collaborative learning...

The other day I was on a tour with my AT as part of her Dean-ing (My AT is also a Dean) visiting every class checking to see if any student has a cell phone on them. If found our 'mission' was to confiscate them. What an irony, I thought. The intent of my practicum was to actually experiment, use and promote these technologies for the purpose of thier multi-dimensional learning. Here I am doing the opposite.
Internet enabled computers offer students the opportunity to engage in peer-to-peer communication via email, chat rooms, bulletin boards and instant messaging (Demb, et al. 2004). In addition, mobile communication that includes multimedia messaging, web access, email and voice/text messaging, provides short learning activities that are attractive to students and foster collaboration (Shih & Mills, 2007). Gay, Stefanone, Grace-Martin and Hembrooke (2001) suggest that within a collaborative learning environment, students working in groups recognise and use social communication for the exchange of information, and I have noticed that even before teachers formally start using these technologies in their teaching certain groups of students effectively use them for collaborative learning. Of course, thanks to the wireless connections, they increase the ability for students to collaborate whenever and wherever they want. Probably teachers need to legitimise the use of these technologies currently hiding in the students pockets.

ubiquitous communication....

Having seen students visiting my AT to hand-in all sorts of letters (letters of apology, permission, parent approval etc) I asked my AT if email is used for student-teacher-parent communication at all. The answer was surprising. My AT questioned the legitimacy of Email which do not carry pen-stroked signatures.

Several studies quoting students report that using email to communicate with teachersis generally more preferred(Mitra & Steffensmeier, 2000), and that with email, they communicate with teachers more often and more freely (Arend, 2004). Traditional office hours are being replaced with email communication (Dickson & Segars, 1999; Reynolds, 2003), as students can ask brief questions of teachers without having to meet in person. This asynchronous communication allows for greater flexibility for students and teachers, and also provides teachers with an electronic record of student advising and counselling (Partee, 1996). Brown and Pettito (2003) suggest that email is becoming ubiquitous in that, “a majority of academic communities are presuming that students and faculty communicate via email” (p. 26).

How far removed is the practice from thoery....

networked class rooms....

Regarding the use of computers in secondary schools, there are a number of aspects to consider including general use, communication, student attitudes toward learning, student achievement, and distractions.
The study of McVay, Snyder and Graetz (2005) finds that students use computers an average of five hours per day, with 36% of that time being spent on academic activities. Studies examined how students use computers for learning:

1.      16% of overall computer use involved typing papers and notes (Demb, Erickson and Hawkins-Wilding, 2004)

2.      Other work such as writing papers, using software programs, searching the Internet, and completing group projects constitute the major bulk of computer use (Arend, 2004)

The use of these communication tools (recreational computer activity) can also be potentially detrimental in the classroom.

1.      Recreational email and instant messaging are among the primary uses of students in the classrooms (Grace-Martin and Gay, 2001)

2.      Recreational use of email and instant messaging in class can be distracting to students (Crook & Barrowcliff, 2001).

3.      12% of students used their computers in the class for non-learning purposes such as web surfing or social emailing (Barak, et al.(2006).

4.      The ratio of work: play is found to be 30%:70% (Crook & Barrowcliff, 2001)

Are the teachers equipped to provide learning activities that are both challenging as well as recreational is the question often asked without showing the teachers the way out.

Words...the stumbling blocks

Many subject areas, as I see, have specialised vocabularies which learners will have to understand and be able to use and ICT is no exception. In many cases this will involve explicitly introducing new vocabularly and providing a range of activities so that learners can practice their new vocabulary which ideally should include learning the correct pronunciation of those new words.

In addtion, the current practicum invilves dealing with students who are new immigrants as well as refugees. This means 30% my class comprises of students from non-English background. Some of the following activities seemed to be helping:

• allows the learner to create and integrate a new mental map of the subject area
• involve visual elements to demonstrate the new words
• involve audio elements to practise pronunciation, rythym, intonation and stress of new words
• may include interactive activities to make learning the vocabulary more engaging, for example, crosswords, matching, cloze, quizzes, labelling diagrams
• opportunities to use online glossaries and dictionaries for learners to re-inforce vocabularly at any time during their learning, Google translater is most frequently used.

Ideally learning new words (concepts) should occur within the context of other learning which means  that the learners will be able to see or hear the new words being used in authentic contexts. This is found to make the vocabulary of immediate interest and relevance to the learner. And the ICT integration suggests the following design steps:

• Select the vocabulary items that need to be learnt and practised.
• Select graphics, photos and audio to support the vocabulary.
• Design the activities which will explicitly practise the words
• Prepare the activities using appropriate ICT tool.
• Upload the vocabulary activities to the web, either on a stand alone website or into a Learning Management System.
• Integrate the activities into a complete learning sequence.
• Prepare supporting resources for learners on how to use the vocabulary activities.

Yet. I find this involves a lot of bending of the school's ICT policy. I am fiercely supported by my AT. Sill I find that the management is sitting on their hands. However, I find numbers of tools and resources available the moment the green signal is given:

• Hot Potatoes - http://www.halfbakedsoftware.com/index.php
• Audacity - a free audio editor. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about.php
• Dictionary.com - http://dictionary.reference.com/
• Case Study - http://netspot.com.au/gtcasestudy/gippstage_06.htm
• Glossarist - http://www.glossarist.com/
• Using Glossaries in Moodle - http://docs.moodle.org/en/Glossary with instructions at http://docs.moodle.org/en/Adding/editing_a_glossary

Co-construction: two ways

What does research say...

