Week 5

Animation in Primary Schools
This week's lecture was concerned with the use of animation in primary schools.  As the lecture progressed I began thinking that the use of animation would be an exciting and engaging way of developing the English domain for children in primary school.  First of all we looked at Lego films on You Tube.  Most of these have been uploaded by amateur animators but as I quickly discovered the films are very polished and cleverly constructed.

Stop animation is one possibility that children can work with. In our lecture resources there is a great link to Hawthorndene Primary school's claymation experience at http://www.hthdeneps.sa.edu.au/clay

You can see from the pictures how much fun it is.  It would be a great way to develop interpersonal skills with children; working together, creating story boards, making models.  It would also be a great exercise for kinesthetic and visual learners.  As a teacher I would also use it with children to identify and name concepts of film animation and to develop their awareness and understanding of visual narrative: characterisation, theme, stereotype, setting, plot, and sound scape.  They could investigate and identify the different styles used in animated films.  They could identify the different animation techniques: cartooning (Snow White), claymation and pixilation (Robots) and computer generated techniques (Finding Nemo).  I think the use of ICT could also be a great tool for livening up lessons.  Just a short clip could help raise children's energy levels and get discussions flowing.

Digital movies and other creative websites

In the work shop we moved onto digital movies and other useful websites for the use of  ICT in the classroom.  My favourite has to be www.xtranormal.com.  This is a fantastic website which states, "If you can type you can make movies."  And it is that simple.  You choose your characters and setting and then start typing in the dialogue.  There are easy-to-use instructions with icons for camera angle, expression, movement and sound which you just click and drag to your dialogue box.  This would be a fun and creative way of encouraging creative writing with children.  As part of a literacy block you could ask the children to create an extra scene to the book they are reading.  Or you could use it to reinforce the idea of story boards.  Children could storyboard a short scene and then 'shoot it' using xtranormal.  The possibilities are endless.  Here is my attempt below, it took about an hour to create but most of that time was spent familiarising myself with the operation.




Dvolver is a simpler programme to use but its content is probably not suitable for primary aged students.  http://www.dfilm.com/

The zimmertwins is good fun as well at http://www.zimmertwins.com/.  It is another free website working on a similar basis but simpler in use and look.  This might work well when introducing ICT to the younger year levels in primary.  

Greg introduced us to a number of other websites which could be used to foster imagination in the classroom.  Build your wild self is a great website where students can create fantasy images of themselves.  This could be used by students to create characters that they then write a fantasy story about or to create characters to illustrate a fantasy story they have already written.  http://www.buildyourwildself.com/

We also looked at the use of games in the classroom to develop mathematics skills.  One of my favourites was Street Racer from the Sumdog website.  This website is designed to make mathematics fun.  In Street Racer, you race against the computer or other students by answering maths questions.  Correct answers accelerate your car towards the finish line, while incorrect answers can slow you to a halt.  Great fun for kids but also a good tool for encouraging mental calculation.

http://www.sumdog.com/en/Sumdog_games_-_Street_Racer/

Week 4

English and Mathematics Activities for Classrooms using ICT

This week's workshop showed us how to equip students with the skills and knowledge to use technology in mathematics and English. Below is a great example of how to engage children in mathematical enquiry. Taking a traditional works sheet to record how many different coloured M&M's were in a packet, our challenge was to present the information in a more dynamic way.

As Greg pointed out, this is a great ICT activity for primary school students especially when they get to eat the M&M's afterwards! The activity in the classroom would be to pair students up and give each pair a packet of M&M's and have the students sort the M&M's into their respective colours. Students design the spreadsheet as creatively as they like and then enter the data onto their spreadsheet. I had never done this before but in a short space of time could produce some quite effective results.



Each pair then print out their spreadsheet and students discuss the colours they found in the packages. These groups then form bigger and bigger groups until the whole class has an overview. Greg explained that this process is known as “jigsawing”, where students are in small groups then join bigger groups as they discuss the issues. One spokesperson reports on the groups findings. The teacher can then enter the data into a class M&M spreadsheet or get groups of students to add their data as they finish designing their own.



