E-Learning Assignment

Please review my synopsis.

Education in the Digital Age

Teachers of the 21^st century are challenged with not just being a competent Learning manager but also to be a wiz on the computer and an expert with all the available programs that the internet now offers students. Students are now, more then ever, more inquisitive to change to new technology. Most secondary students have their own mobile phone, iPod, iPad, and laptop or desk top computer. Play stations, X boxes and the like, technology is their life and teachers are viewed as old fashion and out of touch. (Lankshear, 2005)

Productive pedagogy and the inclusion of technological engagement for the students is the new vision of educators, but what, when, where and how much do they use. What are the benefits, the down falls, the academic links? Are schools becoming a gaming console center?

E-learning, why use it? Unlike other teaching forms, e-learning can cater for all learning styles, whether the student is a kinesthetic, auditory or a visual learner, a teaching point can be delivered to all these students in a way that they understand and can engage in.(Kruse, 2004). Learning managers connecting to a network of educators, world wide, able to get their hands on endless information resources from schools and institutes the world over, (Kruse, 2004).

The new era where everyone is just an email away can produce more globally aware students for the betterment of mankind.

As well as there being endless advantages of e-learning and the ease of access for teachers and students alike, there are endless reasons way e-learning is not such a good educational tool. Students that are either slow at learning or are unmotivated to learn may fall behind the rest of the class. If the student does not know to use a computer very well or has no support from family at home they my find it hard to cope or find no value in the e-learning side of school teachings.

Internet activity needs to be constantly supervised, or students may want to wonder to different sites and waste time, or just want to play games instead of research. And then there is the fact that the internet is unreliable and the speeds can vary, causing delays with projects, and frustration to students. This increase use in computer studies can also make students less social if the lessons are not structured with this in mind. (n/a, 2010).

After investigating a small number of the digital tools available, I have identified four that I like and that I am likely to use in the classroom environment or in a school workshop.

The first one being:

www.Delicious.com

I found this web application to be, maybe, the most useful of all applications when it comes to storing useful links. For teachers and students alike, this application is free to use, it is easy to use and you can access your bookmarks from any computer that has internet access.

This application is designed to store all your bookmarks from your searching. It is a great way of keeping track of internet sites you have visited and found useful information from. Another feature of this application is when you add a bookmark it will give a counter of how many other people have added that website to their Delicious account. By clicking on this counter, it will bring up individual peoples links to that site and from there you can click on an individual and then see what other areas of research or websites they have saved in their bookmarks.

The usefulness of this feature gives a researcher countless other leads to search for useful material. If the person you have selected is researching similar topics to you. In short, you have other people’s research at your finger tips. For senior students writing finals essays and reports, this program would be a must.

I have already taught my sons how to use this and I will be teaching my students how to use this application as well.

Power Point

I thought that I had a good grasp on how to use power point for presentations and to teach by using power point, but over the last few weeks I have learnt so much more about the power point application and other ways in which it can be used. The most interesting way in which I was shown is how power point can be set up as a quiz.

The obvious uses for power point are as a means of giving a presentation slide show, displaying pictures, text, graphs, digital photos, and the like. The slide shows can be controlled by the presenter or they can be sent up to display each page on a set time, with a set appearance pattern, or remove from screen feature. Objects or text can move across the screen whilst the presenter is talking or can flash up images for a socking or interesting effect.

Excel

This program has many useful uses for school students to use, before I go into the benefits of using excel, the biggest down fall that I have found by interviewing current yr 9 student is that they have neither heard of the excel program or they have never been shown how to use it or for what uses it would be good for.

A few prime uses that excel could be used in the classroom environment,

Business class, making a spread sheet for keeping track of shares bought, sold and profit margins, learning how to track business expenditure, stock, wages etc.

Excel could be used for year 11 or year 12 Construction classes, were the students are required to estimate projects with cost and material usages, not only is this program useful for student projects but also for staff members to help run and keep track of the cost and materials used within the schools workshops.

Calendars and daily entry data sheets, graphic organizers, even writing reports with columns, shadings, pictures etc. Like most Microsoft applications, excel can insert data, pictures, text, even videos from external sources. Excel pages themselves can be shared and exported or uploaded onto web sites. Students can share their work or data spread sheets with others around the world. Despite excel being a very complex program that the teachers need to be very competent using this program themselves before they go teaching students how to use it, I strongly believe that this program used correctly can enhance the students learning and their creative input into some of their projects.

If no other e-learning devices are used during your classroom activities, teacher should show all students how to use the basic functions of excel.

Blogger

I would give Blogger a try in one of my classrooms, as a means of having the students set up their own blog and using it for a project where the students where required to design something that eventually they would be required to make in a workshop. By using a blogger application, the students would be able to do some investigating about their project and then post up dates or thoughts and ideas onto their blog for their class mates to comment against.

