my-blog

An end to EDN113 - Living and Learning with Technology

Thu, 24 May 2012 23:46:24 +0100

I think I am ready to submit my website for review by my tutor. I have spent the last couple of days thoroughly editing this website so it is at a professional level but what I have found is that no matter how much I 'fix' or change there is always something more I can do. I don't know if that is the perfectionist coming out in me but I always see something else I could improve on or update. So I have come to the conclusion that I am going to keep updating my website throughout my degree especially the 'links, software and website' page as I can always refer back to it for information if need be. We also have access to the units main Wikispacewhere Assignment 3a was presented along with other students presentations. This is going to be so handy to have access to this huge amount of collaborated teaching resources with just a click of a button.

Most of all through this unit, I have really enjoyed learning about all the different technology and software out there and especially the FREE kind. In the past I have felt a little uneasy to play around with programs/software as I thought I might make mistakes and 'stuff it up'! Now with ease I tackle these fears head on and just have a go.

I have really enjoyed learning from Jan Herrington about the meaning of ‘Authentic Learning’ and how we can use it in our classrooms. I had heard the term 'Authentic' before but never really knew the definition or meaning. My understanding of ‘authentic learning’ is ‘learning that uses real-world problems or projects, that allow students to discus and explore these problems in ways that are interesting and relevant to them’. Throughout the semester Jan Herrington has been educating us all about authentic learning and its 9 elements:

1. Authentic context
2. Authentic activity
3. Expert performances
4. Multiple perspectives
5. Collaboration
6. Reflection
7. Articulation
8. Coaching and scaffolding
9. Authentic assessment

Herrington also advised us as upcoming teachers that to create an authentic environment in our classrooms we need to focus on the tasks we are presenting to students. A quote from Jan Herrington (2012) in week 6 was "If appropriate, tasks should be authentic rather than academic." which I thought summed it up really nicely. So as teachers we need to focus on the tasks we are providing our students and let them somewhat be in charge of their own learning and not dictate education to them, rather guide...

I have also enjoyed doing the reading from the unit text ‘Meaningful Learning with Technology’ (Howland, Jonassen, Marra, 2012). Hopefully I will refer back to this book throughout my journey in university and onto teaching as it has explained how to use different technologies to engage and support student learning in the classroom aswell it gave me advise and understanding of what it is going to be like teaching in a 21st Century Classroom!

Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed the unit and this self taught, learning journey. This unit is extremely practical and left us as students to be in charge of our own learning. I have identified some of my own flaws and weaknesses working in group projects, met some great like minded students and I definitely feel so much more confident when it comes to technology as now I have the attitude of ‘Just have a go!’

Sarah

(Image: http://yourmilktoof.tumblr.com/page/5)

Polishing

Wed, 23 May 2012 07:38:27 +0100

The unit EDN113 - Living and Learning with Technology is coming to an end this Friday 25/05/2012 and I have been editing and polishing my website. I have recently created a new page named 'Links, software and tools' where I have listed a range of different resources for the educational minded or for students or teachers. I am preparing my website for submission and I have been working on it so it looks as professional. I was thinking if I have adequate time during the rest of my studies I would love to keep updating my website and blog so I can direct future employees to it to show my multimedia experience and knowledge as well as having the chance to view my own thoughts, difficulties, accomplishments and learning.

Last Friday, 18/02/2012 my group and I submitted our Group Assignment for the Authentic task. We were overall really happy with the effort we all went to knowing we all had some other enormous commitments and pressures. I felt really proud being part of this group as I believe we have covered all of what was expected of us by reviewing the ‘marking rubric’ which was provided by our tutor and unit coordinator. Our Wikispace is easy to navigate, clear, professional and hopefully interesting.

Upon submission of this assignment the four of us made contact via Facebook to let each other know we were all ready and happy with the work, so we all submitted it around the same time. I felt really excited and connected to them during this process as we all had really good communication. It was nice to submit the final of my assignments for this unit as I feel this semester has been pretty full on.

I will leave it here for now and continue to finish polishing my website so it's ready for Friday!
(Image:http://xhtmlized.com/why-us.html)

It's all coming to the end....

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:45:25 +0100

I have been extremely busy of the past week with not only EDN113 but with the rest of my units for this semester. It seems that over the last two weeks I have had so many assignments due and it made me feel like I either wanted to pull my hair out or I couldn't breathe.

Tonight I have been putting a new page together on my Yola site to explain Assignment 3a - Group Project and the process I went through to complete it. Over the last week my group and I have been making huge changes through editing and adding materials to our WikiSpace before we are due to submit on Wednesday, 16th May. We are all ready to go and we decided as a group we are going to meet on campus and submit the assignment at the same time. We would have completed this task 100% together from start to finish.

