Teaching in the Context of ICT

Page 35 of the New Zealand Curriculum describes teaching as a process of inquiry.In this ongoing, cyclical process, teachers constantly ask themselves where their students are in their learning, how they can help them progress, and how their teaching impacts on the students’ learning

Focus Inquiry

Teachers identify the outcomes they want their students to achieve. They consider how their students are doing in relation to those outcomes, and they ask what their students need to learn next in order to achieve them. The following questions may be pertinent -

1. How will I know the learner?
2. How will I assess prior knowledge?
3. What knowledge is important?
4. What is important given where my students are at?

Teaching Inquiry

Takes place both during and after teaching as teachers monitor their students’ progress towards the identified outcomes and reflect on what this tells them. Teachers use this new information to decide what to do next to ensure continued improvement in student achievement and in their own practice. It is, therefore, important to ask -

1. What strategies (evidence- based) are most likely to help my students learn this?

Learning inquiry

The teacher investigates the success of the teaching in terms of the prioritised outcomes, using a range of assessment approaches. They do this both while learning activities are in progress and also as longer-term sequences or units of work come to an end. They then analyse and interpret the information to consider what they should do next. The questions are -

1. What data could be collected?
2. What tools could be used to do this?
3. What happened as a result of the teaching?
4. What do I need to change?
5. What are the next steps for learning?

The Internet: Paradise Lost or Paradise Found?

Successful Practices

The Internet has and will continue to change the way teachers and students go about the business of education. Educators who are willing to take the time to explore this new technology will find that it offers an almost unlimited amount of opportunity for learning. Creative teachers from around the world are banding together to utilize the educational resources of the Internet and we are looking for others to participate.

A number of teachers around the country have been using the Internet in their classrooms for many years. These pioneer Internet-using educators have had the opportunity to experiment with a number of techniques and creative teaching methods that tap into the educational potential of the Internet. Educators who are just beginning to explore the possibility of using the Internet in the curriculum can benefit from the experience of these teachers.

1. Some educators and organizations have established web sites that offer useful resources for Internet novices as well as experienced online educators interested in integrating the Internet into their curriculum. These sites contain useful tips designed to help teachers take advantage of the information found on the Internet, project ideas, project groups and organized lists of curriculum based web sites grouped by topic. These comprehensive collections of links are excellent places to find relevant and appropriate curriculum materials on the World Wide Web.
2. There is no escaping the fact that the teacher needs to put a considerable amount of time into researching and bookmarking appropriate web sites that their students will visit. Finding curriculum sites in advance saves hours of wasted class time. Students can go directly to the bookmarked sites; there is no time wasted stumbling through search engines looking for web sites that may or may not be relevant to the subject being researched. Some teachers create their own web pages that contain relevant curriculum links that their students can access in the classroom and at home. Students with Internet access at home can visit the school web site and their teacher's link page. Research can continue at home without interruption.
3. Veteran Internet-using teachers have learned that instructors need to carefully structure lessons that involve the use of the Internet. Students using the Internet need to approach the task with a purpose. Allowing students to mindlessly surf the web is a waste of precious instructional time and increases the possibility that students will encounter a web site containing inappropriate or objectionable material. By contrast, well planned lessons that include outlines, questions sheets and note-taking activities help students to collect enormous amounts of information. The manner in which the teacher organizes the research is critical to the success of the lesson.
4. As mentioned previously, publishing student work is an excellent use of the Internet. Students can create web sites that allow them to share their knowledge with others. Other learners can then visit the web site and learn from the students that created the sites. An exciting way to get started having students create websites is to participate in one of the many Internet contests that occur annually. The contests are designed to encourage groups of students to create interactive web sites that serve as educational resources for the world. The Global Schoolhouse is a teacher resource site that serves as a clearinghouse for these well-run and popular Internet competitions.
5. Teachers interested in integrating the benefits of the Internet into their curriculum should proceed cautiously and methodically. We need to set small goals and take steps to reach those goals. Teachers need to develop a basic foundation of personal computer skills before they attempt some of the more advanced Internet-related activities. A teacher who has personally never used the Internet is not in a position to begin creating web pages with students on the first day of class. With a little experience however, he or she can take small, controlled steps to visit curriculm-related sites with their students. Once there, they will expand their knowledge of Monet, Helen Keller, Mars or tessellations.

We share food and knowledge

There are many established theories and models we could use to explain learning and a few specialised theories about how learning can be enhanced and extended through electronic media. But if we want to gain a better understanding of learning within various e-learning contexts, we need to get our hands dirty at the interface of e-learning to begin to understand some of the complexities becuase some of the rules of traditional learning are changed or extended. The new phenomena causes us, teachers, to modify our expectations and opinions of how students learn within electronic environments, or cause students to behave in ways that would not be possible or even acceptable in traditional settings.

