Teacher Centred Lesson Reflection

During the teacher centred lesson I took at Pimilico State High School (PSHS) I feel as though the planning was adequate just not so much the delivery. It was interesting to see the feedback that students handed back in on their Learner Profiles even before I got a chance to start teaching.

Some things that I need to work on for a teacher centred lesson are things like preparing work for students that are fast workers and finish early. Giving them work resolves allot of classroom chatter. I need to avoid talking over people and demand attention by say a catch phase, “More work less chatter.” Need to be more clearer with instructions. Advising students of what I expect.

It was interesting to see that what the SBTE picked up on for not speaking loud enough a student also picked up on. The student by the name of “D” was witty enough to answer, “How can I help you learn better to reach your goals,” by answering,

“Explain things well and in a loud voice if speaking to a group.”

That has stuck with my thinking pattern today. My SBTE made a comment to me prior to the lesson. She mentioned that they were a smart bunch and out of all of them “D” will really be able to help you.

It must be like this for all first years fresh out of high school. I mean teaching a class of year 11 or 12s. It’s awkward. Being the same age and mental ability. Anyone can teach a bunch of grade 8s although teaching grade 11s or 12s requires study.

Creating with ICTs

The term creativity was integrated into education during the 60s - 70s. Educators and developers developed and awareness for the need of having creative students. They found that the influence of social contexts and environments effected a students creativity.

Creativity and Culture Education (UK, 1990) defined creativity as "imaginative activity fashioned to produce outcomes that are both original and of value."

The purpose of everything created

Blooms Taxonomy

High Order Thinking - While primary learning focuse on knowledge comprehension and application students are capable of. creativity, composing, inventing and hypothesizing.


Analysis - Catagorise, comparing and contrast.

Evaluate - After scaffolding - Students can give an example or opinions, judge, rate, recommend and review their work.

E.g. - Rating the effectiveness of the design
       - The 3 main elements.

Creativity doesn't mean just being limited to Powerpoint and Word. As this next video displays; Death by PowerPoint. 

YouTube Blog: The Future Will Be Captioned: Improving Accessibility on YouTube

Youtube has increased their accessibility with auto Captions videos that are uploaded.

YouTube Blog: The Future Will Be Captioned: Improving Accessibility on YouTube

Information about Townsville Hot Topics

Well, this page often features information about Townsville. It's developed by a website developer in Townsville. Often interesting topics about local events and news are posted for your enjoyment. If you don't feel like reading then just have a listen instead. You can even listen to Suburban FM in iTunes.

Don't forget to subscribe via iTunes or to the RSS feed.

in reference to: Suburban Podcasting FM – Internet Radio » Casts (view on Google Sidewiki)

Virtual Classrooms - DimDim

Virtual Classrooms seem like such a great idea. There are several applications available on the internet that allow for video and audio streaming. With the right setup these services can really be taken advantage of.

Virtual Classrooms are a private online space where teachers can share learning activities with students remotely to support learning. It can be accessed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It allows for face-to-face discussion. Like a real classroom virtual classrooms are busy.

Most virtual classrooms have facility to incorporate files such as ppt, pdf and doc files. These files can be shared with students at the click of a button. Likewise students also have the ability to share files with teachers and piers.

Dimdim a virtual classroom tool

The services that are available to teachers although seem a little lacking in quality are elluminate and dimdim. There may be others around but these are services which are easy to register with and learn.

All you really need for a virtual classroom is a microphone and webcam. This is often built into a laptop. Otherwise these devices should be available from a technology store for about $50.

This week I shall be doing a podcast on the use of dimdim and elluminate. Show you a little hands on about how I believe that the application can be used in a classroom.

I personally would recommend a private uStream channel for virtual classrooms. This is because it allows for far better quality. The only loss here is sharing files.

If your not really into being on camera than why not just post your presentation and record audio to go along with it using an application like VoiceThread.com.