I can say the whole process of working in a group a little challenging as it is my first group project while being at university. It's a little difficult in the fact that we all come from really different walks of life and have limited time on our hands where we were all available (e.g. work, motherhood, different university timetables). But the main thing is we all pulled together and got it done! Below is a screen capture of our homepage for the Assignment:

I am really happy with how it has turned out, I just hope my tutor likes it and we have meet all requirements!

To change the subject I had a great learning experience whilst completing a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation the other day for one of my other units. We were required to create a PowerPoint for visual assistance for an oral presentation and I really wanted to enhance it by inserting a YouTube video. I had no idea how to do this so I searched trusty old YouTube to look up "How do I insert a YouTube video into a PowerPoint". My search produced some really informative videos but the one I have inserted below I really enjoyed and found user friendly. Please click on the screen capture below. It was upload by maniactive on Aug 9, 2007 who has a channel on YouTube called "All About Presentation". I hope you enjoy :-)

Hiccup

Sun, 06 May 2012 23:31:40 +0100

We had a great lecture last Wednesday, 2nd May with Prof. Rob Phillips. His lectures are great as he lets students interact with technologies in front of the lecture theatre. We were introduced to some of The Le@rning Federations activities. We were asked what age they would be suitable for and if we liked them. I really enjoyed the 'Digestive' activity we were shown.

As for the tutorial this week, my group had a little hiccup. We explained to Jenni our concept and we asked if we were on the right track. She said that we lacked authenticity as our resource was more 'telling' the students what to do rather than being a 'self' learning task with space for the students to be in charge of their own learning. As a group we brainstormed and discuss other suitable authentic learning experiences. Checking the rubric for the assignment there was no way we would have meet the criteria for the assignment if we didn't re-evaluate.

Over the last five days my group has had communication via Facebook, email as well as face to face. We have come up with another idea of the students to create their own cookbook full of 'lunch box' recipes. The 'Food Plate' will be the main link to the curriculum as the focus is still greatly on nutrition. Our group is meeting today in one of the computer labs on campus to update the wiki and discuss finer details.

(Image: http://zidbits.com/2011/02/why-do-we-get-hiccups/)

Group Project

Tue, 01 May 2012 03:10:59 +0100

As mentioned in a previous blog post, we have now been assigned a group project task. The group and I have had two formal meetings to discuss the progress and features of our wikispace. We have basically at this point created 3 pages on our wikispace site for the topic 'Nutrition' (The food plate) which is part of the Health curriculum for primary school.

During the meeting we updated the homepage and I typed up a draft copy of our authentic resource which has to have a use of some sort of technology. I am quite happy with the progress our group is making as everyone has really strong ideas and opinions. Our group name is LADS being
L is for Leah
A is for Amy
D is for Dani &
S is for Sarah.
We have created a 'homepage' which describes our topic, concept and activity. Another page we have created is a 'teacher's resource page' which contains great resources for teachers on the topic of nutrition and especially 'The Food Plate.' Our third page is going to be designed for students on the topic of nutrition where there will be great links to websites, recipes and interactive activities.

I am quite happy how it is all going. Better get back to it!

(Image curiosity of: http://www.healthy-eating-and-living-tips.com/kids-nutrition.html)

Submitting Assignment 2

Tue, 01 May 2012 03:13:43 +0100

I am just about to submit Assignment 2 to my tutor for assessment. Fingers crossed everything is ok. I really enjoyed this assignment as it will definitely help me with the rest of my degree. I feel confident that I have better researching skills as I know more about where to find academic information and no exactly what to look for. I now know to check how many times a document/paper has been cited as the more times it has been cited the more trustworthy it is as other professionals have either used it as a reference or at least cited it for information. I also love the fact I have access to the software EndNote as it makes my life a lot easy when referencing a paper or assignment and it keeps a record of these references forever. I now can always go back to these exact resources if I need that information again! Below is a screen capture of my EndNote library.

I had one hiccup when it came to taking screen captures of my search engines. I lost the software 'Jing' that I previously stored on my computer. I managed to locate it within my PC but the little sun icon you get at the top of your computer screen when 'Jing' is installed has totally disappeared. I still cannot see it anywhere but it says that it is still running. I am now going on the mission to find the 'Jing' sun. If you would to have a look at the 'Jing' which allows you to create screen captures and videos (up to 5 minutes in length) please visit the following link:

http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html?gclid=CJmq0uvx1K8CFQZNpgodKkP3bw

(Image curiosity of: http://www.ehow.com/list_6613208_fun-visual-arts-activities-kids.html)

Editing and Referencing

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:20:44 +0100

I have just finished editing my 'researcher' page and document for Assignment 2. I can say that this week’s online lecture on 'referencing' especially the use of the software EndNote was beneficial to me. I was having a lot of trouble entering most online references for example, a blog, podcast etc.