1. “Allowing students to have a sense of ownership and control over ‘what is learned, how it is learned and when it is learned’ has been shown to be a powerful motivating factor… Co-construction is at the heart of customized learning. Students and teachers work together.” Mason Durie, Students First – Secondary Futures
2. “Learners actively construct knowledge by confronting and solving problems. Each learner brings his or her own expertise and shares it with others at the same time as developing new expertise, and so the process of construction is an interactive one. Cultural and social meanings are expressed and constructed.” McNaughton (1995), Describing co-construction theory

One thing I noticed during my practicum is that students also carry knowledge from other subject areas. This means working together with other subject teachers. Team teaching some concepts with an art, business, English, or science teacher could provide students a great variety and an authentic experience. This could be effectively carried out by arranging students go into the other teacher’s classroom for a change of atmosphere or inviting the other teacher into the classroom or even tailoring the project content to the content being covered by subject-area teachers.

The school I am currently in is a decile 3 school and only ICT classrooms have computer access. Nevertheless, we are working together with social studies faculty to support them with ICT integrated activities. Students are so very engaged to design a PowerPoint presentation. They make use of the knowledge they gather from their social studies classroom and couple it with the design issues taught in an ICT class to produce a presentation for an Observatory about the Celestial bodies starting with the Solar System.

some useful scenarios???

Scenario 1: Teacher moving about the room when students are working on computers -challenging, checking, monitoring, assisting and intervening or supporting as necessary.

Scenario 2: Moving the furniture around to match the landscape to the activity.

Scenario 3: Teacher scanning the room with frequency to figure out where to move next but will also use eyeballing and eye contact to make some of those movements less necessary as many students respond well to such gestures.

Scenario 4: Teacher announcing any shift of activity with enough time so that students can wrap up what they are doing. "In two minutes I will be asking you to turn around and join me for the next activity."

Scenario 5: Teacher asking students to "shut screens" when a single computer shared by a pair or trio works better than one-on-one. Sometimes a group discussion is best served by cooling computers down.

Scenario 6: Teacher calling for complete attention prior to demonstrating a series of instructions. "I need 100 per cent eye contact now."

Scenario 7: Teacher holding conferences with individual students and teams, guiding, suggesting, encouraging and supporting their work in various ways.

Scenario 8: Teacher devoting energy and time to assessment, most of it informal, asking how things are going and what needs to be adjusted.

I tried to be the student where these scenarios are practiced, and I found it stifling. Any comments please?

importance of strategy

The main goal of this blog was to stress the importance of facilitating thinking strategically among the students. There can be different types and a numbers of tools used during any one lesson. The ICT classroom where I am currently doing my practicum, students enjoy a one-to-one desktop computer to do their work. Just because a teacher works in a one-to-one school or classroom does not mean that every learning experience should make use of any or all of those computers. There should, I understand, be times when all the computers should be set aside as the group explores an important topic or issue. At other times each student may be working independently and separately on a computer or a paper pencil tool. We sometimes ask students to work in pairs and trios — sometimes in quartets and sextets. There are no set rules or tools to dictate what works best - working smarter is what needs to be developed, I guess.

social learning

...by nature we are social beings, and I think Web2.0 is just enabling something that we actually like to do. Social learning has been around for a long time. Albert Bandura was one of the first writers way back in the 70s (Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall).

Networks I think are a really valuable development that the web-based software is enabling. These connections that we have with people can be constantly shifting as our need or focus changes and can take our students much further than just our classroom or institutional boundaries. For example, all of a sudden we can now choose a topic and communicate on a world-wide basis either with experts, other practitioners – really anyone – and that’s very engaging and enriching from a learning perspective.

Otherwise you normally get  essays and things back that are basically regurgitated what you have already told them. But, as a teacher I am interested in knowing what they think. With the effective use of social networks, it is certainly posible to have a peek view of their thinking - or kick thier thinking off.



Also communities are a little bit more closed – with like-minded people there is this danger of echo-chambers. If I’m in a group with like-minded people, we just keep talking about things that we already know and we already like (Txting, for example). That doesn’t leave us open to a lot of examination from those arguing against us. But this may not be the case with social software such as Facebook or Twitter, for example.You can hang out with other practitioners who may not necessarily agree to what we think or do is wonderful.

I’d like to see students more in these loosely-formed networks where people can come in and offer critique – not criticism – but informed critique, and we get some rich debate happening around issues rather than the more closed behavioural thing within a community of practice that we used to see. The learner’s ability to then comfortably mix in these environments seems really empowering for them as well. They don’t seem to hesitate and I think you will see the younger ones as very natural communicators.

digital students speak...

The New York Times reported in July of 2010 disappointing results across a number of projects that hoped laptops would improve the academic success of the disadvantaged students who were the focus of the programs. "Computers at Home: Educational Hope vs. Teenage Reality by RANDALL STROSS - published: July 10, 2010. Yet these students say otherwise....