Here is a video of a school in England that uses Virtual Classrooms. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hMGbTPnWIc

Developing a Search Strategy

Well when it comes to university study references are the difference between a pass and a HD on a report. References can sometimes take hours to find by using a simple search engine like Google or Yahoo.

Thankfully for the Education industry there are several online databases. These are; A+ Education, ProQuest, Google Scholar, OneSearch.

Things that need to be done before searching an online Database:

1. Identify the keywords / concepts in your research topic.
2. Identify Synonyms - For example; rural, remote, outback or primary, elementary and junior.
   
   
   
   
   

   
   
3. Identify Traunication - Phase searching opportunities.
4. Formulate and execute your search srategy. For example the following operators in your query; and, or, not.
   
   And - Narrowing a search.
   Or - Broaden a search.
   Not - Exclude a term.
   
5. Evaluate your results - Evalutate the information that you find for relevance.
6. Apply limits to your search results. For instance within a specific location or time frame.

Databases are slightly different in the way to a commerical search engine. Databases are more advanced and require information input to find the correct / relevant information.

Here are some helpful database links for education:

• A+ Education - An indexing and full text database that provides Internet access to the scanned images of journal articles from published material on all aspects of education. Source documents include journal articles, monographs, research reports, theses, conference papers, legislation, parliamentary debates, newspaper articles, tests and web. Articles and reports by Australian authors or about Australian education published in overseas sources are also included. Subject coverage includes curriculum, educational research, information science, librarianship, management, policy administration, psychology, sociology, teaching and training.
• ERIC - A world wide site for education journals and documents.
• ProQuest - Resources relevant to education and ED1401.

Dear Readers

Dear readers,

As you know I started “blogging” this year, and I never really took the time out to explain what a blog really is.

It must get a bit confusing, because every time you click on the bookmark that I saved for you, the

I started a blog

“letter” that you read last time isn’t there, and you’re not sure where it’s gone or where to find it.

So I’m writing this letter to let you know a little more about what it is that I’m doing here at suburbanfm.com. Chances are you’ve probably worked it out for yourself, but just in case….

A blog is really like any website you visit, except it can be a little more difficult to navigate around. I know you think I’m very clever by creating my own website, but it really isn’t all that complicated to do (and I’ll explain that another time). Really, you could have your own inside an hour!

From Nicholas O'Sullivan (nicholas@suburbanfm.com)

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

More of my blogs are located at http://cyclingknowhow.blogspot.com, http://bacheducation.blogspot.com.

Creating with ICTs

Creating refers to the process students undertake and the product they produce when they explore.

School students are often reflected as, "digital natives," due to this presumption it is believed that they have had extensive exposure to and interaction with ICTs in their home environment.

When students enter a school environment they bring a wide range of technological experiences. Some may have access to a computer and others may still only have access to a type writer. Regardless every student has a different experiences with technology.

As "digital natives" students experiences may vary from non-users, users to creators. Below is an example of a creator:

There is a boy who is 12 years of age that I've had association with. He is able to program a web page in notepad as well as program a complex lighting desk. When I was his age I was designing websites in MS Publisher and didn't learn to program a lighting desk until grade 15.

Most but not all of us have had exposure to a wide variety of content; Videos, CDs, DVDs, Mobile Phones, PDAs, Mp3s.

In the school environment it is necessary to give young students opportunities to engage with a range of ICTs that are compliant and supplement their pre-schooling experience.

Resources that are open ended and promote communication, interaction, discovery and problem solving.

A variety of electronic media is presented to them but there are 4 main types of resources:

1. Design and Make
2. Work and Play
3. Communicate and Share
4. Online Project

These will be looked at in a future blog post.

Conducting a Classroom Survey

Well, conducting a classroom survey can sometimes be a little hard to organise. After the initial designing - such as working out what your going to collect data and questions to ask there is the calculations.

Well this is where a handy ICT called SurveyMonkey comes into play. Survey Monkey is a fee online survey tool that enables you to ask up to 100 people to complete an online survey form. It can be integrated inside school intranets, blogs or personal websites. There is a premium account which enables you to have up to 1000 people taking part in your survey.

