Week 6

This week’s focus was mobile technologies such as the IPad, the mobile phone and the IPod touch. These sorts of technologies are very familiar, widely used and very accessible to the digital natives of today’s youth.

IPad

I have used my IPad both at prac as well as in my earlier career as an early childhood educator. I found it to be a great educational tool because of the man educational apps that are offered which are inexpensive, if not free as well as the fact that it is lightweight and portable as well as very simple to use.

This short clip is an excellent example of a very young digital native interacting with an IPad. 

Some ways that I have used an IPad in the classroom include:

·         Creating learning stories in accordance with the Early Years Learning Framework using apps

·         Taking pictures to record learning

·         Downloading e-books to suit classroom themes at the drop of a hat rather than searching for them

Ways that my students have used IPads in the classroom include:

·         Creating stories using apps such as StripDesign, BookCreator or Keynote

·         Consolidating mathematics knowledge using the LadyBird maths apps

·         Moderating their own noise level using the Too Noisy app

I recently attending the Early Years Catholic Education Conference and one of the workshops I attended was “Working with IPads in the Early Years” with Robin Finch, something new that I took away from this class was the fact that the IPad has a feature that allows the user to be locked into one app which would be incredibly helpful for ensuring that students remained on task as well as not allowing them to stumble across something unrelated on inappropriate.

Here is a simple clip to guide you into using this feature

Mobile Phones

I found it helpful to revisit the mobile phone wiki/DeBonos hats activity that I engaged in earlier this term when thinking about this topic.

·         Ways that I have used my mobile phone in the classroom include:

·         Taking photos of learning and outcomes being achieved

·         Taking videos of student learning

·         Taking audio and recordings of students

·         Using it as a timer

I have my doubts about letting early childhood students use my mobile phone or a mobile phone owned by the school mostly because they are an easily damaged and expensive item.  I think the IPad is much better as they are able to be used on a stable surface and the student wouldn't be able to carry it around and risk dropping and breaking the device.

IPod

I have never used an IPod in the classroom but here is a screenshot I took from the Apple website that shows the features of an IPod touch at a glance. I would think that an IPod touch would have the same capability of being broken by an early childhood student in the classroom but here is a clip of a very brave teacher that shows the benefits of using an IPod touch in the classroom.

ICloud

As an end note I would just like to quickly talk about ICloud. Apple (2013) states that “ICloud is seamlessly integrated into your apps so you can access your content on all your devices.” Watch this clip to learn more about the capabilities of ICloud.

I definitely think that I-devices have their place in the classroom because of the many educational apps offered as well as their ability to integrate through ICloud.

Happy Blogging everyone.

References

Apple (n.d.). IPod touch at a Glance. Retrieved from http://www.apple.com/au/ipod-touch/

Week 5

This week we examined a set of tools that could be used to present, collate or share learning or information. These tools are all interactive as well as multimodal which make them ideal for digital natives who are non-linear learners or thinkers and not linear learners or thinkers like students of the past who were taught primarily with books.

PowerPoint

This week I used PowerPoint for one of my assignments. I created an inquiry model for teachers and students to teach year three students how to write a recount. My PowerPoint guided them through the task in ten easy steps. I included hyperlinks in both my text and pictures to take the students and the teacher on a journey while exploring the task of writing a recount.

You can find the PowerPoint here; I converted it onto a PDF file and then converted it into a Prezi. 

Here is a PMI that I created about my PowerPoint

Plus

·         I created a safe environment for students to explore this topic independently because they were directed to specific sites through my hyperlinks.

·         All of the necessary tools for exploring the concept of writing a recount were all on one page

·         The tool is able to be used by students and teachers

Minus

·         The PowerPoint would have to be checked often to make sure that pages that were hyperlinked did not expire.

Interesting

·         This tool could be used independently as well as interdependently with a teacher or a small group of students.

Prezi

The next digital tool that I explored was Prezi. I have watched Prezi’s created by other students before but until now I had never created my own.  It was incredibly easy for me to convert my PowerPoint that I created earlier into a Prezi. I watched some YouTube videos about Prezi that might be helpful to beginners learning to use Prezi.

 I think that Prezi would be incredibly helpful in the classroom as it is a visual representation of learning. Jones (1988) maintains representations can help students select important ideas and details that enable learners to develop new skills they acquire to complete a task. .  Graphic representations are particularly helpful for visual learners and for those who struggle to understand information presented primarily in a linear fashion.

Glogster

While exploring Glogster I created a pin board glog from the many templates available to me. I explored the many learning benefits of Glogster on my pinboard as well as including a picture and a YouTube clip and I was then able to save it and upload it here:

The group 4 technology that I chose to talk about this week is Google Docs. I have used this tool many times when working on group assignments.

Advantages of this tool include:

·         Ability for all group members to access the document

·         Negates the need for the group to constantly meet

·         Group members can build on each other’s ideas

Disadvantages of this tool can include:

·         While digital natives are quite comfortable with this sort of technology, I can’t imagine my Mum as a digital immigrant using something like this.

·         Other group members can accidentally delete information that was added.

Until next time bloggers.

References:

Jones, B. (1988). Teaching Students to Construct Graphic Representations. Educational Leadership, 46(4), 20.

Week 4

This weeks blog post will be about exploring images, audio and video tools.

Using Images as a Learning Manager:

In my job before Uni I was a Kindy Educator and had to resize images every day when updating our class blog, Facebook page and daily reflection of our learning every day to ensure that we did not waste time waiting for very large images to upload. This is a practice that I would like to continue when I finish my degree and move on to teaching in a school as I liked how involved the parents could get with the sharing of pictures of their child’s learning.

Using Images as a Learner

Gee (1991) states that we are better at what we acquire but that we know more about what we learn. By providing visual and written representations of procedural knowledge learning managers are combining the best of both ways of gaining knowledge and skills. Students should be provided with visual representations of their learning in order to consolidate what they have learned.

Here  is an image that I took on the weekend and re-sized. 

Exploring Audio tools

I was introduced to the Voki tool previously in this course and I created one for my blog last week. This week I created another and added my own voice to it using the microphone on my headphones that I use for distance courses. I recorded my voice with a reference to the Early Years Learning Framework (2009) that states that, “Children are effective communicators and engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts when they view and listen to printed, visual and multimedia texts and respond with relevant gestures, actions, comments and/or questions.”

IMovie

When thinking about using video in an Early Childhood classroom I have brainstormed some ideas of how I think my students would be able to use video to:

Create – Creating Claymation or similar movies to produce their own short films

Present – Creating a short movie clip to present information learned in an integrated unit in a new and different way.

Communicate – Communicating with other schools and classes with recorded videos about shared learning or projects.

Summarise – Students could create a movie or series of still images in a slide show to summarise their learning in a term or a school year to present to parents.

Evaluate – Students could compare video clips or create two videos for comparison on a topic.

This is a movie that I created for a numeracy course to demonstrate real life use of numeracy in Early Childhood students, I created it using IMovie. I documented the learning journey through a series of still pictures and quotes about what the students said and then added them together, added text and a sound track and uploaded it to a shared Facebook page for a group assessment task.

Until next week.

References

Australia, & Council of Australian Governments. (2009). Belonging, being & becoming: The early years learning framework for Australia. Canberra, A.C.T: Dept. of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations for the Council of Australian Governments.

Gee, J. (1991). What is literacy? In C. Mitchell & D. Weiler (Eds.), Rewriting literacy: Culture and the discourse of the other. New York: Bergin and Garvey.