The Last Post

   by  Création CARAVEO 

I am done. Almost. Once this post is done, I shall be complete.

Kind of, anyway.

Although it was fiddly, and I struggled with finding words, this assignment wasn’t horrible. I have a study date with a friend tomorrow, to try and knock over another assignment – then assignment #3 will have to be done independently (and very late).

This semester seems to have been my hardest so far. And I’m not quite sure why. Sure, only having four assignment dates was difficult, but even so… I find comfort in the fact that I wasn’t the only one having issues though. Everyone seems to be struggling.

What do I take away from this course? ICTs are important. They are beneficial. And they are challenging. The world is changing dramatically, on a daily basis – and it is our job to keep as up to date as possible, in order to give our students the best hope for the future.

As I said, months ago, this was going to be an interesting semester. And it was. I don’t think I found an ICT that has “clicked”, but I’ve learnt more.

Let’s hope my learning sticks.

More prac and ICT [and fulfillment of my blog requirements]

Today is a sunny day, and it is my greatest wish to move outside and enjoy it. Unfortunately, my computer screen does not agree. So I’m stuck inside, wearing my fiancé’s jumper (I couldn’t be bothered getting mine out), and trying to actually come up with something meaningful that will benefit my later study.

No matter where I sit though, I’ll be serenaded by club music. At least the car’s sound system works – although I haven’t mentioned that to the back neighbours.

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Personally, I feel like I could have done more meaningful ICT integration had I had more to access. Youtube videos are great, but I would have loved to create a lesson where the kids had ICT access. ICTs are brilliant, when used right.

That being said, I feel like the kids learnt more from the visual/audial presentation of the content than they would have if I had tried to explain it myself. One of the kids is hearing impaired, so the visual aspect theoretically helped him.

I know I’m only preservice, and experience will help. But in the meantime…

The final frontier!

Assessment. The bane of my uni existence.

I haven’t even looked at Assignment 3 in any great detail. It’s due Monday. One of my Facebook friends legit asked me if I was okay when I told her that I’ve been trying to cram four weeks of study into three days. It could have been that I also told her that I haven’t look at any of my three due assessment pieces either… Oops.

At least I only have to get 8 marks to pass… however, while that is tempting (who really wants to do 1600+ words), it probably isn’t advised. Knowing my luck, there is a “bare minimum” clause somewhere that will fail me if I don’t attempt all of it.

Wish me luck. 😦

The interesting discussion around IWBs

Interactive Whiteboards are all the rage nowadays, along with Blooms, Gardner, and Vygotsky. But are they really used appropriately? I can’t say that I’ve often noticed them being used in a way that really transforms student learning. Often, they seem to be glorified projectors.

For this last prac, I was in a classroom without an IWB. That in itself wasn’t an issue; I see IWBs as a similar technology as a computer, and assume that they are possible to master with a bit of time and experience (I may be wrong). I worry that, in our haste to incorporate new tech into the classroom, we are neglecting it. Yes, this technology is designed to benefit and extend on both teaching and learning, but are we allowing it to do so, or are we using it as simply as possible while crowing our “we are an ICT school” mantra? I don’t know.

So many theories, frameworks and models!

I don’t know if this counts as a blog post, but I hope it does.

Trying to power through study after 10pm is not good, and that’s why I’ve chosen to share this amazing piece of work rather than bore everyone with my own. When I created mine, I struggled – partly due to motivation and tiredness, and partly due to purely not being sure of the rather clear instructions.

Thank you CrinkleClare for putting this together and sharing it! It’s awesome, and I really do appreciate the word you put into creating it. It, and you, helped me tonight. Thanks a heap. 🙂

crinkleclare

We were tasked to complete a table describing theories, models and frameworks and I thought this was a good reminder of what we have learned so far, so I thought I would include it in my blog.

Theory	Purpose	Application
CLEM	Helps to understand how to learn about a new ICT and how to use it to enhance student learning.	If there are any new ICTs at the school, it might help your explorations.
TPACK	Assists in thinking about different types of knowledge needed to design effective ICT learning experiences.	Might help explorations to plan ICT rich learning experiences.
Backwards Design	Helps to plan lessons ‘backward’ so that the learning experiences achieves a specific learning outcome.	Will help in planning lessons to ensure students reach their goal.
RAT	Helps ensure that teachers implement ICTs to amplify and transform learning, rather than using ICT to replace learning.	Will help ensure that…

View original post 334 more words

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To work, or not to work. I’ve reached Week 9, but… do I really want to start another week of work now, or would I rather leave it for tomorrow and read posts on Not Always Right? Honestly? Even though I’ve got an hour plus drive tomorrow, I’d rather not work now. But I have three assignments that have not been started, and only four (two and a half, really) days to do them. 😥

I’ve completed one week today, so that’s a start. I feel really weird reading it all because it’s all like “welcome to the last learning path before you head out on Professional Experience“. Profex is over and I’m lazy. Stahp making me feel guilty for actually having other assignments to do before and during prac. 😥

#sadface #rantend

Do you want a lollypop?

As children, we’re taught stranger danger.

It’s interesting. I semi-regularly Google myself. And, so far tonight, I’ve seen two pictures of mine – one for my YouTube account that took forever to trawl through and find, and one from my Twitter account that doesn’t even come up in the Google images search (although, you can click on it under the images for ____ option in the Google search. I also found a picture to my LinkedIn account there too, but again, it doesn’t show up in regular search). Years back, I could find my Delta Goodrem account – it’s long gone. I’m not public on Facebook, and a quick search through my profile as “a member of the public” shows four public posts (and they’re only public because people shared the original posts), two profile pictures, and a cover photo. Hardly the stuff of nightmares.

