Assignment One Complete!

All finished! It took a lot of thinking, new skills and time to develop this assignment but I have really enjoyed myself! What I like so much about this assignment is that it is so different from anything I have done at uni in the past. It was fun to try something different other than writing essays. This really got me thinking and I’m happy for that! My artefact is based on year 9 history and ICT skills that will be used to help the students learn and complete their assessment. I hope everyone has done well with this assignment and has enjoyed it!

Below is my artefact website:

http://u1033192.wix.com/ict-and-history

Emailing within the classroom

As ICT begins to grow within our classrooms today, it has got me thinking about emailing within the classroom and what should be appropriate or not. Speaking from my own experiences within school, emails could become a bit of a problem within the classrooms. There was a lot of inappropriate emails being sent and received including cyber bullying that would be included within them. This has me thinking that as email is an essential within school, should there be limits and certain boundaries put in place? I believe all emails should be monitored within the classroom and that teachers and staff should keep a close watch on this, but do you think this is realistic and possible? I think this is possible and would be great if all schools were able to help emailing stay appropriate.

Mobile phones and Classrooms

I really like what Schon has said here about mobile phones!
It is a really difficult and complicated topic that has a lot of pros and cons. To me, I believe mobile phones should not be used within classrooms and perhaps all students could have monitored school ipads or computers. I believe the only difference between phones and these other devices are that they are able to communicate frequently with friends through texting and videoing. This can become dangerous as students could get up to filming inappropriate things within the classroom, effecting the school, students and the teachers. I believe texting in class can be very distracting and stops the students from learning.
In conclusion, I believe mobile phones are not necessary within a classroom and can become quite dangerous and a big concern within certain situations. However, I do believe monitored computers and ipads could work and be very helpful within a classroom.

Schon Hansen's weblog

Should mobile phones be banned in classrooms?

It’s a hot topic with many views and opinions and debates amongst teachers and pre-service teachers. Similar to Danielle‘s blog and her views on banning smart phones in schools, I believe utilising smart phones and connecting students to technologies they use outside of school can be beneficial in learning. I know there are students out there who use there phones in a wrong way or get distracted during lessons with texts, tweets and Facebook posts, so there needs to be boundaries when they can access their smart phones. But banning mobiles, especially  in schools who don’t have the budget to give all students the opportunity to use ICTs regularly can be disadvantaged, especially as we see technology becoming more widely used in the modern day workplace.

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Feeling the stress!

Ahh it has been a busy few weeks! I have found it quite difficult to get my head around the information and being able to stay up to date with blogging throughout all the course work to be done.  Assignment one is really close to being due and am starting to feel the pressure! I hope everyone is moving smoothly through their assignments and work. I feel as if this has been the most challenging semester of my degree learning so far. I am sure it will all end up to be very rewarding and helpful by the end of the semester. Good luck to everyone on assignment one!

Working on Assignment One

Still going working on assignment one! Have found this challenging but am still enjoying it. I feel I have learnt so much from this course already, especially a lot of skills that I didn’t know could be learnt. Before beginning this course I thought I was already fairly tech savvy and knew a few things about ICT, how wrong that has proven to be! I have learnt there are always new skills to be learning and ICT is continuously growing. I cant wait to learn more skills and so many more lessons throughout this course. Hope everyone is going well with assignment one!

UNESCO – ICT in Education

The following article I have read relating to technology really made me appreciative of how lucky I am to be able to learn and develop skills within ICT. I am also extremely thankful for the fact that I have the chance to teach these skills to students to expand their knowledge and skills. The article is based mainly about UNESCO promoting ICT throughout the world for equity in education. I find this a really great and empowering thing. This leads to everyone being able to connect throughout the world in a skill developing way.

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/themes/icts/

ICT and Early Years

I am studying to become a secondary teacher, however I have been looking into ICT use for early years as well. Secondary teachers I believe teach skills based on the level of the class’s knowledge. This could mean the students are very tech savvy and work with ICTs daily and attain a number of skills, or this could mean that the students have not worked with ICTs and need to learn many more skills to be able to efficiently work this way. There could also be a mix of both of these types of students within the class. The job of the teacher is to find a way for all students to obtain the information with the right skills required.

 

Within this website I have found, there is information regarding ICT being used to develop appropriate skills within early years that I found interesting and that I agree with, as it also states that children still need to be stimulated, making sure there is a purpose for this learning.

Website available at:

http://ictearlyyears.e2bn.org/planning1_23.html

Side effects of ICT?

 

I found this photo on the internet which I found quite intriguing. There is an ongoing debate if the use of ICT is damaging the learning levels of students. In my opinion, I find that it is not about whether or not ICT is a problem, but rather how we are teaching ICT and pedagogy to the children, which brings us right back around to why EDC 3100 is such a useful and very helpful course to be taken while studying to become a teacher. I have to say that looking at the 4 reasons that are apparently side effects of ICT learning can come from many other ways of learning and teaching, not just from ICT. In the end, I believe it all comes down to pedagogy and how we teach the skills and information with a balance to the children.

Image can be found at – http://edudemic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/top-skills.jpg

Is technology improving education of students?

Recently I have read an article highlighting 8 reasons as why technology is improving education. There 8 reasons included –
Better simulation and models
Global learning
Virtual Manipulatives
Probes and Sensors
More efficient assessment
Story telling and multimedia
E – books
Epistemic games.

The main reasons of this article that I really agreed with were global learning and better simulation and models. When it comes to global learning, technology allows students to reach out and learn about everything they possibly could want to know about. To me this is important for students to have endless amounts of information to fill their minds with so much knowledge.
Simulation and models I believe help teachers to better explain so much information to students that simply cannot be explained as well without technology. This includes sounds and vibrations.

For more information there is an available link on this topic – http://mashable.com/2010/11/22/technology-in-education/

Hello!

Hello all students in EDC3100 and other bloggers! This is the first time I have made a blog and have used this website. I am feeling already challenged within this course but am excited to improve and eager to learn everything we will be taught. I have not had much previous experience within blogging and ICT use but I am ready to learn and can hopefully gain a lot from this course. I am also looking forward to connecting with you and reading your blogs!

Ellen.