help improve lesson planning and the process of engaging students more. However, because I don’t teach (in the traditional sense) it is not something I would have considered fully before. The model will certainly help me structure what I am doing with students, to make sure all the necessary requirements are met – it will help me to assess my own teaching practice too.

I can see where Salmon’s model fits in well with a distance course or even a course that requires attendance physically but has online elements, particularly in HE. In a secondary school however, I am not so sure how this would work perfectly well. I think this model would have to be adapted to suit the audience – common sense again I think.

Furthermore, this model is certainly something I would like to try and achieve with my current school – there is nothing like this in place at the moment. Salmon’s model clearly has an element of independent learning and teacher as facilitator rather than everything being taught. The idea of that interests me more and it must be implemented in schools as soon as it can be.

The model would be an ideal structure upon which to base a good lesson plan! A lesson plan that is innovative and engaging with clear outcomes.

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Week 16 – My Web Links

June 11, 2009 by

My details are below for the suggested sites if anyone wants to add/follow/investigate me….. lol.

Del.icio.us – Starchild20

Furl (now Diigo) – Starchild20

Flickr – Starchild1980

Twitter – Starchild20

I use Twitter frequently (microblogging) and also Diigo is my preferred site for archiving. However, I use Flickr frequently for searching images but have not uploaded any of my own as yet. I have signed up for Del.icio.us and have been aware of it for some time, but have always opted for Diigo instead, so be aware that I don’t have any content on Del.icio.us.

Please have a look and I would be happy if anyone wants to share ideas on this. I will post another message with information about each site later. In the mean time does anyone want to pair up with me? Or is everyone doing this as a group activity?

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Week 16 – Task 3 – Apply to Teaching /Learning

June 11, 2009 by

Well, my simple idea would be to use Flickr in some way for creative writing based on art work.

I have previously said that Flickr can be used in a variety of ways but one way is to use it as visual literacy. Key words here are reflection, description, discussion, location.

It may be possible to link English lessons (I am thinking UK based curriculum in schools) with art and design.

Perhaps a photographic journal that tells a story. Perhaps, like Aky, a photo of a location like Bangkok which then tells a story. This would allow students to enter into an online discussion, use photos as well as drawings of sequences and share ideas. This would tap into the creative/artistic mind. It could be possible as an alternative to a short story, to use travel as a topic and get students to write poems based on photos. Perhaps the NYC skyline without the Twin Towers – an empty scene.

Alternatively, student could use mobile technology to take photos which are then uploaded to Flickr and commented upon by other students as well as the creative writing element added in.

There is a saying, a picture is worth a thousands words – this perhaps could be a useful plan.

I have included a link to a video presentation which identifies uses of Flickr – including some of those I have mentioned here.

http://www.slideshare.net/michaelc/teaching-with-flickr-presentation.

I hope this makes sense as it really is somewhat simple.
Thoughts welcome.

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Week 16 – Task 2 – Web Service Feedback

June 11, 2009 by

I thought I would post a few notes in reflection of the three web services provided. There are others that I could comment on but in order to keep it simple I decided to stick with Diigo and Flickr. With Del.icio.us. I decided not to comment as I have not investigated it enough yet.

Diigo (previously Furl) is the one I use most and have done for some time. I actually preferred the layout and design of Furl as it seemed to have much easier navigation and I knew where everything was. Diigo is growing on me though.

I also like to quantity and quality of groups you can join on Diigo and this allows you to click on categories with specific genres or search by name.

I like the aspect of commenting on links as well as rating them by a star system.

I think diigo is useful to use with students who are required to access a particular site and comment on it in terms of analysis. It is also useful for students who you want to focus on specific learning materials and you are guiding the research they access.

Flickr is a wonderful tool, in particular for art based projects where photography may be a required element. It would allow students to draw photos/images, comment on images and photos and even have debates over what they see. It is even possible to use Flickr as a basis for creative writing and analysis.They could even share their own photos. There are so many benefits to Flickr.  The explore button on flickr is great – lots of features and you can order prints direct (if req.) I find the map fascinating as you can see a satellite of where you are as well as others who may be near to you. Flickr has so much scope – it needs to be used more in the classroom.

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Week 16 – Social Literacies – Task 1 Reading

June 11, 2009 by

I thought I would post just a few brief comments on my reading of the two papers listed:

1) Anderson, T. (2005) ‘Distance learning:social software’s killer ap?’

