Group 1 ICT Tools

Within the following post, three effective digital tools will be explored:

-          Blogs

-          Wikis

-          Websites

Blogs

Analyse the text. What is a blog?

Blogs are websites that individual people create to update regular entries of commentary. descriptions of events or other materials such as graphics or videos. Some blogs are based on one particular subject whereas some are more of an online personal diary.

Analyse the functionality and scope of the text. What sort of thing can blogs do?

Blogs are functional as they allow poeple to have their say on their own space (blog), teach people, sell products, do reviews, interviews and also to update distant friends and family. I personally like the fact that you can create your own online diary to update friends and family. It's effective as it saves time as you can 'blog' and update everyone at once rather than send 10 different emails all over the country or world.

What sort of materials/activities will blogs support?

Blogs support students to reflect effectively. Reflection is a complex process for students and requires important skills to allow students to analysis, evaluate and synthesis. Blogs allow students to scaffold their thinking by reflecting of their learning. It is important to provide students with reflective strategies tools such as:

- De Bono's six thinking hats: This tool is effective for group discussion and individual thinking as it allow students to combine ideas of parallel thinking which means to think together and plan thinking processes in a cogensive way. Each hat has its own perspective that students are able to reflect on with giudance.

- Y-Chart: This tool allows students to reflect on what it looks like, sounds like and feels like. Students may be reflecting on a difficult days they have encountered and this tool will help them to brainstorm using their emotions.

- PMI Chart: This tool is used to examine the perspectives on an issue. Students are able to reflect using this tool by justifying the plus (all the positive), minus (all the negatives) and the implications (the potential outcomes whether positive or negative).

My experience with using blogs
At this stage of my learning this is the only chance I have had to use a blog. I find it very easy to operate and understand and find that it is a vital tool that should be implemented within classrooms. I am enjoying completing this assignment via a blog.

 How will my students make use of this ICT for their learning? How would I apply/use this in my teaching context?

As a learning manager, I would use blogs to not only reflect but allow students to use blogs as a tool of constructing their assignments. I would implement this simply by allowing students to brainstorm what they know they need to do for their assignment and make weekly blogs of their progress of their assignment. This would be interesting as I would be able to see progression of the assignment and give feedback by commenting on the weekly posts. For the older years it would also be beneficial for students to made constructive comments on their peers work.

How do blogs support higher order thinking?

Higher order thinking develops from the new literacies of online reading comprehension (Castek et al., 2007; Coiro, 2003; Henry, 2006; Leu etal., 2007). The approach consist of four steps that intergrate both traditional reading comprehension skills and the new, higher order thinking skills often required during onlione reading comprehension.

1. Bolster background: During this first stage, teachers post activities and questions on the blog designed to build background knowledge about the selection that students are reading. Then, students read online to locate, critically evaluate, synthesize information, and communication their ideas by posting what they have found to the blog, inviting others to comment.

2. Prime the pump: During prime the pump, blogging can help students think deepely about the background they have built and what they have read in the beginning chapters of the text to share an initial interpretation (Langer and Close, 2001). One approach is to post an invitation to students to share any of the following types of thinking:

- Confusions that may need to be clarified

- First impressions of the characters or stroy line

- A summary of what has been learned so far

- Connections to themselves, other texts, or the world

3. Continue the conversation: In this stage, students begin to summarize and synthesize understadning across multiple texrual units. While thinking about the blog posts by other students and the group/class conversations, students ask to synthesize what has been shared and learned. Synthesizing is more than simply summarizing though; it involves original thinking (Harvey and Goudvis, 2000) and requires the use of higher order thinking skills (Anderson, 2005; Bloom, 1956). The following are questions on which focus assessments of students blog posts:

- Do the post include a summary of other students' blog posts or discussion comments?

- Do the post include any new thinking?

- Are the posts well organised and focused?

- Do the posts reflect inferental thinking that moves beyond simple recall?

Wikis

Analyse the text. What is a wiki?

Wikis are online spaces where users and guests can edit, modify, add, remove information with intuitive editing tools. Users and guest can remove, overwrite and edit the work of others, therefore, working with wikis require rules and etiquette.

Analyse the functionality and scope of the text. What sort of thing can wikis do?

- Open: Should a page be found to be incomplete or poorly organized, any reader can edit it as they see fit.

- Incremental: Pages can cite other pages, including pages that have not been written yet.

- Organic: The structure and text content of the site are open to editing and evolution.

- Universal: The mechanisms of editing and organizing are the same as those of writing so that any writer is automatically an editor and organizer.

