Draft for my assessment

Below is the draft for my assessment. I must say that backwards planning was really useful here and really helped me map where I want to go.

What is the context (especially year level)? Foundation year: Prep

What are the learning objectives? English curriculum

Literature: Retell familiar literary texts through performance, use of illustrations and images(ACELT1580)

Literacy: Construct texts using software including word processing programs(ACELY1654)

I believe that once I map out some of the activities with this unit of work i will also be able to  include a few more of the literacy areas in the curriculum to this list.

What are the assessment criteria you’ll use?

Formative
Observations during whole class, group and individual activities, Observational checklists. Using these to check students abilities.

Anecdotal records about students abilities to recall text.
Anecdotal records about student’s ICT capabilities.
Summative
Creation of an animal that is described in a sentence. Use of sentence requirements shown. Demonstrate understanding of these requirements. Use illustration to predict text.

Read this text to the class.

My online artefact

This is the link to my online artefact. It is for parents of early childhood children to hopefully persuade them to encourage ICT use in their children’s learning.

WHY SHOULD YOUNG CHILDREN USE ICT’S IN THEIR LEARNING

I learnt a new word today. Embed. By definition it means “When designing a Web page, an embedded file refers to any type of multimedia file that you might insert, or embed into the Web page.” While I have come a long way to be able to make this artefact, I still have a lot to learn before I am comfortable in using ICT’s myself in teaching practices. I suppose this will come with time, experience, and ultimately with the need to engage.

Please enjoy my online artefact.

 

available resources

So here I am at the back end of my degree, wondering what do I do once I graduate? Of course I will graduate, work and live my life, but I have been contemplating that all through my course I have been shown how to plan, I have been shown how to engage and I have even had opportunities out on prac to put these skills to practice. But what do I do to put all this into reality? So I did a google search tonight of “teachers resources in QLD” and I came across Beginning teacher induction on the Education Queensland site. It has some really good resources on it such as a link to the DETE induction website, which as a beginning teacher has heaps of information on it for the first few months of working.

There is also a wealth of information in the links provided on this page.

Key links include

DETE induction website
Beginning and Establishing Teachers’ Association
The Learning Place
DETE Induction strategy
Queensland College of Teachers: Beginning to Teach Videos Years One and Three

These really are some wonderful tools to add to my tool belt and have at the ready when I finally do graduate.

I am kind of starting to think, that once I graduate, it makes me a qualified teacher, but that is when the real learning will begin. How exciting.

 

Older doesn’t always mean wiser!

How true is this? Who has not had this phone call at least once from an older relative. I know I get my mother on the phone at the most awkward times… “how to I get my picture to show on my facebook”!

But does being tech savy = being younger? 

According to an article called British Young People More Tech Savvy Than Global Average – But Gender Gaps Persist in the Huffington Post on the  04.06.2013 “Young people in the UK are almost twice as tech savvy as the worldwide average – but men are still much more confident in their abilities than women.”

Is this true in your life? I know in mine it probably is not the case……. I am a 39 year old female of 3 kids. I feel I can hold my own with technology in the workplace, and often am a resource for my younger co-workers. In my personal life my children can also hold their own, but I would not say they were more tech savvy than I am. And as for the men being more confident than women thing… my husband rings me from work asking me how to do his work on his computer!

I was probably about 17 years old when my dad was hooking up our first modem to our home computer. While I stood back and wondered what this was and what it meant, I wasn’t “scared” of it. In fact I was curious, sat down and had a play and while the dial up internet of the day was slow and often dropped out from that day it changed my life forever. 

I think it is more important to embrace change and technology as it arrives, and have the “give it a go attitude”. There is not a technological generation gap as far as I am concerned, unless you personally let it happen. What do you think?

 

Today I was reading through some blog posts and came across one titled “SHUSH! Stop Talking Yourself Out of Success”  and while reading this article I was stopped by this quote:

 

 “When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there” I read this comment maybe 5 times over and over and then paused and thought.  I immediately related this to my education path and how after so many years I am now in the final stretch of my journey. I have endured through tears and despair at times and there have even been moments where I didn’t think I could do it. But here I am. Never once did I loose sight of the goal, I may have had to alter the course of that journey here and there, but I never lost the decision to finish.

I only have 2 subjects including this one until I graduate. And I have left these last 2 subjects as they have been the ones I have dreaded completing! The ones I kept putting off for a variety of reasons. ICT’s because I am out of a comfort zone. The comfort zone is such a big thing and one where we are out of it could quite easily self sabotage ourselves into not completing because it is too hard…. So i suppose in hindsight it was my own way of protecting me and making sure I finished my degree to leave these to the end….If I had enrolled in this course earlier in my degree I would have packed it all in too easily, but now it is at the end of my degree the thought process change…… I figure, hey I only got 2 to go don’t waste all the years and study that I have done for one subject that is making me feel uncomfortable. Seize the day grab it by hands, change the direction without changing the decision…….Just got to remember……. Nearly there.

 

Slate, Paper, Ipad…….

 

Has anyone else looked at an iPad and thought it is just a slate? A modern day version of the old school slate that students did their work on.

 During this course we have looked at how technology has advanced ideas and often replaces something. Paper replaced slates in schools as a modern solution to the dependence on memorization. Because slates were wiped clean to continue to work students had no record to study form, hence the idea to replace slates with notebooks. But now we see our classrooms, reemerging back into the “slate” era with iPads.

 Are iPads really just modern day slates? Have we taken the ideas of what paper gave us of the ability to retain information and sculptured this into some old technology? So was paper really a step forward?

