I'm starting to feel pretty confident with the whole blogging concept. I'm even contemplating starting another one! I wasn't really 100% sure what the purpose of a blog was, but now I understand that it can be or do whatever you want it to.
This blog is solely for reflections about my e-learning course at uni. I have a friend who's a chef and he has a blog that is semi-educational with recipes, cooking tips, restaurant reviews and he even runs competitions sometimes. Some people use blogs as a dairy and some people us them as a travel journal to update friends and family on their travel adventure and share photos and videos with them. The possibilities are endless really.
In schools I can see how a teacher would be able to incorporate blogs into their teaching. They could get each student to create their own blogs, and the teacher and other students would all follow each other and comment. The teacher could set a homework assignment each day to get the children to post a reflection about their homework for that night. This could be a way for students to seek help from the teacher and for other students to help and teach students that need help.
http://crankychef.com.au/about/ This is the link to my friends blog. He'll be pretty stoked if I get him some followers! Check it out...it's an interesting read!
Saturday 30 July 2011
Images
Today I've been playing with 'snagit' which is a photo editing tool. I'm not really sure what I'm doing, I'm just pressng different buttons and watching the different things that I can do to photos. I resized the photo and made it look like an oil painting, and just pressed a few random buttons and I came up with this. I think I need to properly learn how to use this program so I can use it most effectively. So if anyone has any tips or help it would be muchly appreciated. 
Today I also became a memeber of flickr and have been playing around with that. I'm not too sure about flickr either. What are you supposed to do. I know you can use photos of it...but why would you want t upload your own photos to it? I know I'm probably being ignorant but I really have no clue about it? I know we're supposed to be looking at sources where we can get picutres and images for free online without infringing any of the copy right laws.....and I know you are able to do that on flickr...but how?
Thursday 28 July 2011
Space Tools- Websites
Last week in e-learning we talked 'space tools'. A space tool is a type of digital technology there are 4 different types of tools:
Space Tools - Wikis, Blogs, Websites etc
Multimedia Tools - Voki, Photo Story, movie maker, youtube, Flikr etc
Presentation Tools- PowerPoint, prezzie etc
Other Tools (interactive and online)- Forums, Angry Birds, Skype etc
Our task as to create our own website using weebly. I was a bit worried about doing this task, I'd never made a website before. I figured it would be really difficult. The hardest part for me, was deciding on the content!! The rest was very simple and self explanatory. My website it about the travelling me and boyfriend did over seas. I tried to use scribble maps on it to mark out my journey, but for some reason the link didn't work properly! I'm no sure why that happened. (If anyone knows why...I'd love to know!)
http://erinsadventureweebly.weebly.com/ This is a link to my website. Feel free to check it out.
I can see why this type of tool would be used in schools. I know a website can't be added to like a wiki and the content is out there for everyone to see, but it seems relatively safe because the person creating the site is the one controlling it. I'd get students to do their school projects on their own website, instead of the on big sheets of cardboard that I used to do all my school projects on! Then to present the website the child would present it to the class and navigate through the site to show their project. I think digital technologies are a great way to get kids engaged and learning but also having fun while doing it.
Space Tools - Wikis, Blogs, Websites etc
Multimedia Tools - Voki, Photo Story, movie maker, youtube, Flikr etc
Presentation Tools- PowerPoint, prezzie etc
Other Tools (interactive and online)- Forums, Angry Birds, Skype etc
Our task as to create our own website using weebly. I was a bit worried about doing this task, I'd never made a website before. I figured it would be really difficult. The hardest part for me, was deciding on the content!! The rest was very simple and self explanatory. My website it about the travelling me and boyfriend did over seas. I tried to use scribble maps on it to mark out my journey, but for some reason the link didn't work properly! I'm no sure why that happened. (If anyone knows why...I'd love to know!)
http://erinsadventureweebly.weebly.com/ This is a link to my website. Feel free to check it out.
