Join us on Jani's Journey

Jani is one unique little girl.. She has schitzophrenia.. I am inspired by the strength and courage of her parents and wish them all the best. Maybe one day Jani will write her own book, we would all love to read about her own personal journey...

Join us on Jani's Journey

Bridging the Gap

The digital divide will be an ever-increasing gap unless today’s teachers fully embrace the technologies that are available to them. However many teachers may not like being less knowledgeable about a subject than their students; and this is highly possible in regard to online technologies. Considering this, are we expecting too much by asking teachers to use online resources and keep up with the tools of the future? Do we already expect so much when the task of a teacher is to provide an education; and we have already increased this load by demanding they take responsibility for social and emotional intelligence as well as academic success? Today’s teachers have every right to feel overwhelmed by the workload that seems to increase every year. But a pertinent question to ask would be; will the teachers themselves be left behind if they do not embrace technology as an educational tool for the future?
These questions seem to pose more questions and do not really offer much in the way of a practical solution that teachers can work through. So I thought I would analyse the benefits and possible detriments to using online resources as teaching aids.
Benefits
· Students are often more motivated to use technologies
· Enables extension of current knowledge
· Much easier to locate information
· Quicker
· Teaches critical literacy skills. Using the internet shows students that not all sites are useful and even accurate in their information
· Promotes deeper level of thinking when using blogs or wikis to ask for comments on thoughts and ideas.
· Encourages and promotes problem-solving skills
· Students are able to produce a professional looking document
· Visual information is much easier to read than linguistic – has appeal to a wider range of age groups

Disadvantages
· Difficult to supervise
· Equipment can be expensive
· Education Department firewalls prevent access to some valuable applications, tools and sites.
· Monitoring progress can be difficult if the teacher is not as experienced as the students
· Some teachers are reluctant to change from their tried and tested programs
· The cost is not always able to be covered by the school.
A part of the elective unit, “Using Computers in the Classroom” required us, in pairs to research one innovation and present it to the class in an effort to teach others how to use it and why this would be of educational value. This was then explained in detail in a wiki page. I feel that this is one way that this gap can be bridged, by teaching each other about technologies that are available online and learning from each other. This wiki page can be accessed by anyone interested in the innovations and has proven to be an excellent way of sharing our new found knowledge. All class members that heard the presentation were then required to write a blog explaining their understanding of the innovation and state whether they felt it was a valuable educational tool. This supported the wiki page well and provided the presenters with some great feedback from their peers about the value of technologies in the classroom.
To answer the question; how can we bridge the digital divide between those who know and those who don’t know? Sharing knowledge at every available opportunity is the best way to circulate this information। Always be open to learning about new innovations that may aid our teaching and experiment with them. But, importantly, new education students should be encouraged to take on a unit such as this elective to provide them with the knowledge of these new technologies. As more and more of us are educated about online resources, they will become more common for use in the classroom and our colleagues will see the benefits that they can provide in educating the students of today and the future.

Voice Thread

A slideshow that is online and users can upload videos, text, pictures and comments via text or by recording your voice. It is similar to an online version of PowerPoint, but viewers can leave comments in many different ways. These are:
· Text – you can post a comment just by typing
· Audio – record your voice with a microphone or upload from your computer, IPod or MP3 player.
· Video – directly from your webcam, or upload a file from your computer
· Doodling directly on the document – this tool allows you to draw/write directly on the image to show what you mean.
· Phone
Voice thread is a clever innovation because it allows for collaboration from anyone within any form of document. It is very similar to Jing, but with Voice thread there is no software to download.
It is a totally interactive application that could be used in the classroom as a means of sharing work and allowing collaboration between students. I was particularly impressed with Voice thread because documents can be drawn on directly so viewers can explain what they think about a document. A teacher could use this to explain to the students exactly what may be expected of a task so they are clearer and more likely to achieve better outcomes.

Edmodo

This is Facebook for the classroom!

This is the program I would use if I had the use of handheld PC’s in the classroom। This would be the perfect tool to use. It works the same as a social networking site, but is designed exclusively for the classroom.
Edmodo can:
· Be a communication tool between teacher and student
· Keep records of tasks
· Post alerts about upcoming events
· Set reminders for assignments
· Remind students of homework commitments

It works the same as Facebook as in communicating with accepted friends and you are able to upload files, links and file attachments and share them with your classmates. Comments can be posted on each other’s work which allows for peers to reflect and comment appropriately.

