It's a big World Wide Web 2.0 out there!
There has been a bit of an 'account creating' party going on this week, as I embarked on signing in to numerous online gizmos. I have been introduced to Weebly, Voki, PowToons, SlideShare, Flickr, Wordpress, Google Docs, Wikispaces classroom and YouTube, just to name a few. Technically speaking... the possibilities really are endless! I have spent many, many hours exploring all of these and having a bit of fun entertaining my sons with a voki that harps at them like Mum, to 'put your shoes away, make your bed, brush your teeth, stand on one leg, pat your head...etc'.
Aspects of the technology
It was difficult to decide which of the three online spaces; blogs, wikis or websites, I would select to overview. All are fairly easy to construct as the online providers have made the user interface very simple to understand. Each has different features and types of functionality that can be used to support learning. Having already become familiar with blogs over the last couple of weeks, I really wanted to spend more time looking at websites and wikis. There are so many examples of both that are used for educational purposes, however I really found the collaborative and interactive features of wikis to be more appealing when thinking about creating my virtual classroom. Websites just did not offer the same platform to have multiple students working together online on the same project.
Same
|
Different
|
- Easy to
construct
- Can embed video,
photos, diagrams, documents
- The ability to
include large amounts of information and teaching area content
- Ability to
classify included content according to topics
- Can create links
to other online sources
- Presentation
styles can be greatly varied and customised
|
Blogs:
- Chronological
sequence by date of posts
- More
journalistic in nature
- Usually focused
on one topic
- Interaction
between users mainly via comments
Websites:
- More content and
information focused
- Can include a
blog
- Content and
usage controlled by creator
Wikis:
- Online
collaboration spaces
- Much easier to
create classroom tasks and projects
- All members are
able to edit, add, delete and change
- Edit functions
can be easily setup and individualised for each page
- Assessment
schedules and updates
- Creation and
assignment of students to online teams
- Can easily
incorporate different scaffolding tools and templates
- Intuitive
display and navigation setup
- Permission
settings allow setup of a safe place for students in cyber space
|
So after evaluating these aspects, I focused more attention on constructing a wikispaces classroom site for a pretend Year 8 Business class. I was able to create various components, including:
- a Voki that welcomed students and introduced some of the things they could do on the site
- navigation to each topic area of the content covered, including a unit overview
- humerous pictures to grab student attention
- YouTube videos
- links to websites with further information on selected topics
- PowToons animated slideshow presentation about income and expenses (this was so much fun!!)
- add assessment events in a schedule for students to track when projects are due
- create online activities for students to participate in
- assign students to teams/groups
- set preparation tasks for in-class activities
- documents and templates for students to download
- discussion forum that could be used to post updates, encourage questions and for communication among students
- set permission rules to ensure the safety of students online, but still allow suitable public access (for example parents to view student work)
It was interesting to see the ways that some of these embedded online tools could be used on a stand-along basis as great teaching resources. For example, this teacher has used the Voki Classroom in a really interesting way. While going through the learning materials for this week, a few ideas stuck with me, that I envisioned being able to incorporate into my wiki also:
- a student created textbook (this could be a fantastic research motivator or revision tool)
- a page for progressive note-taking that could be used for end of unit review
- upload student work for other students, classes, teachers or parents to view
As I was constructing my wiki classroom space, I referred to the SAMR model and deliberately incorporated different design aspects that could be linked to each level of technology integration.
SAMR Model for Year 8 Business class wiki
| Redefinition |
Technology allows for the creation of new
tasks, previously inconceivable |
Students collaborate within wiki to create
an online virtual textbook about Income & Expenses that includes videos,
photos, animations, presentations, student recorded podcasts, links to other
sources and documents. Students receive feedback via a YouTube video created
by the teacher and embedded in the wiki, comments from other students and
people in the ‘real world’. |
| Modification |
Technology allows for significant task
redesign |
Students can collaborate through an online
project within wiki to create a joint SlideShare or YouTube presentation on
Income & Expenses. Students receive feedback from the teacher via an
embedded audio file in the wiki project page and comments posted by other
students. |
| Augmentation |
Technology acts as direct tool substitute,
with functional improvement |
Students can create and share their own SlideShare
presentation about their personal income & expenses on wiki. Students
receive feedback via comments posted by the teacher in the wiki project page. |
| Substitution |
Technology acts as a direct tool
substitute, with no functional change |
Students view PowerPoint presentation on
the topic ‘Income & Expenses’ that has been uploaded into wiki. Feedback
is received from marked criteria sheets that are scanned and uploaded for
students to review. |
I also wanted to include the following table, as I was able to use some ideas from this, when I was constructing the activities to use in my wiki.
