Week 4

Week 4: Using Inspiration in Literacy and Microsoft Excel in Numeracy




Today in the workshop we began with a literacy task. We were required to watch an Aboriginal Dreamtime story from www.abc.net.au/dustechoes , and then retell the story using the mind-mapping program Inspiration (which we were introduced to in the week 1 workshop). At first I was quite taken aback and unsure as to how I would be able to complete this literacy task using such a seemingly scientifically-based program, let alone how my future students would be able to manage this task.


However I persevered. Firstly I watched the online video of the dreamtime story "The Bat and the Butterfly". Then I opened and explored the teacher's guide in order to deepen my understanding of the story. I noted the 'blackline master' depicting the events of the story out of order - with the aim of students rearranging the events into correct order. I used these events as a starting point for my Inspiration diagram.


I then watched the video and tried to pull out pivotal 'screenshots' that would depict the story via diagram. I really made a concerted effort to try to limit the amount of screenshots used, to ensure my finished product was a diagram, and not just pictures with copious amounts of writing attached. I ended up with 7 pictures, and placed a sentence under each. I then arranged these in a 'snake shaped' flow chart to show the progression of the story.


I can see this activity as being useful for use in my future classroom, but only in the upper primary years. I found the task to be quite fiddley and slightly tedious - i.e. having to take screenshots at 'just the right time' and then import them into Inspiration via Paint I felt to be quite a 'clunky' task. I therefore feel that the lower and middle primary students may become frustrated and disheartened by the process required to complete the task and it therefore would not be suitable at that level. I would used it in a 5/6 class if, and only if, students were made very familiar with the process required and displayed general confidence and competence regarding computers.


The second focus of today's workshop was to complete a numeracy task using Microsoft Excel - a task I am very familiar with and found to be quite easy.


We were required to separate M & Ms into colour groups and graph these. Your can see my graph to the left of this text. I created a bar graph and formatted the bars as to better reflect the data they are representing - e.g. red bar for 'red' category. I also added individual data labels onto the top of the bars, again to increase the clarity of the data. I then copied a picture from the M & Ms website and placed it beside the heading to make the graph look more interesting.

I think graphing data is a fantastic activity for the classroom as it is a great way of integrating numeracy with ICT, and appealing to visual learners.


However I do not feel comfortable with using M & Ms in the classroom. Along with the obvious issues associated with allergies and childhood obesity, I also don't believe that I as a teacher should be seen to be promoting brand-name products to my students. I would much prefer to use confetti shapes or something similar that students can sort and graph.

In the lecture this week we learned about "The Learning Federation" website. I am incredibly impressed with this resource, and have found a multitude of uses for this whilst on placement. I have mainly used it for numeracy (counting and subtraction) and literacy (sequencing and describing events in chronological order). I found that my students really enjoyed these activities when we played them together on the interactive whiteboard and this succeeded in "allowing for multiple and distributed intelligences" and "generating motivation to learn" (taken from G. Powell lecture notes - accessed 29/08/10 entitled Integrating ICT in the Classroom).

As I was most recently on placement in a Prep class, many of the students did not have adequate reading literacy levels to allow them to understand explanation or instruction without additional attention or strong visual cues. Using activities from The Learning Federation website on the IWB worked well to remedy this as students were provided those strong visual cues, along with the written and auditory instructions. I predict that programs such as this will not only assist them to understand the task on that particular day, but also actually, over time, improve their literacy skills - which just goes to show what a fantastic resource ICT can be in the classroom.

In terms of "generating motivation to learn" - students were always incredibly motivated when they knew that the class were to be doing and activity "on the big screen". I ensured that I had students participate in the tasks, which further increased motivation as all of the students "wanted to have a go".

Aside from The Learning Federation, another program I used quite a lot on placement was "Rainforest Maths" which I also found to be very good. This was simply a levelled maths program covering all areas of VELS that was very interactive and colourful, and the students seemed to love. Maybe there is some scope to discuss this in future years of this subject?

Overall this week in Learning Technologies has perhaps been the most enjoyable and useful for me so far, because of the exploration of the Learning Federation and its wonderful application in the classroom.

Week 3

Week 3: Technology Design Process and Online Games Development

The focus of the first half of today's workshop was on technology design briefs. We were given the brief as follows: "Design a frog that jumps using.... cardboard card, picture of a frog, rubber band, sticky tape, glue-stick, scissors."

Myself an my partner made sure to follow the 4 steps of design; Investigate, Design, Produce, Analyse/Evaluate as this is how we would expect our future students to complete the activity.

At first we investigated possible ways to complete the design brief by experimenting with ways to use the cardboard and the rubber band to make the frog jump. I personally struggled with this section, and the ambiguity of the task. I was convinced that there must have been 'one right answer' and was desperate to find out what it was. This resulted in myself and my partner persevering with an idea that was not the most successful. Once we came up with a workable method we then designed how we were going to create the jumping frog. After briefly designing the frog we produced the design using the materials. Once we had trialled our design we then evaluated our design - i.e. judging if we achieved our original goal.

During the evaluation process we came to the conclusion that our design was not actually very good, and I was very reluctant to demonstrate the design to the rest of the class, especially once I had seen the quality of everyone else's attempts.