An example of a survey could be one about radio and the progress of users switching to internet radio.

For example here is a survey I created for my podcasting website. Here is a link to information about the survey. This survey was put together to gather information from a selection of 100 people about the radio stations they listen to. The ultimate idea is to understand whether an Internet Radio station is viable.

Below is an image of what Survey Monkey can do

The survey above took about 5 minutes to design and create. However in a classroom concept when teaching about surveys there are a couple of good pointers to keep in mind.

1. Have a Learner profile of the students in your class. This way you have an understanding of what the students in your calls already know. Come up with an interesting topic that is relevant to the student's learning. Use information from the essential leanings.
2. Start teaching what you've planned. For students to gain an understanding of survey monkey it might be helpful if you could get students to participate in a survey first. You can then use the survey they participated in to make the information more relevant.
3. Ask students to start planning their surveys. Group work might be helpful if the task requires extensive work. Once planning has been completed students can create a free account at SurveyMokey
4. Once all students have participated in each others surveys the results can be analysed. The students can use a program such as Excel or Powerpoint to create a graph.
5. The information that is in graph forms could then be present by students as an oral presentation to demonstrate their understanding. This would address the CCP of Numeracy as well as ICT.

Well that's a very brief overview of conducting a classroom survey as an activity for students. Further activities that can be done is if your survey is something that the school would benefit from. For example if the topic of your survey was, "The amount of hours children watch TV". The results gathered from this survey could be displayed in the school newsletter advising parents of the effects of to much TV stimulation.

Remember a good teacher is someone that can teach well and use ICTs to enrich their students' learning.

Technology as a Human Endeavor

Technology has been the center of our current time. Every corner we turn there is some new piece of technology that didn't exist 3 years ago. One such example would be Wireless Mobile Broadband. Technology is designed with the needs of humans in mind.

When technology is able to be accessed and used by humans, it changes the way we plan and organise our lives. For example the creation of Outlook has enabled many people to keep track of important appoints and emails. Outlook along with a PDA such as iPod Touch enable you to be organized where ever you go.

In teaching students can gain knowledge and understanding of technology by exploring the design of products and learning about various design standards. Some examples are listed below:

- Simple as a pair of scissors or as complex as a radio or computer.
- Investigate the way technologies are constructed to fufill a purpose.
- The relationship between the materials used to construct technologies and the design requirements.

 A students' thinking when investigating technology is divided into four major areas of knowledge:

•The non-linear nature of technology education - Is taught in a step by step process.
•Linguistic competence - Discuss virtual ideas and the knowledge to label the physical action needed to work technologically.
•Tacit (doing) knowledge - Students learn on the job, the doing knowledge required.
•Design capabilities -The link between the capability of children to design and realize a product from that design.

Awareness of the developmental age and capabilities of students will ensure better lesson planning and greater student success.

Technology as a Teacher


Teachers need to have knowledge of technology in order to teach technologically. You couldn't teacher Office Excel on an overhead projector.

Teachers are required to use technology to access and orrganize learning content as well as classroom logistical data such as student records.

Teachers are required to creating learning experiences; organise, research, interpret, analyse, communicate, represent knowledge in different ways.

Pedagogy 

Education Queensland teacher standard 6 requires teachers to plan, implement and monitor learning strategies that implement a range of ICT technologies to promote and enhance student learning.

 

Linking Cross Curriculum, Essential learnings and Information Literacy

Education authorities and the national curriculum board have prioritized the implementation of a national curriculum. As teachers we need to be aware of the national curriculum and changes it will bring. School education is responsible for laying the important foundations for the students future. However we can't be aware of whether what we teacher a student in grade 1 will be relevant in 10 years time.

Cross curriculum priorities are subject areas that are considered by the education governing body as being an essential topic of study. Such as Maths, Literacy and ICT.