This article was interesting to a point but it did not keep my attention. Anderson discusses many issues including pivotal role of social presence, freedom for learning but with cost and learning effectiveness in mind, affordances, evolution of social software, classification of social software, the need for a definition as “a precise definition of social software seems yet to elude us”.

I think ultimately, after an extrensive paper, he is saying that social software needs a killer ap that covers key areas – cost, learner centred in terms of what is learnt and learner centred in terms of satisfaction.

I much preferred reading the second paper as follows.

2) Thomas, S. (2005) ‘Del.icio.us way to talk’.

The key words that I pulled from this paper are transliteracy, e-publishers, e-learning specialists and multiple platforms.

I found it a brief paper that was interesting to read. I was interested in the mention of SafariU and signed up for information on this site. I considered that SafariU (allowing you to build a customised textbook) could be categorised as a mashup (am I right Lesley?)  :-)

The key quotes that I found useful in this paper are:

“Today, transliteracy has created a new ecology with new interdependencies”

and also

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and re-learn”.

This second quote is my particular favourite when I consider the literacy issues we have in my school, in both senses of the word illiterate. This second quote also brings the following key words to mind – independent learners, just in time generation, NetGen and digital natives.

I also consider the poor social skills that our students have in a f2f setting and consider the quote “social networking is a key part of a growing complex global conversation”.

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Week 16 – Mayas & de Freitas Review

June 11, 2009 by

Below I have made a few notes after my reading of Mayes and de Freitas. It is not especially comprehensive but hopefully you can pull the points apart easily.

Learning as social practice (situative) – all of my teaching allows social interaction – I actively promote conversation in all of my lessons. I even have debates with my students during lunchtimes when I am not teaching as such – this is particularly effective with students who appear shy in the classroom.

Learning as activity (associationist) – this is true with a majority of teaching practice I think. This is true with my teaching in reference to the statement “each student responds actively to questions or problems and receives immediate feedback on their response” (p8).

Learning as achieving understanding (cognitive) – this is true and probably the most common in my teaching practice – focus on constructivism “understanding is gained through an active process of creating hypotheses and building new forms of understanding through activity” (p9). A comment made by Brown et al (1989) looks at the teacher as a facilitator for learning rather than teacher, which is very familiar to my project based teaching/learning “we should consider concepts as tools, to be understood through use, rather than self contained entities to be delivered through instruction” (p9).

Ultimately, I think my main teaching focus is on cognitive and situative theories. However, like Ben I can apply all three. My teaching situation is a bit more unique I think in that I am not a traditional teacher is a traditional classroom. My teaching is varied, innovative and often takes place in a variety of environments. My teaching is not formal as it does not require official lesson plans and learning outcomes (although I usually do create these as a backup and a guide for me), furthermore because I am not a teacher, I can be extremeley flexible and test out new tools on the students. Very often we have discussions about their learning, about the teaching they receive generally and about what they would prefer. This works well for me and them.

I hope this provides a start to my input on the topic.

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Week 16 Activity 1 – Teaching Analysis – ePedagogy

June 11, 2009 by

I had to think hard about this before I made some notes because technically I am not a “teacher” in that I have no formal teaching qualifications. However, I find myself in a situation more and more where I am in direct contact with students and teach – just not in the traditional sense and I am not classroom based – I am also categorised as support staff. My role is therefore varied and has many aspects to it…

As an e-learning co-ordinator I focus on several areas:

- eTwinning programme – European ICT project partnerships for schools
- Management of school VLE including staff training and inductions for new students
- Project manager for school website

My teaching, particulalry with eTwinning (this is the easiest example where teaching is fundamental) is flexible and and more student focused. It allows a bigger impact for presonalised learning too and certainly invovled e-learning and innovative practice. Students request to come out of normal lessons to do project work with me – because it is different and engaging. Learning environments can change too – I am not confined to a set classroom like many teachers. I also allow feedback and have a large emphasis on student voice.

I find that I act as an advisor to teaching staff on how they can implement e-learning into ther lessons – I usally advise and they then ignore it anyway :-) I have been involved in many INSET training sessions for e-learning tools, designed to empower staff in the classroom.

Prior to the focus on e-learning I was a librarian which translates to having to know everything – or so teachers and students think. In this role I found myself at the centre of having to be a bank of information, literally. This role tied in e-learning but on a much smaller scale. A school library becomes the place where you provide a information service as well as a home, as well as a counselling service etc etc. You have to be multi-talented – I also taught information skills, study/revision skills and a whole host of other things.