I can see why this type of tool would be used in schools. I know a website can't be added to like a wiki and the content is out there for everyone to see, but it seems relatively safe because the person creating the site is the one controlling it. I'd get students to do their school projects on their own website, instead of the on big sheets of cardboard that I used to do all my school projects on! Then to present the website the child would present it to the class and navigate through the site to show their project. I think digital technologies are a great way to get kids engaged and learning but also having fun while doing it.
Tuesday 19 July 2011
TPAK and Digital Knowledge
I feel I have come a long way in the last few weeks. Managing E-Learning was the subject I was most nervous about. My computer skills are fairly average and I had no idea what a wiki was and how to go about setting up a blog. Yet here I am with a wiki and a blog and I'm manoeuvring around the 2 fairly confidently.
Today's blog is all about my understanding of TPAK and Digital Knowledge.
TPAK for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term is : Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge.This basically means that digital technologies are being recognised now for being an integral part of good learning, but it also acknowledges the importance of knowing the content and knowing how to teach it so that your students can learn as well. This is what e-learning is about. Teaching us how to use the technologies around us so that we can get a good handle on them and then use them in our teaching later on. This is the way the world is going, technology is the way of the future and there is so much information available at the click of a button. We need to know how to be able to sift through the 'useless' information to find the information we need, we also need to know how to teach our students to do this correctly otherwise it could be disaster. Digital Knowledge is the knowledge we find on the Internet or on other ICT's. My understanding of TPAK and digital knowledge are still growing. I'm a long way off being an expert. Each week I'm sure my understanding will grow and I'll gain more confidence with this subject. What I've learnt about these things in the last 2 weeks is huge and I know there's still a lot more to come, which I look forward to learning.
Today's blog is all about my understanding of TPAK and Digital Knowledge.
TPAK for those of you who are unfamiliar with the term is : Technological, Pedagogical and Content Knowledge.This basically means that digital technologies are being recognised now for being an integral part of good learning, but it also acknowledges the importance of knowing the content and knowing how to teach it so that your students can learn as well. This is what e-learning is about. Teaching us how to use the technologies around us so that we can get a good handle on them and then use them in our teaching later on. This is the way the world is going, technology is the way of the future and there is so much information available at the click of a button. We need to know how to be able to sift through the 'useless' information to find the information we need, we also need to know how to teach our students to do this correctly otherwise it could be disaster. Digital Knowledge is the knowledge we find on the Internet or on other ICT's. My understanding of TPAK and digital knowledge are still growing. I'm a long way off being an expert. Each week I'm sure my understanding will grow and I'll gain more confidence with this subject. What I've learnt about these things in the last 2 weeks is huge and I know there's still a lot more to come, which I look forward to learning.
Mobile Phone Wiki
Last week in e-learning we all had to participate in a discussion wiki. The topic of this discussion was 'Should mobile phones be used in the classroom?' We had to use De bono's six thinking hats to express our opinions. De Bono's six thinking hats are: Black (Negative), Blue (Process), Green (Creative), Red (Intuitive), Yellow (Positive), White (Objective). For more information, I have attached a link where you can read more about the six hats.http://www.kurwongbss.eq.edu.au/thinking/Hats/hats.htm
For this discussion I put on the Negative (Black) hat. The beauty of this wiki and with the thinking hats is that you can 'put on' more than one and have varied opinions. It's also great because once more people have 'put on' a hat and written their opinions in, it can some times change your opinion or at least give you some more to think about an change your view slightly. I thoroughly enjoyed reading every one's opinions about this subject. It still however was not enough to change my opinion from negative to anything else! The only downside with learning this way is that is does require everyone to participate to be able to see the full spectrum of every one's feelings, judgments and opinions.
I do feel that doing these sorts of activities with students in a school setting would work and contribute to their learning. There would need to be a way for the teacher to make sure the students are actually participating though. Which I think would be fairly easy with primary and high school students because most kids do like their opinions to be heard ad this is a pretty good way of doing that.
The learning styles evident in this activity are connectivisim (which I spoke of in last weeks blog) and Constructivism, mainly social constructivism. Constructivism basically is the idea that students knowledge is base on past experiences, beliefs and the way they interpret objects and events. Social Constructivism is learning based on social interactions in learning environments and the idea that understandings grow from social encounters. I feel that this wiki has done that. We each went in with our own experiences and personal perceptions of this topic and through the different opinions expressed by our peers we were able to learn through this social interaction.
