week 8

Another part of further Educators

At a part of  the learning activties for this week I found most helpful the list of frameworks to sequence learning. Like the standard elaborations that I never knew existed I also hadn’t heard of  many of these frameworks  either. When I was researching a relevant framework for my unit plan I came across with a useful website .  I strongly reccommend for you to view the site as I found it extremely useful.To give you a snapshot of this resource the project was commissioned in 2000 by the AUTC to explore the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)  to facilitate flexible learning opportunities for students by identifying learning designs that have been demonstrated to contribute to high quality learning experiences and determining which learning designs may be redeveloped in a more generic form.  Oliver (1999) argues that a learning design comprises the following key elements:

• Tasks that learners are required to do.
• Resources that support learners to conduct the task.
• Support mechanisms that exist from a teacher implementing  it.

Next time when you are sequencing learning I believe it would be worthwhile to consider this diagram and Learning Designs.
In your studies have you found any other learning designs that are effective and useful.

week 6 & 7

 

Not encouraging ICT

Hi guys,

It seems that other countries are debating and evaluating the decision to use ICTs in schools. The following article particularly discusses European schools.

For me, some of the issues raised from this article were that:Teachers are not embracing ICT use in classrooms,Teachers need more pedagogical training to become confident in using ICTs.More money is needed to be able to include ICTs in schools, let alone classrooms and Teachers are not making connections between learning and their already existing ICT knowledge. Their knowledge about ICT could be used in their class; however they are just not making links between the fact that they could use the ICT devices (e.g. mobile phones, Skype) evident in their personal life, in their classroom.It is important for us as pre-service teachers to gain a deeper understanding of ICTs, by acquiring useful knowledge and thinking about what can be learnt through the use of ICTs.

 http://www.euractiv.com/education/experts-ict-bigger-part-educatio-news-517288

 

 

  I am Working in the Early childhood centre with the 3 to 4 year olds  and I’m starting to realise that we don’t utilise the usage of ICT’S enough. In the room we have 2 computers and an Interactive white board. The computers seem to be used more as pacifying tool for those children who are disruptive and hard to manage. The children who are like this get put on the computer to play educational phonics games etc, and they really engage and enjoy this. This enables the rest of us staff to work with the other children. I’m now starting to think is this there preferred area of interest and is the behaviour just to get on the computer. From the information I have been reading on the EDC 3100 course I really believe we need to structure ICT’S into our classroom with the use of the computers and IWB we have alongside introducing more ICT’S