In week 4 of the ICTs for Learning Design course I am completing, just after the instructions to set up this blog, we are then instructed to set up an aggregator to help us follow the hundred and something other bloggs being written by our fellow students. Now I thought I was confused before, and spent hours over several days sorting out this whole blog thing, and somehow (can't find it now) I already set my google account to automatically subscribe to any bloggs that I choose to follow. So when I moved on to this new instruction, I then doubted everything I had done and spent several more hours trying to confirm if I had in fact done the right thing in the first place! Talk about frustrated, confused and stressed! And I haven't got to the Wiki or Mahara yet!
What have I learnt from this experience? That when students are learning new skills which they have no or very little prior knowledge of, they need a lot of moral support, as outlined in Dimension 1(1) under the subheading 'Helping students develop positive attitudes and perceptions about classroom tasks' by helping them 'Believe they have the ability and resources to complete tasks'. This means I would provide my students with appropriate feedback, help them recognise the abilities they have to complete the task, and help them realize that part of their abilities include their ability to seek help. I also think that the subject 'Understand and be clear about tasks' that also falls under the same subheading mentioned above, is applicable in this situation. Working in a flexible study mode as I am is very different to the experience I can offer students in a classroom. By interacting face-to-face and reading the vibe of the room, I will be able to give clear directions as required, and immediately clarify any issues they have about the knowledge they need to have.
The other thing I have learnt is that bloggs could be a useful tool in the classroom. The teacher can encourage students to blogg on a particular subject and enable students to engage with one another, give encouragement to one another and open up new topics for conversation within that subject. For example, if a primary school is currently participating in the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Project (2), the students could blogg with other students in other schools under the same program. The students could share gardening tips, recipes or just talk about how their gardens are doing and inspire one another.
References
1. Marzano, R. & Pickering, D. 1997, Dimensions of Learning, Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning, Colorado.
2. www.kitchengardenfoundation.org.au/
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Hi Cathy,
ReplyDeletegreat little blog you have here, the blog's one thing and then getting the feed subscriptions and commenting on others, etc is another thing again. I believe this course, as we lacked the face to face tutorials of internal students (not that i know what they actually did), could have used some more examples of breaking down of new technology tasks for students not familiar with the different facets of technology we had to come to grips with. Student's that were already familiar with the software or application could have skipped over the instructions. I like you, spent hours gleaming through help menus, etc trying to pin point the process that would make something happen the way it was supposed to (learning new facets of somethings such as technology may not be that easy when your not familiar with the terminology, etc,) and once we had the main task done we could have learned about advanced type usage in time as confidence and time was gained through quicker, easier communication.
You are right about being clear with instructions when starting a task with students, miss a step or having to back track because you missed something may cause confusion, especially for some learner types. This point has me a bit worried because when starting off the students may lose faith in a teacher if they start to doubt whats going on.
As you will soon see, when you hit the Wiki's your gardening project may be even better with a wiki as the student collaboration tool, except the privacy issues is a bit of a concern with many of the web stuff, private type wiki's etc cost. And once again knowing some of the in's and out's of software will come with experience and learning from another more experienced person.
All the best
Anthony
Flex GDLT