As a child, I didn’t have the best relationship with my father. Because of this, my Mum took us into hiding, and although I now have him as a friend on Facebook, I locked my account as much as I could so he couldn’t access it or me. Also, for my own privacy, but that goes without saying. On the other hand, my sister has a very public profile, and it scares me. Five minutes on her instagram would give you everything you need to know to find her, even down to an inadvertent sharing of her phone number. But she doesn’t do much about it, and that worries me.

Looking at the Take This Lollipop simulation, I have some questions. Given that my location is inaccessible to a member of the public, and I live in a large city with no public school or work details available, I don’t know how the crazy man can track down my city (or location). Also, my friends list is public – in the video, it is not (which then means I lose out on the end animation, but from what I can tell, that’s an okay thing). Ultimately, the message is good – I understand what it is trying to do. But, still – only two of the photos that the video shared are actually public. The rest aren’t. #feedingmyfearsonefalsepictureatatime

Be safe kids.

Connect.ed and cyber safety

Online safety is important. And it is important that we as teachers keep up with the need to teach our students the skills they need in order to be safe online – check out the resources available here and here.

Personally, I would recommend the Connect.ed modules to every teacher, for the simple fact that we need to know what we are coming up against. Not everything is useful and practical, and sometimes it takes a somewhat simplistic approach to educating teachers – but, I do need to remember that I am a Gen Y student teacher; not every teacher, student or qualified, is going to know what I do.

One thing I really enjoyed was the social media simulation (and I’m not the only one). I think a school-based social network that is moderated would be a great idea to expose students to social media in a controlled sense. I personally use Facebook, and have quite enjoyed my times on other sites (Club Penguin, in particular); but in a changing digital world, with students who are engaging with these sites at a younger age, I think it is important to create a safe, social, and educational space. I think it is important for students to have that freedom to learn how to express themselves, without the danger of the big bad world. It might be a challenge, but I think it’ll be worth it.

Digital Citizenship and Cyber Safety

As an avid internet subscriber, I like to think I have a fairly good hold on my security. I don’t go on dodgy sites, I don’t click dodgy links, and I sure as anything don’t pay attention to the countless emails I’ve gotten over recent months about watches, viagra, and ‘excited’ women [if you’re the one who bought my email address and insist on sending me spam, please note – even my email address identifies me as female. Free dresses or petrol would probably interest me more].

But even though I “know” what I’m doing, and I protect myself, I still can fall victim.

For example, I am the Child Safety Coordinator at my church. One of the ladies, a teacher, had just been rejected for an exemption card due to a lack of information, and I was expecting her to give me what I needed to restart her application. I got an email from her, with a link to Google Drive for an attachment. All good, I use Google Drive. The main page was off, but I figured it was because I as approaching from a different link, logged in; the attachment opened – but it opened to the middle of some financial overview document. No big deal, maybe it malfunctioned.

It wasn’t until the third attempt, when I misentered my password and still “logged in” that I realised that something was very not right. Suddenly, security mode. I changed my password, started a manual anti-virus scan, and panicked for the next hour. The breach itself wasn’t the issue – it happened on my “personal” account – but my personal account is the account that my computer runs off. Much like Android phones, Windows 8 and above request an email account to set up. Gone are the days of relative freedom and email/computer separation (those days didn’t last long anyway).

Nothing ended up happening that I am aware of. I didn’t hear any complaints from my contacts about a dodgy Drive link. But it was certainly a wake-up call, a reminder that I cannot necessarily keep myself safe. I can try, but just like those who used and trusted Ashley Madison, I need to remember that it’s a big world out there – and I need to be careful where I tread.

Too much ICT

I wish I could say study is the reason why I’m so tired, but… it’s not. #diaryofalazystudent

While on prac (let’s talk about that again, it’s terribly exciting), I found that there were certain ICT resources that I used a lot. Pinterest and YouTube, for a start; occasionally Sparklebox (I do recommend that one so much), and a bit of Google. I also used some technology that shall remain unnamed, for unnamed purposes, that greatly improved my ability to use certain ICTs in the classroom when I lacked internet access or the time to search for what I needed before the next lesson – and I shared these resources with one of my mentors. Long story short, the worse the song, the better the students engage. I had kids rocking out to horrible song like this. #stuckinmyhead

I’ve mentioned previously that I want a tablet of some sort, and although my workload was different compared to previous pracs, it still is something high on my list of things to buy. I got to play with iPads and set educational activities for the kids to use during rotations – and by play, I mean, when there was a spare iPad during the rotations, I played the education game everyone else was playing. #topgradeteacher

One of my actual designated lessons was the two ICT lessons in Weeks 2/3 – we taught the kids to use text boxes (they learnt to use clip art the week before – a skill that is kind of useless now that Word ’13 doesn’t actually use clip art, but a skill nonetheless). They know their way around a computer fairly well, which is impressive. My mentor sent me to the senior computer labs to observe the Year 6s as they did their computer stuff, and the contrast is massive. The older kids actually know what to do, you only need to explain the requirements, not detail the steps. They know how to explore and discover tools. Preppies aren’t quite there yet. #awholenewworld

I’d love to have more access to ICTs next time. Like, I get that the ICT revolution is slow in schools, but it’d be really good to fully utilise it. Maybe next time.