Edmodo polls in a great new addition to Edmodo. A teacher can pose a question and ask students to choose an option. These are then collated into a poll of the whole classroom’s viewpoints. This is another effective way to engage the learners.

Edmodo is also completely secure. Only those approved by the teacher can become a member of a particular classroom group.

Teachers can grade and notify each student of individual results within the application. The students are able to access all assignments through the program and when they are submitted they will automatically go straight to the teachers account. This saves an immense amount of time and also does not require that documents be printed. Edmodo helps preserve the environment too!

Web 2.0 technology is rapidly gaining popularity with this generation and Edmodo is a perfect example of how this technology can have huge educational benefits also. Teachers can engage students through the social networking interactions and gain an insight into how their learning is progressing.

I am looking forward to using Edmodo in my own classroom as a perfect means to communicate with my students and ensure they are engaged in quality learning.

Hot potatoes

‘Hot Potatoes’ is an online free-ware service that contains six applications for teachers to design worksheets for their students. These applications include:
· Multiple-choice worksheets
· Short-answer quizzes
· Jumbled-sentences
· Crosswords
· Matching/ordering exercises
· Cloze exercises
It was created by the University of Victoria and is controlled by a company called, ‘Half-Baked Software’.
Using this software, I quickly realised the educational benefits of this. A teacher will be able to create activities that compliment the concepts taught in class. It does not teach the concept, but the teacher can use it to support the learning in class. It has the added benefit of recording ongoing results and teacher and student accounts.
To sign up, you need to open a demo account and then download the package. Unfortunately this is only temporary and the full version does cost money. (About $80 US)
I think it’s a great resource for educators to use that will save a lot of precious time. However, I would probably not use it as it does have a cost associated with it and I probably wouldn’t use it often enough to warrant the cost.

Game maker

As the name suggests, Game Maker is a programme that allows users to create their own online games, without the need for learning the difficult programming language that is so often necessary.
It uses a basic drag and drop system, whereby you choose your sprite, background, wall and actions and drop them into relevant boxes. This in turn creates a game of your own design. There is a limited variety of sprites etc that may not appeal to most people, but it is enough to get an idea of how games are designed and to experiment with various types.
Game Maker is a great tool for the classroom to teach students how to create their own game. It uses lots of problem solving skills which helps students to find alternative ways to master solutions and develops higher order thinking. This application has been used in an extension program for primary students called PEAC (Primary Education Academic Program).
It requires a step by step guide on how to use it, in class I managed to keep up, but I noticed that others didn’t. Instructions would have to be clear and engagement in the lesson is a must, because if you miss a step, you miss a lot of vital information.
I like Game Maker! I believe that I would use it for students in my classroom as a Friday afternoon activity. (Only because there is so much else to fit into a school day, I feel that parents and other teachers would not see the educational benefits as they exist.) It is interesting and engaging for primary aged students and I believe it had loads of educational benefits.

secondlife

Second life is a 3D virtual world that is played online and is one of the many applications available with Web 2.0 technology. It is basically a game where the players have a virtual life in another realm. However there is no objective to the game, so it is better described as a social space. They choose an avatar that may represent themselves and socialise with others, participate in activities, create or trade property or just explore the realm and travel
It was developed by Linden Labs in 2003 and it is free to join and play. A premium membership has a small cost associated with it that enables upgrading of items, clothing etc. And extra technical support. This also gives the user a salary of $300 in second life money per week. This money is called Linden dollars.
There is a chat service available where users can communicate directly with each other during the interacting on the game. This chat is visible to anyone within a reasonable distance from the chatters. A private chat service is also available.
The educational benefits for Second Life are numerous. At Curtin uni the nursing program is developing a platform whereby routine duties can be practiced in the virtual world, before attempting them on real people. This is a much safer way to learn. At a primary school, teachers could set up a platform to teach a specific content. The students could work through a series of activities designed to meet a specific outcome, this could be then assessed within the virtual world. However, as the age limit of second life is limited to those over 18, it is not practicable for the primary classroom.
Overall, this program has massive educational benefits for the future. Virtual world offer the chance to practice skills without doing real people any harm, so it will probably become more popular as time goes by, and as people get used to the idea.
I can’t imagine doing my teaching prac in a virtual classroom, but perhaps practicing behaviour management techniques, or explaining difficult concepts in this environment would be an exciting opportunity and beneficial to those without much real life experience.