- Observable: Activity within the site can be watched and reviewed by any other visitor to the site.

- Convergent: Duplication can be discouraged or removed by finding and citing similar or related content.

- Trust: This is the most important thing in a wiki. Trust the people, trust the process, enable trust-building. Everyone controls and checks the content. Wiki relies on the assumption that most readers have good intentions.

- Fun: Everybody can contribute; nobody has to.

- Sharing: Of information, knowledge, experience, ideas, views...

- Interaction: This enables guest interaction.

- Collaboration: A good collaboration tool, both synchronously and asynchronously.

- Social Networks: Its power for supporting collaboration is great.

What sort of materials/activities will wikis support?

Wikis allow learning designers to consider the nature of the learning and scaffold accordingly. It is essential for students to put into place tools that will assist them when being involved within a wiki: These tools include:

- Project drafting: Project drafting can be used in a wiki as it benefits students by easily inserting comments, making changes, annotating and suggesting by peers or teachers. This tool is effective if students are working by correspondence and need to complete a wiki assignment together. All added information can be easily saved for the next time the user is in need of the information.

- Collaborative authoring: By collaborating over a wiki group members have access to the information, no information is lost, users can track the changes, comment, colour change and other tracking mechanisms. This is effective as all the information by the group members can be found on one wiki and users can collaborate via different computers and even different towns.

My experience with using a wiki
I have used a wiki within this subject by responding to the De Bono hats: Mobile phones in classrooms. In a math subject last term I also got the opportunity to present a summary of ACARA via a wiki. This wiki was completed as group work and I found it very effecient as all of our work was found in one place and could be accessed from different computers. I find wikis to be an effective way of group work as I believe it makes the content easier to understand. All of your group work is found in one place instead of on different computers, USBs or word documents.

How will my students make use of this ICT for their learning? How would I apply/use this in my teaching context?

As a learning manager I would give my students the opportunity to work collaborately on a subject by wiki. By doing this students will use the appropriate technology skills that they need to complete a wiki. Students won't have to worry about leaving their work at home or a group member being away as all the information they have gathered will be contained on the one wiki. Students will also be able to make their wiki their own by adding the approriate pages needed for their wiki and even by able to change colours and add files and pictures.

How do wikis support higher order thinking?

Bloom's Taxonomy for Thinking are considered higher order thinking skills for Collaboration.

- Evaluation: Judgement

- Synthesis: Creative thinking- Putting things together

- Analysis: Critical thinking- Breaking things down

- Application: Using knowledge in new situations

- Comprehnesion: Understadning

- Knowledge: Recall (knowledge retention foundation for higher order thinking)

 

Websites

 Analyse the text. What is a website?

Websites are a collection of web pages. A web page is when you type in a web address, click of the link, or put an query in the search engine. Web pages contain any type of information which can include text, colour, graphics, animation and sound.

Analyse the functionality and scope of the text. What sort of thing can websites do?

Websites give users discoverability skills as everything is easy to find as there is alot of information on the internet about every topic possible. Users can find relevant information fast by typing key words related to their topic into the search engine. Within seconds there are pages and pages of information related to the users topic. This allows users quick research from appropriate resources.

What sort of materials/activities will websites support?

Websites can draw together artefacts that are help within the web. Websites are effective as users can upload only one of everything ina range of spaces custo bult for each type fo artefact. For example, some activites might include:

- Slideshare for powerpoint presentations.

- Flickr for images and videos.

- YouTube for videos.

Within a website, users can embed codes which embeds the artefacts within their webpage.

My experience with websites.
I don't believe anyone can say they haven't participated within a website! Even by typing a website into a search engine that is experiencing websites. I find using websites more efficient than using text books. I would rather 'surf the net' for the right information I am looking for rather than flick through 20 different text books.

How will my students make use of this ICT for their learning? How would I apply/use this in my teaching context?

Educational research and practice suggests that website technlogy has the potential to benefit student academic performance, including math achievement, by enhancing instructional delivery and by strengthening parental involvement in education. As learning manager I would create a trial website for my student's parents and provide weekly feedback on the class cohort overall. This instructional practice of a class website will involve family and communication.

How do websites support higher order thinking?

Technology can be used for higher-order thinking by many different websites. Technology today has so many opportunities and different things you can do with it. Technology can help students with multiple intelligences, constructivism, and cooperative learning. Technology opens a whole new world up to students, their are games, practice websites, and so many more things that can help students if they need help.