George Siemens and Stephen Downes present us with connectivism - in their own words, a 'theory for the digital age'. It's not what you know, Siemens argues, but who you know that's important. Others like Scott Wilson say that Personal Learning Environments are a counter proposition to the institutional content management system (VLE), while still others are theorising about what PLEs can possibly look like (me included). Then there are those such as Marc Prensky, Dave White and Mark Bullen who lock horns and argue whether today's learners are respectively, digital natives and immigrants, residents and visitors, or none of the above.

My own teaching experience has led me to theorise why certain things happen. I have seen several things happen that are departures from traditional learning behaviours. Students who previously collaborated willingly on a single piece of work for example, may decide to be more protective of their ideas and work when it's placed in a shared online space such as a wiki. Some students lose all their inhibitions when they post content onto Facebook or Myspace. People who are quite vocal in traditional classroom situations suddenly have a crisis of confidence in an online setting.  And yet the literature suggests that there are no significant differences between traditional and online forms of learning. e-Pedagogy is not an easy field to understand, but it is on the increase, and we only need new theories to help us understand.

Role Assumed by ICT Educators in Practice...

Epsom Girls Grammar recruited a Director for school's E-Learning. Having attended a briefing by the incumbent, I started wondering her actual role. In fact it occurs to me that every teacher needs to assume the responsibilities that this school is trying to fossilize in this new role.

Until now, the regular use of ICT in education in Secondary Schools appears to be low, despite the availability of technology relatively cheaply  (Strudler, Falba, & Hearrington, 2005; Tondeur, Van Keer, van Braak, & Valcke, 2008). In this regard, research indicates that there is a gap between the educational change required by means of ICT implementation and the actual use of ICT in schools (Tondeur, van Braak, & Valcke, 2007). To realise the potential of ICT, schools need to realise the complexity of its implementation especially in way of innovation and change (Lai, Trewern, & Pratt, 2002; Tearle, 2004). Also, as Strudler, Falba, and Hearrington (2001) emphasise, educational change with ICT is in continuous progress and demands ongoing coordination and support.

This means that schools need ICT teachers who can guide and support the school in implementing ICT into education (Watson, 2006). School technicians cannot fulfil this role nor does a director. Obviously the responsibility is assigned to the ICT educators (e.g., Lai et al., 2002; Strudler, 1994). The ICT educators, therefore, play an important role in the integration and management of ICT in schools (Lai et al., 2002; Marcovitz, 2000).

Over the last few decades, the role of the ICT educator has changed considerably. In the nineteen-eighties they mainly dealt with practical problems associated with the installation and use of computers (Moursund, 1992). Nowadays, besides this role, the ICT educator is assumed to take on many different responsibilities which Moursund (1992) divides into two categories: planning and implementation. Planning includes tasks such as facilitating changes in the curriculum and making sure that there are means available to implement the curriculum. Implementation means that the ICT educator facilitates innovation: they maintain the hardware and the software; offers training to the teachers, administrative staff and parents; develops curricula; and provides technical support (Moursund, 1992). Additionally, they define the ICT educator as a change agent, someone who facilitates the change in ICT use at schools.

digital brainstorming...

I am going to use 'Inspiration' next week to teach my students mind-mapping. It is called 'brain-storming' here in this school. What is in a name? As part of research I found quite a few strategies. Just sharing them with you all....

• Time Travel. How would you deal with this if you were in a different time period? 10 years ago? 100 years ago? 1,000 years ago? 10,000 years ago? How about in the future? 10 years later? 100 years later? 1,000 years later? 10,000 years later?

• Teleportation: What if you were facing this problem in a different place? Different country? Different geographic region? Different universe? Different plane of existence? How would you handle it?
• Attribute change. How would you think about this if you were a different gender? Age? Race? Intellect? Height? Weight? Nationality? Your Sanity? With each attribute change, you become exposed to a new spectrum of thinking you were subconsciously closed off from.
• Role-storming. What would you do if you were someone else? Your parent? Your teacher? Your manager? Your partner? Your best friend? Your enemy? Etc?
• Iconic Figures. This is a spinoff of rolestorming. What if you were an iconic figure of the past?  Albert Einstein? Thomas Edison? Mother Theresa? Princess Diana? Winston Churchill? Adolf Hitler? How about the present? Barack Obama? Steve Jobs? Bill Gates? Warren Buffet? Steven Spielberg? Etc? How would you think about your situation?
• Superpowers. This is another spinoff of role-storming. What if you suddenly have superpowers? Superman? Spiderman? Wonderwoman? X-Men? The Hulk? One of the Fantastic Four? What would you do?
• Gap Filling. Identify your current spot – Point A – and your end goal – Point B. What is the gap that exists between A and B? What are all the things you need to fill up this gap? List them down and find out what it takes to get them.
• Group Ideation. Have a group brainstorming session! Get a group of people and start ideating together. More brains are better than one! Let the creative juices flow together!