This format of student interaction would be beneficial for all grades of students as it would encourage creative thinking, improve student’s abilities to communicate their thoughts and ideas and it would provide the students with differing feedback about their ways of thinking, which ties into both blooms taxonomy theory and that of deBonos 6 hats theory in that, views can be given from an objective point of view or a creative suggestion or even a fact of the matter to, will it work or not.

The future

The changing times of how education is looked upon, and how learning managers are encourage to open themselves more to the likes of e-learning, in the process of bringing more e-learning tools and strategies into the classrooms and exposing the students of today that things are very different to when their parents went to school.

The focus is not on the students just being able to read and write well, now, students are expected to be computer savvy and have an expended knowledge on how to use a vast variety of program based and internet based applications.

Teachers are challenged to find new ways to engage with the students, help the students to retain their creativity, whilst still achieving their academics. Teaching with e-learning applications will only improve both the teacher and the students and bring education into the 21^st century so that one day Buck Rodgers can get that proper education.

References

Kruse, K. (2004). Benefits and Drawbacks of e-learning Retrieved 24^th Aug 2010, 2010, from www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art1_3

Lankshear, C. (2005). Digital Rhetorics: Literacies and technologies in classrooms – current practices and future directions. Retrieved 24^th Aug 2010, 2010, from www,iier.org.au/qjer/qjer15/Lankshear.html

n/a. (2010). E-learning Advantages and Disadvantages. E-learning Retrieved 24^th Aug 2010, 2010, from www.about-elearning.com/e-learning-advantages-and-disadvantages.html

Self Confessions

I must admit that the more and more that I use this Blogging system , the more and more that I like it, and am getting better at using it, to the point, I might be incline to incorporate blogging into a classroom assignment. Shock horror, I know. Times might be just a changen.

Comments of other Blogs
Here is a comment I made on Gary 's Blog

Here is another piece of communication with another student

17/8/10

Google maps-
I found this application to be interesting and engaging to students, History and Geography students would have a really good time at using this for there assignments to give more depth to distriptive mapping of past events and comparison to today's image. As for its application with real topics like Woodwork and Metal work, not so much of a good instructional tool. In saying that though, for a Graphics project a teacher could use it to illustrate how certain drafting techniques taught in class where used in buliding structures like the Eiffel tower, London Bridge, the Great wall of China, showing photos of the past and then looking at Google maps of the structures today. Interesting to say the least, but not a program that I will be using to often in a classroom.

Microsoft Word: -
Word is a program already used widely through out all schools. It is the basis for most projects and assignments. All teaching staff will have used this program and should be able to teach students how to use it successfully and the teachers should be able to successfully teach using word as well.
Word is a very good program for writing essays, stories, list, brian storming, it is able to count the words, paragraphs or spaces, it has a automatic spell check and a number of fonts and bullet settings and many more good features. Disadvantages of students using word. If they are not confident at using word, they could waste hours of time trying to recover paragraph styles, or spacing. If they do not save their work often enough during the writing process they could lose all their hard work if the computer crashes. Because of the spell checker they may become lazy at spelling.



Microsoft Excel:-
This is a very versatile program and can be used for nearly ever subject studied. While the benefits of this program and the uses are endless, so are there many issues with encouraging the use of Excel. It is a complex program and takes a long time of using to master, it can be difficult to teach to students, students can waste a lot of time trying to get the forula functions to work, the filter functions, the auto sum, these make excel great for Math, Business, Science and even Man arts and home ec. If the teacher knows how to use Excel, I strongly encourage them to show their students how it can benefit them.

3/7/10

www.voki.com
As learning and teaching covers so many different topics, content, media, arts, skills and achievements, the delivery of all these areas is just as complex, varied and engaging. I can imagine where this particular internet tool would be useful within an arts class, drama or maybe even sose, either as a project for students or even for the teacher to use as a mode of delivering a boring topic that the kids would generally lose interest in. This is a fun entertaining delivery system but it is time consuming and limited in its functions and limited in the use. I will not be pursuing this tool for any use in one of my classrooms.

Get a Voki now!



www.wordle.net
I could use this site for making signs on safety or key points to remember, acceptable behavior. There are many little uses this program could be used for. Static art, not really a war stopper, it is easy to use and students will be able to use it with ease and may even enjoy using it. I don't put alot of academical credit on this tool but it is a nicety, not a necessity. Have fun but don't waste your day on changing the world with it.

www.tagcrowd.com
Whether it is just me not knowing how to use it, or it just a poor program. Either way, not much chop. Where with wordle.com, I would use for signage and posters, this tool I would not use at all for any reason, the functions are very limited and the end product is weak. That is all there is to say about this.

