Relection 5, Week 6

Group 4 - Animations and Simulations

This week, as I have gone through the long list of new tech tools, I have filtered out ones that aren't really related to my teaching areas and narrowed my focus to those that I would actually be interested in exploring further for use when I am a teacher. I guess with prac looming less than a week away, I'm really wanting to start cutting through all the theoretical jumble and start selecting out what is going to be most useful to me in practice.

1. Teaching with Gizmos 

This is a website that offers a collection of maths and science based simulations that students participate in. I could see some benefits, as these Gizmos offer visual representations of concepts that can often be difficult for students, for example fractions. There are opportunities for students to manipulate information, change variables and data and have these demonstrated visually through graphs, illustrations or diagrams (e.g. pie charts, shaded areas, angles and shapes). There is also the ability to easily offer extension activities for students who easily grasp concepts and want to experiment with their new knowledge. Also, for assessment purposes, it is very appealing that feedback can be given to students and us, the teacher immediately.

2. Google Earth

I could immediately see several features that would be appealing for my teaching. The use of real world examples would be very engaging for students and could promote higher order thinking. There were many examples provided in the educator's site, all organised according to discipline. One thing I did notice, was that many of the activities were multidisciplinary, which would better prepare students for post-school life, as problems do not come neatly categorised as maths, english, science or geography or with the answer in the back of a textbook for them to rely upon.

There were many examples provided on the website of ways I could incorporate this into my lessons, with measurement, estimating distance and complex area problems. However the one that caught my interest immediately was the U-Boat Hunt. What a way to spark student interest, after all who doesn't love a treasure hunt! Also, I noticed that the Pro version is now free (I have seen application in action as my husband uses it a lot for his work as a property valuer), which offers some extras such as high res printing and ability to use in Movie Maker.

3. Google Docs / Google Classroom / Google Apps for Education

Firstly, just Google docs I was already familiar with. I was aware of some ways that my students (who I mark for at CQ Uni) who are located across multiple locations have successfully used this tool for group work assessment. I had never explored some of the other capabilities - particularly add-ons that are available nor really considered the perspective of how I could utilise these in my teaching context. I opted again this week to review the technical aspects with a PMI:

Plus	Minus	Interesting
·         Easy to use ·         Accessible everywhere – online access ·         Multi-device compatibility ·         Software compatibility – with Word ·         Tools for editing and formatting are very intuitive ·         It’s free! ·         Most people are familiar ·         Students can collaborate in real time ·         Chat and comment functions ·         Can embed images, photos, video, sound, hyperlinks ·         Auto-save – no excuses from students for lost work! ·         Revision history – track who made changes ·         Images can be edited easily ·         Can work offline also ·         Add-ons increase functionality e.g. labels, highlighting, referencing, clipart, charts, maths formula editor, speech to text recognition and … sooooo many more!	·         Could be a learning period for students who are not familiar – more used to Word ·         Have to move existing docs across ·         There have been some technical difficulties with Drive (online storage) and compatibility with non-Android devices ·         Must have a google account – all students would need this	·         The way this is used could have significant impact on encouraging engagement, connectivism  and higher order learning ·         Collaboration can be incorporated through student group work ·         Pedagogy is important to effectively scaffold collaborative activities effectively encourage higher order and critical thinking ·         Some of the real educational benefits are where Google Docs is used in conjunction with other Google Apps for Education

 
 I took my exploration further and had a look at Google Apps for Education and Google Classroom. OK, so this one I got most excited about this week. I could see some similarities between it and Wikispaces Classroom; with the ability to select students (add members in wiki), set assignments (Projects in wiki), monitor submission (schedule in wiki) and the ability for students to collaborate online and make traceable changes (history function in wiki). Probably what I liked more than wikispaces, was that with one Google Apps account, you can manage multiple classes, student profiles, email contact and group contact, storage of documents in Drive and the ease with which documents can be shared across classes, assessment tasks and individual students. I think that  Google Classroom appears to offer superior organisation all within the one online location. The downside is that you have to be a Google Apps for Education account member to access this. Google recommends that this platform be adopted by the whole school. I know that I would be campaigning for this, if it was not available at my school! There seems to be a lot of benefits for organisation, time saving and increased productivity. Not least of the benefits, is the further integration of ICT tools within the everyday processes of the classroom - a much more realistic reflection of what the workplace is that we are preparing our students for.

 

The SAMR framework for Google Docs / Apps for Education

Redefinition	Technology allows for the creation of new tasks, previously inconceivable	Through use of Google Classroom, student access and security can be selected and assessment can be created within Google docs (multimedia included), set and shared with all students immediately. Submissions can be tracked in real time, marked and returned to students with feedback, all through this online platform.
Modification	Technology allows for significant task redesign	Students use Google docs to process their individual components of a group work assessment, share with each other for review and feedback and amalgamate into one document. Email notification with link to online Google Doc is provided to the teacher as submission.
Augmentation	Technology acts as direct tool substitute, with functional improvement	Students collaborate within Google docs in real time to complete a class activity.
Substitution	Technology acts as a direct tool substitute, with no functional change	Students use Google docs as the platform for their word processing tasks.

4. Online concept mapping - Bubbl.us and Text2Mindmap

Of these two, I found Bubbl.us easier to use and preferred the presentation. With Text2Mindmap I found the entry of the information outside of the diagram a little frustrating to organise and add to and the diagram was not as easy to manipulate as Bubbl.us. My example, using the concepts for this week is:

5. Zooburst

The features that I liked about this application were:

• encouragement of student engagement and interest: who doesn't want to be a published author
• virtual classroom
• create individual student profiles
• unlimited books
• shared library - students can view each others work

Some things to consider:

• Yearly subscription is $49.99, so again I can see that I will have to be selective about which tools I use, as I'm sure there are going to be budget constraints imposed
• I found the controls to add and manipulate picture and text a bit difficult to understand and work through

6. Museum Box

This one I found pretty similar to the museum theme presentations we looked at in PowerPoint. I could see some limited applications that could be used for my teaching areas, however I have to be honest that I think I would use some of the above tools or PowerPoint before this one.

7. Fractal Foundation

I came across this one, in addition to the tools we were required to explore, this week. Whenever I have made up a hypothetical class activity for one of my teaching areas, I've tried to use different content and create a different activity each time. So, while on the hunt for material for my Zoobust book, I decided to use the topic of fractals and discovered this website:

http://fractalfoundation.org

 This organisation provide software downloads, which can be used to explore the calculations and visual representations of various different fractal equations. The images are beautiful and would be, I believe, a very appealing project for students to explore within the Xoas program they provide.

Well, that concludes my journey through all the tech tools for this week. Now for the Reflective Synopsis!