My role now is pure e-learning but as the only person in school with any knowledge of it or any inclination to learn more, it is a hard task indeed. I hope the above provides a brief background on my role as “teacher”. One final area that I am always keen to promote with students also is conversation….they get told so much to be quit in lessons and I often wonder why. When they are with me I want them to discuss and to to talk – how are they going to learn otherwise? I also allow students to contact me via email which is not something that our school likes – simple because of child protection. I am cautious enough to keep copies of everything though.

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Week 13 Metaphor – Nardi & O’Day

June 11, 2009 by

I have only provided a brief reflection here although I hope it highlights some features of the readings.

There are examples of information ecologies given such as a library, a hospital ITU and a self service copy shop. I would like to suggest here that multimedia centres of any kind can be classed as information ecologies – in turn can we not class the bedroom of a teenager as a multimedia centre (information ecology)? Many young people have several types of devices in their rooms -books, TV’s, game consoles, digital cameras, PC’s, iPods and so on.

Furthermore, in order to allow information ecologies to evolve (which they must) I think reflection is the key term – reflection of environment, audience/purpose, security and environment. In terms of privacy – this is also important and must be considered within ecologies – this links with audience etc.

Furthermore we could consider learning environments of any kind to be classed as ecologies – learning groups, learning styles within those groups.

In terms of ecologies and my understanding of them, following on from my previous attempt an explaining them, it is important to say that it is human interaction with these technologies that makes it an information ecology – it is a ‘whole’ process – take away a part of the ecology, such as the human, or the technology itself, then it is no longer a viable ecology.

I think this touches upon some of the issues……

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Week 11 – Usability – Website Evaluation

June 11, 2009 by

This is by no means a comprehensive evaluation but hopefully it summarises the key issues well enough. I decided (for convenience) that I would evaluate Dr Helen Barrett’s site listed in one of our previous tasks.

The URL is:

http://electronicportfolios.org/portfolios.html (Using Technology to Support Alternative Assessment and Electronic Portfolios by Dr Helen Barrett).

In terms of the pyramid then and potential issues with usability in reference to the above website:

1. Technical Usability

From a personal point of view, the site is accessible for my requirements because I don’t need larger print or voice software as other people may need. It is a simple page with lots of further links to explore. Within my workplace I cannot access many of the links at all but from home I don’t have any problems. Also, the site is typed in Times New Roman font and Ariel is far better for my eyes. I guess also you need to consider the longevity of some of the further links – I haven’t tried them all.

2. & 3. General Usability/Academic Usability

With this site being Academic, as a user you expect that it will be organised accordingly. General/Academic usability on this site is ok although it contains lots of text and is not broken down very much at all. It contains standard headings for each subject covered. The audience for this site is certainly graduate/post grad focused. The lack of images makes it difficult to read through, though it does not change the purpose of the written aspect. Generally there is nothing complicated about using the site, but it is clearly very understated.

4. Context Specific Usability

This site does not really require any prior ICT knowledge in order to use it. It really is a very comprehensive site but very text based so reading and accessing the right links is all that is required. I think it is easy to use by the people needing the information contained (disability awareness would need looking at with the site and the links to other sites).

In terms of actual usability issues that I encountered – other that not being able to access the site at work and the fact that the site is so big, there are no main concerns. However, I find it visually unappealing and very tedious to go through – however valuable some of the resources may be.

I have not yet accessed much of the site but find it a daunting task to do so – purely on my judgment of the initial pages (though you should never judge a book by its cover I know!).

I hope this highlights a few points – there may be more to add but I just thought it was important to attempt the task and build upon it later.

It would be interesting to hear other thoughts on this site if you use it for a previous task in this block.

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Weeks 11-14 – Social Networking Task 3

May 5, 2009 by

I have thought about a set of key points that educators may need to consider if they wish to use a social networking site on a formal course, they are as follows:

- Reliability and Stability
- Cost – funding (or is it free?)
- Accessibility (disability awareness)
- Branding – does it have a good reputation
- Needs – is it appropriate for intended outcomes (functionability)
- Support structure (linked to first point) – internal and external
- Audience – what do they want/need? Do they want you in ‘their’ space?

These points are based on my reading of the stated articles but I am sure there are more that could be added.

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