Based upon my experience completing this task I can understand how some students may struggle with a technology design process task such as this. Too often in Primary Schools students are exposed to projects/tasks/worksheets where there is 'one right answer', and this is in direct contrast to a task such as this where there are many right answers and many ways to achieve these. I can imagine that this could cause anxiety and uncertainty in some students (as it did in me), but in a good way as it encourages students to take their thinking out of their comfort zone, experience some sense of failure and realise that being good at something does not mean you have to be a perfectionist all of the time.

Overall I think that this task (including the accompanying paperwork) is fantastic for the classroom. It encourages lateral and higher order thinking and incorporates skills from many different curriculum areas - e.g. science, literacy, numeracy. It assists the students to develop a sense of responsibility for learning, which is a necessary change of pace for students as they are all too often simply required to regurgitate information provided to them by the teacher.

The second half of the workshop was focused on the creation of Online Games using quia.com.

The thing that struck me most about creating the games was just how easy and user-friendly it was. Within 5 minutes I had created a multiple choice quiz about cites of the world and had created word jumbles based on lunchtime foods.


The benefits of a teacher creating their own online quizzes was highlighted to me when reviewing this week's technology lecture "The Protection of Students Online" and through further independent reading of www.cybersmart.gov.au/schools. These highlighted to me just how careful teachers need to be when students are accessing the internet to ensure they do not accidentally (or purposefully!) stumble upon inappropriate material in cyberspace. The risk of this can be minimised via the implementation of an 'acceptable use kit' www.education.vic.gov.au/management/elaerning suppotservices/www/formsttemps.htm. However a simple way of managing of students access to the internet is via the use of websites like QUIA. Here teachers can be more trustful of the content of the website and the pop-ups, advertisements etc that are likely to present themselves on the page, and therefore avoid any internet misuse issues.


In the middle to upper primary years I can imagine that these quizzes/activities would be more useful in a different way. I think that students would gain much more from the learning and be much more motivated if they were to research a topic and then create the quiz for their friends/family/teacher to complete. Therefore (like with the design briefs) students are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning, which is incredibly empowering and leads to better learning outcomes.

Week 2

Week 2: Microsoft Publisher and ePortfolios

Today in our Learning Technologies workshop we explored Microsoft Publisher, and looked at how to make brochures and ePortfolios using this program.

I have quite a lot of previous experience using Microsoft Publisher, having used it since I was very young. I often use it to create complicated documents, when I want to have more control over the manipulation of the graphics and headings. On my teaching placements, I used Microsoft Publisher very frequently to create worksheets/learning sheets for my class.

So, when I found out that we would be using Microsoft Publisher today I was confident in my abilities. However, despite my previous experience I still found that I learned a few new things.

For example, I learned about how to paste text 'unformatted'. I think this is very handy knowledge to have, as if I have a lot of text to include in a Publisher document, I like to type this in word first. However I often have problems with pasting this text into Publisher, as it maintains the column and spacing formats. This is handy knowledge to pass onto my future students also, as I imagine they will also be cutting and pasting text from different programs/the internet (properly referenced or paraphrased of course!), and constant reformatting can be annoying and time consuming.

One of the Microsoft Publisher tasks we completed was a travel brochure. In order to do this we used a 3-fold brochure template. I chose to complete my brochure on London, and I imported pictures from the internet and added text. You can see one side of my brochure in this blog, which includes the front and back page.

I can envision this brochure task working very effectively in the classroom. The template gives students a bit of a 'head start' in terms of what goes where, and ensures a professional-looking finished product that students can be proud of.

The task itself is very broad in terms of the subject matter it can be adapted to. Students could make a brochure on virtually anything! For example - in science they could create a brochure about how a torch works, humanities they could create a brochure on the effects of drought, in English they could create a brochure to accompany an oral presentation - all combining the knowledge of subject matter with computer processing skills.

I think it is very important, however, to ensure students are aware of copyright and plagiarism issues, and that they are not simply cutting from the internet and pasting to their project. Greg mentioned in the workshop today to encourage students paste into Microsoft Word, highlight key phrases, paraphrase etc. I think this is a good strategy, as it works on important literacy skills such as extracting important information, and ensures the work you are seeing is the student's and the student's only!

The other task we completed in the workshop today was the beginnings of an ePortfolio to be used in job interviews. I think Microsoft Publisher's "web page" option is a fantastic, simple way to create the ePortfolio, and I plan to use this to create my Portfolio.
In terms of using ePortfolios in the classroom, i think they are a fantastic way of documenting student achievement and progress over their school lives - using the ePortfolio to show the "process of learning" over time (Woodward & Nanlohy). They also provide great opportunity for students to learn and practice their ICT skills. However I am concerned about the amount of work that appears to be involved in creating these. I think that the teacher would have to be very strategic in terms of how they were used in the classroom, as they would need to be integrated into the curriculum very well, so the ePortfolio forms part of the curriculum, instead of being the curriculum.

Overall I think Microsoft Publisher is a fantastic program to use in the classroom and gives the students another ICT 'tool' for their 'toolbox'. However when it comes to ePortfolios teacher professional judgement is required to ensure that the construction of these leads to best possible learning outcomes.