Essential learning is learning effectively. Refer to the organisers listed below

Organisers of essential learnings:
- Knowledge and Understanding
- Investigating and designing
- Producing
- Evaluating
- Reflecting (KA,I,P,E,R)

Information Literacy Describes the skill set and associated literacy a person uses to work with information.

Further Notes:

• Frameworks for Information Literacy- Super 3 for younger children and the Big 6 for older students.
• A Consistent Framework -
• Allows you to build on Information Literacy.
• Help built a recognition of explicit ways of working with information that ensures they are better.

Definitions:

Analysis - Is the investigation of component / area.
Synthesizing - This should be done after analyzing. It is the process of taking what you have analyzed and applying it to your own understanding.

Advantages and Disadvantages for the teaching ‘profession’

Teaching is viewed by many people has being a profession. Teaching matches the model of a profession as there is a body of knowledge that is acquired such as pedagogy and knowledge of various subjects. One of the advantages of the teaching pedagogy is teaching is an honorable profession which benefits the leaders and professionals of the future. One of the disadvantages of teaching is the day-to-day tasks such as rolls, answering queries, marking. These are all tasks that are seen as being minor setbacks to the teaching profession.

A teacher in a richer community may seen more as a middle-class citizen due to the popular belief of teaching being an ‘easy profession’. In a poorer community teachers are generally portrayed as being noble leaders.

Who am I?

Hi and thanks for stopping by. This blog basically is just a way for me to keep track of all the notes that I've found useful while studying Bachelor of Education at Townsville JCU. I hope that a few of the people who actually read this blog find some information that may assist them. I'm only planning on adding notes about one subject on this blog as I add notes to do with ICT on my Computer Business Website.

Studying: Bachelor of Education Secondary
Working: Yes, I'm currently working for Telstra Bigpond. It's a sweet as job.
Hometown: Townsville, QLD, Australia

How many websites would you say you've got?
I have got 5 currently. Oh, you want to know about my other blogs. In that case I would have to write all my websites down to remember how many I've actually got.

• www.tsvcomputerman.com
• www.gympmedia.com
• www.sportsclubsdownunder.net
• podcasting.tsvcomputerman.com
• internet.tsvcomputerman.com 

That is just a few of them. The main ones I update on a weekly basis. 

Socialization - Education

Socialization with regards to education allows ourselves as human beings to become educated. Socialisation and education both do involve learning. While socialization occurs when a society increases in size and needs a stable system. There are several types of socialisation that include education that are relevant to education that include primary and secondary. Primary socialization is defined as the time when a child learns attitudes values and actions. Secondary socialization refers to the process of learning the appropriate behavior as a member of a large society. A separate area of socialization is the aspect of how classrooms are ran. For instance in parent teacher interviews each parent and child's individual needs need to be taken into account.

The History of Education - Australia

To empower the present teaching generation you need to have an understanding of past. The ways classes taught and how the classroom environment is structured.

The development of schools and school systems in Australia. For example the nature of teachers' work including their classroom practices.

Time for a schooling system?
A schooling system needs to be integrated when there is a population growth, change in economic production, families no longer units of production, rise of a literate culture.

    All this leads to new forms of government and new concepts of children.

What is the school?
School is the education system with in modern societies. It is demanded by law and is looked at by employers. A good education also sets students up for life.

A Brief time line...
1850s - Primary schools were established. Indigenous kids excluded.
1900s - Beginnings of (state) secondary systems. Teachers trained in teachers' colleges.
1960s/70s - Comprehensive high school system. Public schooling was seen as being better.
2000s - Push for national curriculum's. A big push for participation in schooling from all social groups. Private graduates are seen as being better.

Results of all this
The results of having a good education:

• Uneven distribution between different social groups and races can be seen. 
• Values:
•  Abstract - Concrete
• Mental - Manual
• Theoretical - Practical
• Academic - Vet
• Normalization of pedagogy of the teaching profession. 
• individual Advantages - Better education, better results allow better employment opportunities.