 |
| Source: Google images |
I also returned to Bloom's Taxonomy and contemplated how the redefinition of classroom activities through the use of my wiki classroom would be able to support students to synthesize the content I was delivering at various levels within this framework. It was important to me that students could be given the proper scaffolds to enable them to demonstrate some higher order thinking. Similar to the pictorial illustration of the pyramid below, I didn't want to undervalue the importance of first building within my students a solid foundation of Knowledge and Comprehension of the content I was teaching. The use of the wiki did enable me to explore some fun, attention-grabbing and novel ways of delivering this to students, through the use of Powtoons animation, links to websites about savings accounts and a YouTube video that had tips for teens to save money, as well as the written contents about each topic in the wiki pages.
 |
| Source: Google images |
Through the projects area of the wiki I experimented with some of the teaching resources we were given, such as PMI's and Flowcharts, to develop some activities that would allow students to practice applying their knowledge, solve problems such as budgeting within an allowance, synthesize knowledge about their own income and expenses to be able to understand new concepts about types of transactions and be able to evaluate the benefits of saving money regularly.
 |
| Source: Google images |
Putting all of these wiki classroom functions together gave me some better, or increased context to the TPACK model, where we should be merging our content, pedagogy and technology knowledgebase to create and facilitate learner-centred activities. My recollection of endless, uninspiring processions of dull OHP sheets in my old high school classes are being gratefully replaced with these new possibilities enabled by IT, that I will be able to use as a teacher. Who's excited about this? - ME!! (and hopefully my future students too!)
Hi Julia, thank you for your visit and for your comment here!
ReplyDeleteYes, you got it right... I disregarded my personal reflections for two reasons. First, because I saw everyone doing it and I sort of wanted to avoid repeating what was already out there, and second because, in the end, the plus vs minor debate comes down to personal choices. Like I said in my post, I am a visual learner and a Wiki just looks bad visually and I do struggle to get the idea of it. I know it is popular and so forth, but the idea of a community where everyone can put anything they want just makes me think in liability issues and that I have to work a lot to manage such growing thing.
I found those Voki things very 90s and I cannot see kids, that are so used to notch apps, using them at all. I'd be concerned with kids mocking that thing to be honest. Why have a virtual face such as a Voki, when I can improve my presentation skills when talking to students?... In my opinion Voki and Weebly are just too much, here we have the personal choices I mentioned above :)
I checked your blog a couple of times and I do like the "lets use an example now" approach you use. I have the tendency to go in the same direction with my "case studies" because it makes sense. I thought that posting would be much easier at the start of this subject, but in fact is the opposite because people thing differently. I basically made clear my biased opinion about a Voki and Wiki above, but you made very clear on your post that they be used effectively by people that understand and have the skills to implement them.
Again, thank you for your visit :)
Paulo
Thanks for your response Paulo!
DeleteYou are so right, about personal choices - there are so many things others have done that I would never think of. What I have found surprising is how often my existing (and in some cases, now previous) opinions have been challenged by looking at what others have done with their work for this course and the activities we have done. For example, previous to the de Bono's activity last week, I was pretty firmly against the idea of mobile phones in class. I had to do some research to get some ideas for positive reasons (and the other perspective colours) and read through other student's contributions. By the end I had changed my opinion and have been adding to my resources folder some ideas on how to use them in class activities. I decided that if the kids are going to have and use them anyway - why not put this into productive endeavours. Also, these young people are headed toward adult responsibilities and accountabilities and I guess I now feel we have an obligation to prepare them for this and model appropriate policies and practices for technology.
I did have a laugh about your comments on the Voki's - I guess they are a bit retro! I think you are right though - the teacher who used them quite successfully for a Yr 6 class activity, might have more trouble getting, say Yr 11 & 12 students, to take it seriously. Something to be mindful of when I'm looking for ways that will properly grab the interest of students in an age appropriate way.
This did make me think that hopefully our students will humour us a little while we attempt to 'get down' with them ;) As a teenager, I do know that although I would never have admitted it to a teacher, the thought or effort to engage with my interests did count. That doesn't mean it wasn't sometimes glaringly obvious or that we didn't have a little joke with our friends about some teacher or other's 'goofy' effort! I do know that although my son thinks I'm ridiculously hopeless at playing Xbox games with him (and he's right!), it doesn't stop him asking me to play. I guess I have decided that I'm ok with the thought that my enthusiasm might not always be contagious to my students or that sometimes I might not get the engagement bit quite right.
Thanks again!