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Week 3 Reflection


Minecraft School Built by xing0 & lregie On the Fan Server
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21sXTSh64i8

 

Reflection 1.2 Blogs for Learning


Digital School: To Website, Blog or Wiki... that is the question...


 
 

Technically Useful

For the purpose of this task and to challenge myself technologically, I have chosen to create a blog. Originating from the combination of the words Web and Log, 'Blogs' are generally pretty user friendly and contain four main sections; the Header, Footer, Sidebar and the Body. All of these elements contribute to your readers’ usability and experience of your chronological “Web Log”. This form of technology used in a classroom scenario can not only allow publication of student works and research but they can also use this as a platform to embed other forms of technology that they either source or create themselves. For instance, as part of their research journal they may want to imbed video footage, photos and audio which are all possibilities in a Blog.
 

You can find this video online here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwmTeTV6AOQ




You can also customise your web space to suit your classroom needs by adding widgets, gadgets and other elements via the “Layout” tab on the sidebar in creative mode on your Blog space.




You can also Multi-author with Google Blogger by adding author in the settings tool bar.




In Silvia Rosenthal Talisano’s “Upgrading Blogs Through Lens of SAMR”, where she discusses the extremely varied opportunities for classroom interaction as well as parental inclusion of calendar and assessment updates. She also goes onto explain that the idea is not to completely replace physically written/ printed analogue text but to incorporate the two Higher Order and Low Order thought processes. See link:



SAMR is the model for digital technologies and their adaptations and advancements in an educational terms and their use. SAMR stands for Substitution Augmentation Modification and Redefinition. This model created by and advocated for Ruben Puentedura in 2006 in collaboration with the Maine Department of Education.

When using Blogger you will find in the settings that the user can control who views, comments and interacts with your page. This would be a very useful in a classroom setting to allow students the freedom of use within the safety of their specific blog group. As far as usability is concerned  'Blogger' (in particular) is a fairly user friendly site with fairly simple instructions. On the other hand some students may need a little more adaptation to the instructions for students with learning difficulties which may be in the form of visual prompts. 
 
 

 

Cyber Safety and our children


Some safety issues around this are that we are still working with children, no matter how mature they seem in their Generation Z existence and their safeguarding is absolutely prudent. There are a number of resources online that point to ways for supporting and equipping students with tools to safeguard themselves from cyber bullying and what can be done in the event that such issues. There are a number of preventative measure that can also be taken to assist, as the Seventeenth Century proverb goes "prevention if better than cure".  Studies by Leanne J. Lester a Doctorate from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia discusses; in her thesis "Bullying and the Transition from Primary to Secondary" (2012) the rising issue of bullying and victimisation as being most prevalent during this transitional period of student lives. With Blogs being internet based this is one of the biggest issues that need to be addressed and monitored. Luckily, there are a number of systems and safeguards in place for cyber safety within the Education system and other governing bodies. See links:


Being online based, where resources are literally at your fingertips Copyright (c) needs to be considered. Copyright is the Authorship of a piece or series of, works that is created and published in a variety of formats; visual, audible, text... etc.. Disallowing anyone other than the owner to its use without prior consent from the Copyright owner of that work. Copyright plays a huge role in technology and Media which includes Art publication and promotion. 

Educational Effectiveness - Higher Order Thinking Processes


My second round of reasoning for this is after I got into it and started playing around with it I realised it was actually kind of fun. So, because of this I also feel like a blog may have some prudent advantages in the classroom. Firstly, if students were given the freedom to create their own blog (within the confines of the curriculum, of course) it would be very interactive and engaging (especially to students who are kinaesthetic learners), the students would (I imagine) flow easier into the course content as they would have a sense of ownership and creativity thus resulting in self efficacy and accomplishment. Because of the chronological nature of a Blog, I feel this would be very useful for the teacher progressively, cumulatively and reflectively for future planning as you would almost have a day by day record of the students' individual learning experience and progress which would give the teacher great insight on lesson plans created/ used to really see what worked and where some problem areas have occurred for particular students or the class as a whole. This would also assist in addressing the problem of literacy for some students on a more private level with 'Public' and 'Private' comment settings etc...(student to teacher and teacher to student). This digitally direct resource would be almost priceless to student and teacher alike. Lastly, this would also be a very powerful tool for the students to also track their own progress as it is easy to dismiss its existence with the gradual nature of learning thus adding to self confidence and efficacy.

Another really important tool here (I think) would be to allow students to comment and help each other in a peer assessment tool which would give great perspective for the students and also allow them to discover (with some guidance of course) how to give good, positive and constructive feedback. This is a skill that is then readily available to them in the 'real world' scenario for all of those little entrepreneurs out there.
The only real issue I can foresee for the digital platform in Education is that there are a number of restrictions on student access to the internet (for obvious reasons of course) via the MIS System (Managed Internet Service) but with students unable to access YouTube via their education devices makes for a curly situation when you have an abundance of music material and even tutorials that you and they could access as this is how they would locate what they need in the real world.

 
This problem can be overcome in short by resourcing the material and storing it on the school drive but this is a tedious process in an ever evolving technological world there has to be a simpler way. Can we not have an Education version of YouTube that teachers and Educators alike put their resources as a constantly recurring device? Surely, there could be some government funding for people who provide and update such resources and allow teachers to focus on their students development. Just a thought....
In lieu of that however, I have discovered a few interesting resources (see links below). I hope these are accessible and don't have restrictions for student access via Education Queensland internet system.
Hhm... rant concluded, for now...

 








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