Today I sat in the doctors surgery waiting for my appointment and watched my 4-year old daughter, who is in kindergarten, effortlessly scroll on her iPad, learning her numbers, it just confirmed to me that it is just a matter of time before tablets are commonplace in all our schools. Qld has alredy completed trials in using iPads in schools with the results being both positive from both teachers and students. “Students enthusiastically embraced their participation in the trial and demonstrated maturity, respect and creativity with the use of the iPads.”  Was one of the conclusions in the report  “iPad Trial Is the iPad suitable as a learning tool in schools?“. The Victorian education department has also recognized the advancement of iPads  and has commenced a trial using ipads in their schools.  http://www.ipadsforeducation.vic.edu.au/

 Something is old is new again! Reinventing ideas and education. Maybe technology isn’t always something new, it could be just a process or cycle of evolution!

The slate: They were the affordable tablets of the day and played a key role in the improvement of literacy and numeracy for millions of children. Perhaps the iPad will be the classroom slate of the future.

COPYRIGHT and PLAGIARISM

This week we have learnt about Copyright and Plagiarism in terms of blog posts etc. Some of this is a real eye-opener, and I must say I have always been very vigilant in giving others their due acknowledgement in terms of their work, and agree that “used content” should be given the respect it deserves and hold a citation to the owner.

Where does plagiarism stop and new ideas start? Could you just reinvent the original idea and change the name, and then that is not plagiarism? McDonalds and Hungry Jacks do just this….. Similar ideas yet, different. If I was an interior designer and designed a room of a house. I use the material of a designer to reupholster a chair and I use the artwork of a artist on the wall. Who gets the credit? While each piece in their own right is from someone’s original ideas, they are created into something new in the room, so therefore it is something totally new. The original ideas were used by someone else to make something new…………….

I am thankful for the information I have received this week in terms of copyright and plagiarism. While it is never my intent to take someone else’s work, if I have used a picture here or there without thinking I am so sorry! I am more mindful of what I can and can’t use and have been provided with a valuable tool to help me in this process. Creative Commons has been introduced to me this week via my uni course and I will continue to use this tool in my academic, professional and personal lives. I would love to hear about other tools people use to help them in their copyright adventures!

 

 

 

Interesting quote

Just about 1 thing from the 5 things we need to know about technological change!

I read an interesting point today.

“Im studying for a job that hasn’t been created yet” This statement had me thinking. Is this going to be a job that will be created to solve a problem that wouldn’t have been a problem if it wasn’t created/invented in the first place?

After reflection of the talk by Neil Postman titled “Five things we need to know about technological change”. I was able to reflect on  the use of ICT’s in my teaching. In particular to his point #5: Technology tends to become mythic. 

I borrowed a friend’s older model commodore one day, to collect my children from school as my car at their house was locked in behind several cars. So off I go to school, and collect my children. My children are aged 8 and 13. They both got into the car and looked at the manual window winders that were in the car and asked what they were. After explanation and of course a demonstration, the “olden days” car infatuated them!

So using this example above when we are looking for a job that hasn’t been created yet. Was there someone at university who was studying to be able to a) create electric windows and then b) to fix the broken electric window when it didn’t work? Before electric windows were even made?  Just one example of how it is important to stay ahead of technology and be ready for what it offers.

So a modern twist to an old question…. What came first? The person who made the electric window? Or the person who could fix them?

 

Five things we need to know about technological change

Five Things We Need To Know About Technological Change

“What will a new technology do? “Is no more important than the question, “What will a new technology undo?” Indeed, the latter question  is more important, precisely because it is        asked so infrequently.

The above statement is from one of the readings available through ICT3100. It is Five Things We Need  to Know About Technological Change. It is a talk delivered in Denver Colarado by Neil Postman on March 28^th, 1998.

Are we in our quest for “smart children” and “leaders in worldwide education” taking away from our children the ability to play, problem solve, network and negotiate? By making our lives more enriched, easier and savvy, are we taking away from them the fundamental tools to growing? Look I too am guilty of it. I’m a busy working mum. I use technologies to entertain the children. I secretly love the fact that my 4 year old can navigate an Ipad, and uses words such as download. I think it is great that my children are exposed to learning opportunities that are the forefront of education. Where they are learning to the best standards in the modern world…. But like the reading suggests, at what cost? What is this undoing?

David Jones in his blog discusses Postman’s 5 things we need to know about technological change and he refers to number two as “There are always winners and losers in a technological change.” This describes the point wonderfully. THERE ARE ALWAYS WINNERS AND LOSERS. To win something we have to loose something: almost as though we trade off!

Are children missing opportunities for social interaction where peers teach them? As a group leader in early childhood I too often witness the child who walks over to the other child’s building and kicks it over. Is this because they are destructive or is it because the children have lost the ability to say “Hey I like your game can I play?” is it because XBOX has taught them that the way to engage with others is through destruction. I find for the first time in my 20-year career I have to teach children to play and how to engage with others, yet children are getting smarter.  So I find myself sitting here reflecting on the above statement even though I do love technology and what it can offer; “What will new technology undo?”

A fellow blogger and student Scouting and Schooling has raised some interesting questions in their blog entitled Using ICT’s in my teaching.” Would behaviour management in classes be less of an issue if more technology was used?  Would student attendance increase if students knew that they would be using current technologies to complete their school work?” Would these ideas as well come with undoings? By using the technology in class would the behaviour problems disappear because students stop learning how to socialise in person with one another? Again we are faced with such wonderful outcomes with the use of technology, but what will it undo? What will we loose for this gain?

I’d love to hear others thoughts on this.