No....No...NO..

accuracy board compass drawing eraser paper pencil ruler setsquare sketching textbook tidiness

created at TagCrowd.com

www.xtranormal.com
A fun interactive website. I have said it before and it won't be the last time, I can't use this tool for my lessons. Maybe to get the students to expand theiir imagination, I could get them to play with programs like this but as for using it to achieve any manual arts content projects, it is a BIG NO. I did show my youngest son though and he likes to play with it.


www.blabbersize.com
If given a power point presentation or any type of digital presentation, you could, for a little bit of humor, use this tool. As an arousal at the beginning of a lesson or as a reminding farewell that is bound to keep the students tuned in to the topic. Another fun tool, but again no real weight to its usefulness with teaching content.

A problem with this tool is, again, you need to have more supporting equipment, like a voice recorder, and a digital camera if you want to use specific image to talk for you. If it had the option of typing in your words, that would make it more user friendly. If this was a student homework project and I don't have support equipment, I am going to be a lazy little student and blow off doing this blabberize exercise.

To bad.

Claymation- an art students dream, that for the teacher too I would imagine. No real, or even close to real application for manual arts, so no. Only if you had a student to which you could not connect to but was a creative minded student would you even think of this tool.


www.ikitmovie.com
This program could be used by students to make mini movies, as in still frame productions used demonstrating how to make a project or used for demonstrating a teaching technique. This program is good, but it is time consuming and the download is at a cost. This program can be atteiveds through Microsoft movie maker as well for free.

27/7/10

www.flickr.com This program is another yahoo mail account association. This is a time consuming activity, best set for a project or home work. This program is a type of photo organiser that you can share with the world or have personalise products made from like calenders, cards, collages etc from but these all cost you money. It would be a useful tool for an arts class maybe, or projects that the student had to share with others. Personally, I don't like this program and I would not use it for any classwork activities. Next

Pod casting: I found this to be a teaching tool with an endless array of student involvement. From a simple instruction giving program, to a complete on site how to guide for what ever you wanted. I tried a pod cast for myself at my podcast but it is a program that you need supportive equipment for, like video cameras and or voice recorders, if you can get them for your class you can have alot of interactive fun with them. As for web sites for pod casting I tried
www.podomatic.com . It is good for creating your own voice podcast and publishing it on line, but I don't like the search engine for other podcast topics, it is either hard to find what you want or it is over crowded with European rubbish.

I like the look of www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/rss/podcasting.html
for finding useful podcast topics that the students can use for projects or just useful information that a teacher can use for class.


Digital photos: this would have to be one of the greatest teaching tools available to teachers everywhere, yes it requires the use of a digital camera which almost every student has in their mobil phones these days anyway. So much can be expanded on or expressed or discovered when using a digital image in your lesson plan. Being able to show students what you are talking about. You may not have taken the photo yourself, but you can bet that on he internet, somebody else already has. And depending on the copy write laws attached to that image you can generally use it for your class.

Students can use these digital pictures to add extra depth to their assignments or how-to projects, art work, etc. These images can be uploaded to almost every other program or tool used on the internet. So for a teaching tool and for a student project tool, this should be used and expanded on and taught to students that have never used a digital camera before.

Day 2+

Morning to all my mystical friends, while this week has been thrown around a little, it has still been interesting to say the lest. I learnt how cool power point can be when used as a quiz, which I will be using in my weebly in the next few days by the way. But for now, please enjoy a short intro to a power point that I developed about my favorite TV show. (if only I could work out how to input a power point into this blog, I would have shown you)

I am currently working on my own short film too using windows media player, i am just waiting to organize a recording time with a band i have booked for my sound track, as i did not want to breach any copy right laws with this task.

As well as those to wonderful pieces of information, i am going to start an interactive short story book using my wiki site. This will allow readers to add onto the story I will start, and we can see how it will trail out with different imaginations working on it. I do hope to you and your friends will get involved.

My trip to school this week was a very good learning event for me, firstly I was involved with my first full class, yr 9 Graphics, and i tell you, by the end of that session i was feeling agitated. I give praise to the teacher running the class though, about half of the students, both boys and girls, didn't want to be there and were messing around in one form or another but the teacher remained calm and consistent throughout the lesson. He did demonstrate a couple of different methods of controlling the class and disciplining the naughty students, to which the effects could be both good and bad.

So now I would like to start putting useful information onto these web sites for the benefits of my fellow student teachers by starting on my weebly site a Pros and cons page of classroom discipline methods and again i welcome all input for additions to this. I will email all class mates next week once i have this up and running for your input, again thanks and happy hunting......oops sorry, I mean Happy Learning

Good bye Pen and Paper, hello E-learning

Day 1,

Already a week behind the rest of the class, so many new tools at my disposal. i found this course is already very interesting and confusing at the same time. I have started a wikispaces page, i still need to start a bubble.com a text2mindmap.com and a delicous.com please a yahoo account.

My first question is, "is there a web site that can manage all my other web sites, account names and passwords???"

I have started a weebly.com account as well, today. Have a look. and please leave me a comment on this post. That is until i work out to really use weebly.

Well, all this is still smoke and mirrors to me at the momment and my head hurts so i will add more later. I look forward to your comments.
Cheers