Digital pedagogies EDSE12024 - Assessment 1: Reflective Synopsis

 

This Reflective Synopsis is an account of my investigation into the use of digital pedagogies in secondary schools. Included in this Reflective Synopsis are my limited experiences of use of technologies to support and transform learning and the facilitation of legal, safe and ethical behaviour with ICT. I will begin with the use of technologies to support and transform learning.

Use of technologies to support and transform learning

Advancements in technology have provided new opportunities for teachers to support and transform the learning of students in secondary schools. Teachers can now use tools such as blogs, wikis, websites, presentations, simulations and interactives to engage students and promote collaborative and cooperative learning.

Blogs and wikis are a way for students to have their work read by others. This is important because students can use higher order thinking to consider and comment on other students’ posts. Constructive and positive comments help students learn, develop confidence and contribute to learning. I found blogs to be a convenient way to share my work, and read the work of my fellow students at any time of the day or night. Wikis allow students to contribute to learning by being multi-authored sites. Students feel involved in the class by contributing to a group task and can learn from other students’ opinions.

Websites are a convenient way to display information for students to access at any time. Images, audio and video can all be put on a website to support learning. I found that putting up You Tube videos of mathematics on my website was an effective and convenient way to demonstrate solutions to mathematical problems. Audio can used to record instructions and images can be used to display tables and charts. Because the student can view content whenever they want and as often as they want, the student can progress in their own time.

Presentation tools can do more than just display slides of dot points. Teachers can make presentations more engaging by introducing themes, transitions between slides, animations, word art, smart art, shapes, charts, photos, video, hyperlinked screenshots, and narration. Although these presentation tools do not rank highly on the SAMR model, they are still an effective way to present and share information.

Simulations are especially useful for demonstrating concepts that would otherwise prove to be difficult or impossible to demonstrate. For example, showing the binomial distribution of one thousand coin tosses. With so many coin tosses required, using a simulation tool makes sense.

Interactives make learning more enjoyable. Interactive learning objects, mapping, collaborative authoring, online concept mapping and online timelines are all examples of interactives. Interactive learning objects are essentially any digital object that are categorized and reusable. Because Interactive learning objects are reusable, they are an efficient way for teachers to facilitate learning.  Mapping can involve students creating maps for specific purposes complete with text and photographs.

By incorporating these tools into learning at a fundamental level, teachers will achieve the goals of the European creative classroom framework. The section which I found to be the most interesting is ‘Learning practices’. Regarding Learning practices, students who use these types of tools will:

·        learn by exploring

·        learn by creating

·        learn by playing

·        have self-regulated learning

·        have personalized learning

·        have peer-to-peer collaboration

Technology allows the teacher to create learning outcomes which come under the higher categories of Bloom's revised taxonomy. While remembering and understanding information remains essential to learning, students need the higher categories of applying, analysing, evaluating and creating.

Students also need the higher order thinking skills scaffolded by de Bono’s hats. Teachers cannot possibly teach students for every challenge they may face in the future but we can teach them skills to overcome these challenges themselves.  

Finally, teachers need to know their audience. Through technology, teachers can monitor student progress more effectively. By reading student blogs, monitoring wikis or other online collaborative tools, teachers can plan differentiation techniques to assist struggling students and to keep gifted students challenged. 

Facilitation of legal, safe and ethical behaviour with ICT

As a teacher, it is my responsibility to model legal and ethical behaviour with ICT and to keep students safe from the dangers of the internet. The first issue I will discuss is the matter of copyright. In general, teachers can copy one chapter or ten percent of a work for educational use. Teachers may also stream, link or embed YouTube videos because this is not copying, and therefore not subject to copyright. It is unclear whether teachers can copy YouTube videos. Teachers cannot copy from commercial DVDs. It is very important to model the correct use of ICT material because this teaches ICT ethics and copyright law applies to students as well.

I have left the most important ICT issue for last. That of student safety. The introduction of ICT has dramatically increased the risk of exposure of students to material that is:

•  pornographic
• sexually explicit
• offensive
• hateful
• violent
• encouraging of activities that are dangerous or illegal.

It is bad enough that adults are exposed to this type of material, but for children this is totally unacceptable. Teachers must remain vigilant by using blockers and monitoring what material students are accessing at school and bringing to school.

Students also need to be taught about the physical and emotional dangers of communicating online. Services such as email, chatrooms, discussion groups, instant messaging and web pages all have the potential to expose students to stranger danger, harassment and bullying. Again, this issue requires the vigilance of teachers and the education of students. Teachers need to ensure that online collaborating is private, and regularly monitor the traffic of their collaboration.  

Embracing the benefits of technology will revolutionize the way teachers teach and students learn. Slowly but surely, lessons are changing from ‘student see, student do’, to ‘student think, student solve’. It is up to teachers to support them in doing that.