• Mind Map. Great tool to work out as many ideas as you can in hierarchical tree and cluster format. Start off with your goal in the center, branch out into the major sub-topics, continue to branch out into as many sub-sub-topics as needed. Source Forge is a great open-source mindmapping software that I can recommend.
• Medici Effect. Medici Effect refers to how ideas in seemingly unrelated topics/fields intersect. Put your goal alongside similar goals in different areas/contexts and identify parallel themes/solutions. For example, if your goal is to be an award winning artist, look at award winning musicians, educators, game developers, computer makers, businessmen, etc. Are there any commonalities that lie among all of them that you can apply to your situation? What worked for each of them that you can adopt?
• SWOT Analysis. Do a SWOT of your situation – What are the Strengths? Weaknesses? Opportunities? Threats? The analysis will open you up to ideas you may not be aware before.
• Brain Writing. Get a group of people and have them write their ideas on their own sheet of paper. After 10 minutes, rotate the sheets to different people and build off what the others wrote on their paper. Continue until everyone has written on everyone else’s sheet.
• Trigger Method. Brainstorm on as many ideas as possible. Then select the best ones and brainstorm on those ideas as ‘triggers’ for more ideas. Repeat until you find the best solution.
• Variable Brainstorming. First, identify the variable in the end outcome you look to achieve. For example, if your goal is to achieve X visitors to your website, the variable is # of visitors. Second, list down all the possibilities for that variable. Different variations of visitors are gender/age/race/nationality/occupation/interests/etc. Think about the question with each different variable. For example, for Genre: How can you get more females to your website? How can you get more males to your website? For age: How can you get more teenagers to your website? How can you get more adults to your website? And so on.
• Niche. This is the next level of variable brainstorming method. From the variations of the variable you have listed, mix and match them in different ways and brainstorm against those niches. For example, how can you get more male teenagers to your website? (Gender & Age) How can you get more female students to your website? (Nationality, Gender & Age)
• Challenger. List down all the assumptions in your situation and challenge them. For example, your goal is to brainstorm on a list of ideas for your romance novel which you want to get published. There are several assumptions you are operating in here. (1) Genre to write: Romance. Why must it be that romance? Can it be a different genre? Another assumption is for a novel. (2) Length of the story: Novel. Why must it be a novel? Can it be a short story? A series of books? (3) Medium: Book. Why must be it a book? Can it be an ebook? Mp3? Video? And so on.
• Escape Thinking. This is a variation of Challenger method. Look at the assumptions behind the goal you are trying to achieve, then flip that assumption around and look at your goal from that new angle. For example, you want to earn more income from selling books. Your assumption may be ‘People buy books for themselves’. Flip the assumption around such that ‘People do NOT buy books for reading’. What will this lead to? You may end up with people buy books as gifts, for collection purposes, etc. Another assumption may be ‘People read books’. The flip side of this assumption may be people look at books (drawings). Escaping from these assumptions will bring you to a different realm of thought on how to achieve your goal.
• Reverse Thinking. Think about what everyone will typically do in your situation. Then do the opposite.

• Counteraction Busting. What counteracting forces are you facing in your scenario? For example, if you want to increase traffic to your website, two counteracting forces may be the number of ads you put and the page views of your site. The more ads you put, the more users will likely be annoyed and surf away. What can you do such that the counteraction no longer exists or the counteraction is no longer an issue? Some solutions may be (1) Get ads that are closely related to the theme of your site (2) Get contextual ads that are part of your content rather than separate, and so on.
• Resource Availability. What if money, time, people, supplies are not issues at all? What if you can ask for whatever you want and have it happen? What will you do?
• Drivers Analysis. What are the forces that help drive you forward in your situation? What are the forces that are acting against you? Think about how you can magnify the former and reduce/eliminate the latter.
• Exaggeration. Exaggerate your goal and see how you will deal with it now. Enlarge it: What if it is 10 times its current size? 100 times? 1000 times? Shrink it: What if it is 1/10 its current size? 1/100? 1/1000? Multiply it: What if you have 10 of these goals now? 100? 1000?
• Get Random Input. Get a random stimuli and try to see how you can fit it into your situation. Get a random word/image from a dictionary/webpage/book/magazine/newspaper/TV/etc, a random object from your room/house/workplace/neighborhood/etc and so on.
• Meditation: Focus on your key question such as ‘How can I solve XX problem?’ or ‘How can I achieve XX goal?’ and meditate on it in a quiet place. Have a pen and paper in front of you so you can write immediately whatever comes to mind. Do this for 30 minutes or as long as it takes.

• Write a list of 101 ideas. Open your word processor and write a laundry list of at least 101 ideas to deal with your situation. Go wild and write whatever you can think of without restricting yourself. Do not stop until you have at least 101.

Long reading, isn't it?