This could then lead to a class debate run by the teacher asking questions such as: How many M&Ms were found in each packet? What is the range of colours found across the whole class? What would happen if the company just put all of one colour into the packets? Why do you think some colours don’t appear too frequently in each packet? A teacher could use more mathematical terminology by asking questions like,' What colours were found to occur more than others?' Chance and data activities could be developed from this one activity through investigating students' favourite colours and their reasons why?

This is a great fun activity that I would definitely use in class. VELS involves learning and engagement across a number of strands and disciplines most notably mathematics, interpersonal development, ICT and English and this activity would correlate well.

Dust Echoes

Dust Echoes is a series of twelve beautifully animated dreamtime stories from Central Arnhem Land, telling stories of love, loyalty, duty to country and aboriginal custom and law from ABC website.  We used the Print Screen function to take freeze frames of a particular animation.  We then pasted these into Paint, where we cropped them and then pasted the images into Inspire to create a story board.  This would be a great way to get students retelling narratives and assessing their understanding of texts while engaging them in more creative exercise.

 

Educational Soundness: Learning Federation & Thinking Curriculum Tools and ICT

In this week's lecture Greg introduced us to the Learning Federation website.

The Learning Federation is a project established by Education Services Australia, a ministerial company set up to deliver innovative, cost effective resources to education.


It aims to encourage and support schools to use these resources to embrace the digital revolution in education.

Week 3

The Protection of Students Online

After discovering the fantastic learning opportunities technology has to offer us over the past couple of weeks, this week highlighted the dangers the internet can also pose for students.

In the weekly lecture, Greg directed us to the Cybersmart website. The website was developed by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, as part of the Australian Government’s cybersafety program.

http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/.

Cybersmart provides activities, resources and practical advice to help young kids, teens and parents to enjoy the online world safely.

The Cybersmart website also houses a wide range of cybersafety information and teaching resources for primary and secondary schools. These accessible and engaging materials are designed to help schools develop and implement a holistic approach to cybersafety. 

The 'Young Kids' section features a great reminder of the key concepts of staying 'cyber smart' for children.  I think this would make a good poster to display in the classroom for the teacher to regularly direct the children to.

The lecture went on to make an interesting distinction between 'behavng responsibily' and 'behaving safely' online.

 Behaving safely referred to students: 

• protecting their own privacy and personal information 
• selecting appropriate spaces to work and contribute 
• protecting the privacy of others 
• being proactive in letting someone know if there is something that is 'not quite right'

 
These were the usual protocols I would have expected to find.  However, behaving responsibly put the emphasis on the student to use the internet ethically; in ways I hadn't thought of before.

Behaving responsibly requires students to:

• use appropriate language
• consider the things they say
• treat others with respect
• respect peoples property (e.g intellectual and copyright)
• visit appropriate places 

During the lecture, Greg played us some excellent videos from Youtube with themes of cyber bullying and internet safety.  This had me wondering if there were any videos aimed at lower primary school aged children.  I found the one below and was very pleased with myself as I didn't know how to embed it into this blog, but now I had the ICT confidence to explore the 'help' facility on the Youtube website.  Unfortunately it cuts off towards the end but the full version would be good to use with preps to Year 2.

For older students, I would use the video below produced by the The Department for Education in the UK.  The programme examines a focus group of children who helped shape the report. We hear their thoughts on the 'Zip It, Block It, Flag It' motto as well as what they think about internet safety in general.

Workshop Quia games

In the workshop we looked at the Quia website.  Quia stands for Quintessential Instructional Archive.  It provides a wide range of tools including:

• templates for creating online activities such as: flash cards, battleships, hangman, word search, cloze activities, surveys etc.
• online quizzes which also give you the students' results
  
• and access to over 3 million online quizzes and activities in 300 categories. 

I think the brilliance of Quia is that it lets you personalise activities.  You could create a quiz on any subject that you have been studying with students.  It would be a fun activity in class but also a great benefit in assessing students understanding in an informal way.

Quia also engages students who like to use computers.  It moves away from traditional 'black line markers' to a more engaging medium for children.

Week 2

MS Publisher and ePortfoilios


This week we were introduced to Microsoft Publisher.  Again this came as a shock to me.  I have had the complete Microsoft Office package on my laptop for years and never once have I looked at it.  I am beginning to wonder where I have been for the last few years technology-wise!

The good thing is that this software is easy to use and I managed to produce this three sided flyer in about 30 minutes.  