On the companion website there were great, informative online tutorials which contained screen captures to show you step by step how to create references and the correct procedure to do so. I viewed the ‘EndNote data entry’, ‘EndNote Reference Types’ and ‘EndNote citing in Word’ (jennip98, 2012) tutorials for this week. I can honestly say that these helped me a great deal and I spent a lot of time checking and rechecking I had referenced my report correctly.

I have also rechecked my report against the rubric provided by the university to make sure I had covered all of the criteria and I believe I have covered all that was required. Fingers crossed anyway :-D

Assignment 2 - Researcher

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:21:40 +0100

I have spent the whole day researching for Assignment 2. When I overlooked the criteria and objectives of this assignment I thought it was going to be simpler. How I was wrong.

I choose to select the topic 'Technology assisting Visual Arts in the classroom' and I have to say there was not an extensive amount of information available as for instance Mathematics, Literacy or Science. I wanted to choice a subject I was not only interested by I wanted to challenge myself. This resulted to a lot more reading, searching and a visit to the local library.

I think I have found some really interesting information about my topic which has made me what to do further research on 'Visual Art Technology availability in Australian Classrooms'. I am happy with the reliability of the sources I have used as they have had many years experience in the field and are now trying through their research to make visual art technology more assessable in all Australian classrooms.

To my disappointment, I had a little trouble trying to locate the website 'TeacherTube' for my research. I don't know if it was just having technical difficulties, being updated or had too many users connecting but I could not connect and the site would not load. I really wanted to experience and explore this website for my research and my own learning. I will continue to try and connect to it.

As one of the requirements for the assignment was to use the software EndNote (which is a referencing software), I have to say I love it and can't imagine not having access to this wonderful program for the rest of my degree. It is amazing how easy it is to use and create all the references. The only real issue I found was that there is not really a category for a whole 'website' reference. I decided to create a 'mutimedia' reference instead so I could enter the URL and it appears within the reference. Otherwise I love EndNote!!!

All I really have to do for this assignment now is editing, make my word document into 'googledocs' format, create a short introduction to my topic on my research page and then create a link to my 'googledoc'. Yay! Another assignment bites the dust!!! :-D

Group Assignment - 3a

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:22:44 +0100

Last tutorial, Jenni placed us into groups (of our choice) of around four to complete the last assignment for EDN113. Assignment 3a is a 'Teacher Project' where as a group we will be choosing a topic and designing an authentic education resource for students. We need to be able to explain and teach other student teachers so they may want to use our resource in their teaching career and vice versa.

In my group I have Dani, Amy and Leah from my tutorial class. They seem like passionate, energised learners wanting to achieve at a similar level to me. Within the tutorial we discussed, brainstormed ideas and concepts we were interested in. By the time the tutorial was over we had a great foundation idea and have been running with it ever since. We discussed our idea with Jenni and she said that she had heard of it before. With much consideration, we tweaked and changed some things to make it more original and engaging.

The night of the tutorial class, I exchanged all the other ladies details via email (as I already had everyone’s email addresses) as I had got their permission that afternoon. Our personal email addresses will be our main form of contact to discuss any assignment communication and queries. This was the best form of contact as we are all extremely busy women.

We have already been emailing reguarly, bouncing ideas off each other to get a clear understanding. After the contact email, Amy sent through the 'brainstorming sheet' that Jenni had created and also some information also about the Australian Curriculum Syllabus. I have been onto the Syllabus today and identified which age level we are targeting for our topic Health - Nutrition. I have emailed the others with other suggestions today also.

Leah and Dani have sent through a list of ideas we had been talking about and had narrowed it down to a clear and precise list. It has really surprised me how we have already agreed on the topic and educational resource. I feel confident with these girls. What a great start to assignment 3! :-D

Professor Rob Phillips Lecture - Week 7

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:24:18 +0100

I thought the lecture from last Wednesday was really informative. I liked how Professor Rob Phillips explained 'How a computer works' and how he made the lecture really interacted by using students to demonstrate parts of the computer. Rob also explained ‘How the internet works’ in great detail with the use of visuals, videos and through a great demonstration with the use of students. He explained to us that when you connect to the internet there are 'gateways' in a couple of main cities in each country that the request has to pass through before obtaining the required information from the requested URL. He created this fantastic exercise based on 'How the internet works' by distrubuting 'gateway', 'requests' and 'information' signs to different students within the lecture theatre and showing us the process that happens every time we use the internet. It was awesome to be involved and experience his fun and interactive way of teaching this topic. I really enjoyed it. :-D