Encountering E-Learning Education

This is a short video I sourced from YouTube by Kath Cassidy on primary teaching using information communication technologies. This short video was created for Terry Freedman who is the editor of “Coming of Age”. Kath contributed to this piece of educational literature by discussing how young children can use web tools to learning. Even as young as age six can use blogs, wikis, podcasts to communicate their thoughts despite the fact that they’re only  just learning to express their thoughts. The internet is a powerful learning tool for these young children as they can learn from other children and adults from around the world being a part of the global conversation.

I was intrigued to learn that these young children were blogging as part of their learning with several classes around the world. They were also using wikis to learn about “traditions”. The children were also interacting with a class of university students who were currently studying how to teach writing to primary aged children. To make this interactivity even more exciting and valuable the children met the university students though Skype. For the primary school students, their blogging had greater depth and importance because they knew that older students would be regularly reading and commenting on their work.

This short video is a testimony to the deep value of ICTs in primary classrooms. The scope of learning is unending and restricted only by the teacher’s fears and inhibitions. I can see how imperative a risk-taking approach is to teaching using ICTs in order to really open up the many teaching opportunities the internet provides.

Last week during our e-learning block we conducted an interesting and intriguing interview with Deborah Evans via the internet using Skype. She works at the Macquarie ICT Innovations Centre and is a professional on LAMS. She quotes…”LAMS has become an integral part of many aspects of Macquarie ICT Innovation Centre in developing, implementing and evaluating innovative ways of enhancing learning through the application of dynamic and emerging information and communication technologies”. Matthew Kearney had set up a class interview with her in order to give us a better understanding of the pedagogyand scope of LAMS sequences.

Debbie informed us that initially LAMS was designed for distance higher education learning and it was her role to adjust it for primary teaching contexts. She trialled LAMS on her stage three class and after six months introduced it in the context of online homework tasks. This was revolutionary for the time and really was thinking out of the square as the school was situated in a rural area. After three years LAMS was embedded in the homework system. Students thoroughly enjoyed this new learning framework and would rush home to complete their LAMS homework. Debbie could only assume that they were highly engaged in the learning. Additionally LAMS was integrated into classroom learning.

As LAMS improved she designed learning sequences which were more experimental. She taught collaboratively with another stage three class and created a live chat buddy program. She found forums were a particularly popular tool. One instance was when the boys created a “for boys only” forum. Forums were also used by the parent community for planning social events. She also found that votes were another useful tool. Debbie would sometimes use live edit informed by the results of class votes.

Her tips to us were keep it simple and rich. Have a few gates to allow for class discussion. Use live edit to manipulate the direction of learning. Once you’ve designed a good template, don’t be afraid to re-use it, particularly for younger students. Use LAMS across the KLAs such as themes in English texts, bullying within PDHPE or peer support activities. Overall it was an extremely helpful and valuable interview.

I found a useful a news, information and resource blog for teachers in the UK called Primary Teacher UK. On this blogging page I found a useful entry entitled Me and My Movie. This CBBC program is a unique film-making initiative inspiring and enabling children to make movies and tell their own stories. The website provides fun, interactive film-making tutorials and a safe space where children can upload, share and rate each other’s films. Students can enjoy publishing and tagging one another’s movies on the web. I watched a movie called The Worst Present by 12 year old Catherine. It was a short video of two girls miming. The scene was based around two girls exchanging a present. I thought it was lovely that these two young students were provided with an opportunity to publish and perform their piece of mime to a world wide audience online. The free Me and My Movie film-maker’s pack for children is also available to download from the site in the How To section. This looks like a really interesting and interactive site which would be useful in the classroom. It is visually really appealing to children and easy to navigate.

Images accessed from: http://www.pastornet.net.au/gifs/eternity.jpg

http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/~fuhrmann/eternity.jpg

I found Michelle and Amy’s Vodcast very interesting. They used two metaphors to represent deep and meaningful learning. The first was the eternity sign which they referred to the way learning is a continuous and ongoing process. I agree with this idea although sometimes it can seem overwhelming. Children sometimes need to be inspired by the never-ending nature of learning but conversely may need to be provided with small and manageable learning tasks to gain a sense of achievement. They also used the metaphor of a road in that learning can take you in many different directions depending on the path that you select. From my teaching and learning experiences I have also realised that being able to determine your educational direction certainly does increase the depth of learning.

This was a mind-mapping activity on my first day of the e-learning summer subject. Individually and then collaboratively we brainstormed about how the internet could be used in primary school contexts. It was interesting to observe the great diversity of ideas we developed as a class. It was also helpful to recognise how invaluable the internet is as a teaching and learning tool. It facilitates in-depth, engaging and meaningful learning tasks as it is interactive, highly stimulating and allows for great inter-connectivity across the globe educationally. The internet also lends itself well to student-centred learning with access to a phenomenal range of software and educational resources. Students can also use the internet as a means for publishing their work and displaying it to a wide and diverse audience. This gives greater meaning and value to learning. Students can also engage with educational experts globally though blogging or Skype. Additionally the internet can be used to facilitate further learning at home and in the future as students do not need to be in the classroom to access the vast array of educational online resources available through the internet.

We used Inspiration to create this mind-map but Matthew informed us that another useful online mind-mapping tool is bubbl.us which we could use in our LAMS learning sequence. I browsed the internet to investigate online mind-mapping tools and discovered a blog post by Ian McKenzie which listed other online software which may be useful. I have listed them below. Certainly mind-mapping is an excellent learning tool for collating and drawing together students’ thoughts and ideas. Mind-mapping online is useful on a number of levels. Firstly in digital form it is easy to manipulate and add to either individually and collaboratively compared to pen and paper. Secondly it allows students to publish their work online and share it with a global audience. Thirdly it can be accessed from outside the classroom creating a wider learning sphere.