https://magic.piktochart.com/output/141c336a-0a88-4cb8-8358-22644604330e
| ||||||
 | I am going to try using the flipped classroom model this year. I teach ICT and Art and for the first half of this term my Year 10′s ICT class is doing digital design. We do have problems with our internet speed and some students do not have the internet at home but some have smart phones so I’ll encourage them to use those. This is the homework worksheet I’ve created for them,it’s not great but it’s a start. I’m also going to introduce them toDiigo.com and QR codes so those with smart phones can interact that way. This first exercise is for students to learn about digital image sizes and file types and as they are only asked to create a Facebook profile picture they should be well motivated. I have an enthusiastic bunch of students in my online Level 1 ICT course,how fabulous is that! While most of the delivery is through Moodle I wanted to introduce some other Web 2.0 tools which they might like to try to present some research. We are just about to start a new topic on digital imagery and web design. As we have some late starters to the course it seemed like the ideal opportunity to get a group research project going and have students work collaboratively online with their distant peers. That way they could get to know one another and find out what they think makes for good web site design. They could present their findings in whatever format they liked,this basic Padlet was the springboard for their ideas. I’m an avid fan of the Moodle classroom and the wonderful structure it can offer in providing an online hub of digital resources,links and plugins. I have one blended learning class for Year 10 ICT students and one fully online distance class for Level 1 Digital Technologies. I also love the flexibility E-Learning provides and the ability to accommodate for diversity in the classroom but getting it right takes time. I’ve never tallied up the time it takes to create or maintain a class site,but this wonderful infographic from Leanforward illustrates beautifully the people and time involved in getting an e-learning course off the ground. Now they’re a team of dedicated professionals,it’s little wonder this one-woman-band spends many hours playing around trying to get it right. I came across this interesting video a while back,it’s Joel Klein,CEO of News Corps talking about the need for competition and innovation within our schools. He’s right,our schools are fashioned on a system built in the 19th century for an industrial era. Society has moved on and so should our education system. Thanks to my twitter feed I just happened upon the TEDxMelbourne event a while back. From the feeds that were coming in there was a dynamic discussion happening on the future of education and the direction it needs to take. I collated a few of the best tweets here thanks to Storify
I’ve just had a refreshing break,two weeks of R and R and I’m now feeling ready to embrace the second half of the year. I’ve enjoyed the latest newsletter posted by Clarrie from the FarNet HarbourNet Ning and I am reminded how insightful posting reflective comments can promote new ways of thinking which I can use in my teaching practice. Till now I’ve often felt too busy to comment preferring instead to be a ‘lurker’because commenting takes time and thought. I’ve also worried at times about what my comments might read like to others. I feel more comfortable putting across my ideas in a face to face context where I can interpret my listeners body language and receptivity. Whereas we don’t have that with online conversations. With the advent of the internet and online communities writing in a public place is something many of us are having to get used to,after all a collaborative information era depends on it’s community to engage Still,there are many times when I enjoy being able to blob in front of the television,where someone else does the work. Equally I enjoy being a student or an observer in someone else’s class. However I do recognised the value in commenting,it develops connections to my own experiences and establishes links which form as the conduits to the development of new knowledge. Had I just sat back and observed I might miss those inner ‘eureka’moments. Those moments when I feel I’m the first to stumble upon some insightful understanding,the buzz and the self motivation that arises and inspires me to learn more.  Hot on the heels of my recent post from the U.K…Minister of Education (Michael Gove) is at it again. This time I reluctantly believe he’s on to a good idea. The changes Mr.Gove proposes may well reverberate kindly with New Zealand teachers? The new look is focused on Teacher Training Colleges and their…
The idea is to take the very best schools and put them in charge of teacher training and professional development. These schools will actually take the graduates they want to train and develop them internally. There will even be tax-free awards for graduates who choose to be trained at the toughest schools or N.Z.’s decile one equivalents. These awards will be as high as $47,000! Traditional Teacher Training Colleges may well be phased out altogether. Maybe in this instance,following U.K.’s lead might be a strategy that could bode well for New Zealand’s teaching profession? See the article in full at http://tinyurl.com/c68749x I find it disturbingly ironic that Lesley Longstone who is the recently recruited head of the Education Ministry,was dragged into New Zealand from a similar position in the U.K. One would imagine, that as she was an advocate of the fatally flawed governmental endorsement surrounding the now infamous strategy of “saving money by creating larger classes with fewer teachers” that she may have garnered such “educational expertise”from the system in the U.K.? Is the U.K. the font of all learning wisdom and is New Zealand being shaped by their experiences in education? If this is the case, the National government is backing an absolute donkey! I happen to be writing this from England and right now their Minister of Education (Michael Gove) is having as many “bad headline”days as Hekia Parata. See the link from The Guardian newspaper of June 13th. The U.K. are embarking on changes to their national curriculum that are being described by experts as “fatally flawed”…where did I read that before? Changes which include the making of a foreign language compulsory learning by age 7,are said to be overly prescriptive and onerous to both teachers and students. The irony stems from the fact that the U.K. engaged in a think tank to forward the curriculum changes who “trawled the world looking at the curricula of the high-performing countries to collect core knowledge”…so they’d have been looking at New Zealand then?! Maybe they’re missing Lesley Longstone? That old adage comes to mind…”In the land of the blind a one eyed man is King”.
Teaching my Year 11 ICT class has it’s challenges and the one that I am currently trying to manage is how best I can accommodate the different abilities and learning styles. They’re just getting starting on web design with HTML and CSS writing their own sites from scratch using code. All of the lessons are delivered in Moodle even though it is a face to face class I find it helps to give a 5 minute outline at the start of the lesson and then go around the room helping people individually. I’m finding my way through ‘Lessons’in Moodle,that in itself is an art but I’m getting there and I’m starting to feel like I understand what I’m trying to achieve. I’ve created a quiz with a SCORM Package from exe Learning which turned out ok once I had set the grading in Moodle to ‘Learning Object’but I still don’t know whether it gives me as detailed an analysis as the Moodle quiz. Moodle’s quiz was my first preference but it kept interpreting my HTML code answers and there was no way I could go in and edit the Moodle answer box. Oh so many tricks to learn with Moodle. Today I’ve just received access to Adobe Connect which I’m very excited about and keen to start using with my online students. This connection has just given me a eureka moment and it could well help those slower learners in my face to face class. Some of them are near to hopeless at turning up for a lunchtime catch up so this could be a solution. We could have a catch up lesson online at night for 15 –30 minutes for their homework. I know the technology will work at my end (which is not always the case at school) and hopefully they will have broadband access from home. It would also help those who are away sick and help me move to my goal of Flipped Classroom delivery. I would love to get them so enthused with ICT and this might be a step in the right direction. This Learning4Mastery video is so inspiring,flipped classroom teaching at it’s best. | |||||
| Copyright ©2013 kerryboyde.com - All Rights Reserved kerryboyde.com is using WP-Gravatar | ||||||