For this discussion I put on the Negative (Black) hat. The beauty of this wiki and with the thinking hats is that you can 'put on' more than one and have varied opinions. It's also great because once more people have 'put on' a hat and written their opinions in, it can some times change your opinion or at least give you some more to think about an change your view slightly. I thoroughly enjoyed reading every one's opinions about this subject. It still however was not enough to change my opinion from negative to anything else! The only downside with learning this way is that is does require everyone to participate to be able to see the full spectrum of every one's feelings, judgments and opinions.
I do feel that doing these sorts of activities with students in a school setting would work and contribute to their learning. There would need to be a way for the teacher to make sure the students are actually participating though. Which I think would be fairly easy with primary and high school students because most kids do like their opinions to be heard ad this is a pretty good way of doing that.
The learning styles evident in this activity are connectivisim (which I spoke of in last weeks blog) and Constructivism, mainly social constructivism. Constructivism basically is the idea that students knowledge is base on past experiences, beliefs and the way they interpret objects and events. Social Constructivism is learning based on social interactions in learning environments and the idea that understandings grow from social encounters. I feel that this wiki has done that. We each went in with our own experiences and personal perceptions of this topic and through the different opinions expressed by our peers we were able to learn through this social interaction.
Wednesday 13 July 2011
Connectivism & E-Learning
Well Here I am in my 2nd week of Uni.
I'm not feeling as overwhelmed this week but still really confused about a few of my subjects, namely E-Learning!
Week 1's task was to create this blog, which I'm going to be using to put up my reflections of our weekly tasks and it will also be used with one of my assessment tasks.
Last week we had to make our own wiki, read up on a learning theory of our choice and write a PMI about it.
I chose 'Connectivisim'. Which I find to be a really interesting learning theory.
Basically connectivism is the idea that learning can occur everywhere not just inside a classroom and since the technology and information of today are moving so rapidly the idea of 'know-where' (Knowing where to find information when needed) is much more highly regarded than the 'know-how' and the 'know- what'.
http://erinreneeswiki.wikispaces.com/
Here is a link to my own wiki space, where I have put up my PMI about Connectivism.
I have also put in the link to the reading I chose to read for the learning theories. If you're interested in learning some more about connectivisim, check it out. http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm
Well stay tuned for more weekly reflections and e-learning excitement!!!
I'm not feeling as overwhelmed this week but still really confused about a few of my subjects, namely E-Learning!
Week 1's task was to create this blog, which I'm going to be using to put up my reflections of our weekly tasks and it will also be used with one of my assessment tasks.
Last week we had to make our own wiki, read up on a learning theory of our choice and write a PMI about it.
I chose 'Connectivisim'. Which I find to be a really interesting learning theory.
Basically connectivism is the idea that learning can occur everywhere not just inside a classroom and since the technology and information of today are moving so rapidly the idea of 'know-where' (Knowing where to find information when needed) is much more highly regarded than the 'know-how' and the 'know- what'.
http://erinreneeswiki.wikispaces.com/
Here is a link to my own wiki space, where I have put up my PMI about Connectivism.
I have also put in the link to the reading I chose to read for the learning theories. If you're interested in learning some more about connectivisim, check it out. http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/connectivism.htm
Well stay tuned for more weekly reflections and e-learning excitement!!!
Wednesday 6 July 2011
My First Blogging Attempt
Well here it is my first blog!
I'm Erin. I'm a first year BLM-Early Childhood student and CQuni.
This blog is apart of the managing e-learning course. I didn't make it to the very first class today because my Grandmother passed away. So I'm a little unsure of what exactly is going on.
Hopefully I'll work it all out!
Well that's all for now.
Erin
I'm Erin. I'm a first year BLM-Early Childhood student and CQuni.
This blog is apart of the managing e-learning course. I didn't make it to the very first class today because my Grandmother passed away. So I'm a little unsure of what exactly is going on.
Hopefully I'll work it all out!
Well that's all for now.
Erin
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