I was very excited by my new discovery and can see the many creative opportunities to which it could be put to in the classroom, as a large number of students learn best visually.


I wanted to find out more so I performed an online search for 'publisher in schools' which lead me to Microsoft's website http://www.microsoft.com/australia/education/teachertools/ .  The home page is a celebration of awards won by teachers (like Erin Svean below) for the innovative use of technology in the classroom.

This is a fantastic website not only for learning more about Publisher but for all of the Microsoft's software that you might find in schools.

There are tutorials on how to use products, hints, tips and tech support.  I was particularly impressed by the 'Teachers Tools' page which had a great 'How to...' section.  This contained detailed lesson plans on how to use Publisher to: create a magazine cover, design a CD label case, design a menu etc.  They were even aimed at particular year levels.  It also had lessons plans for the introduction of all Microsoft software such as word, excel and its uses across the Domains.  All in all a very useful website that I am sure I will be returning to many times.

Next we looked at the use of ePortfolios in schools.  Again I had one of those 'wow' moments as to what uses technology can have in teaching and learning.  I was amazed by the level to which it has integrated into our daily lives and the lives of our children.  There is a part of me, though, that wonders if the reality in the classroom will match the possibilities of our lectures.

I can see clearly the power of eportfolios for turning information into knowledge.  As a primary school student, I would have loved the process of turning my ideas into a brochure, book or poster; to build up my eportfolio and have the opportunity to display my creativity.  There was a particular paragraph from the online source 'Digital Portfolios: Fact or Fiction', by Helen Woodward and Phil Nanlohy which summed this up for me:

"A further dimension brought about by the digital construction of portfolios is that of the engagement in learning. Armitage (1998) believes that digital portfolios assist student learning by increasing motivation and allowing publication of their work in ways that result in greater self-confidence. The opportunities for reflection and discussion about the artefacts chosen by portfolio authors also adds to their value as learning support ..."

We went on to create our own eportfolio.  I'm not sure if I grasped all of its possibilities within the short time of our workshop but this is one of the things I am beginning to enjoy about the Information Technology unit.  I am aware that I have started a new learning path and it is very exciting and daunting at the same time.  I think it is good to get these old feelings back because it might help me empathise with how my students may feel.

Week 1

An Introduction to Learning Technologies

Well today was a bit of a surprise.  I was aware that ICT, Information and Communication Technology, was part of the course but up until this week it had not appeared on the LMS and therefore, had not occupied my mind.

Well, not anymore.  Within five minutes of the lecture starting, about the time it took my first computer, an old Commodore 64, to load a game, I was shaken to the core.  Although I thought of myself as not being entirely computer illiterate, I hadn't realised how far ICT has progressed and how fast.  One of the great things about this course is how exciting it is to learn again.  Today's lesson highlighted how much new software is now available and how many uses there are for ICT in the classroom.  At first it was a little daunting and then it became eye opening.

We were introduced to Inspire by Greg.  Inspire is a software programme used in schools for visual mapping, outlining, writing and making presentations.  According to their website, it can be used to:

"Brainstorm ideas, structure your thoughts and visually communicate concepts to strengthen understanding ........ To take notes, organize information, and structure writing for plans, papers and reports....... transform your diagrams, mind maps and outlines into polished presentations that communicate ideas clearly and demonstrate understanding and knowledge".

In the workshop we used the software to create a mind map of our choice (see below).

In only a short period of time I was able to produce some half-reasonable results and, with practise, I feel confident I could improve. 


Here are a few examples from Inspire's website of the work which can be produced.

The Inspire website also contains some very good explanations of mind maps and their significance to students' learning: 

  

 

"Mind maps are visual representations of hierarchical information that include a central idea or image surrounded by connected branches of associated topics or ideas. Subtopics are added to the mind map flowing outward from the central idea".

"Mind maps provide a simplified overview of complex information allowing students to better understand relationships and find new connections. As students use symbols, colors and simple keywords to create a memorable mind map, information and connections within that information are more easily recalled. Supporting information is detailed in attached notes".

Taken from http://www.inspiration.com/

For more information on how to use mind maps, here is a useful link to James Cook University's website  http://www.jcu.edu.au/tldinfo/learningskills/mindmap/howto.html