Hi all!
Here is the link to my web based Artefact! After much deliberation I decided to create a web page. As I know which school I am attending I really wanted to create an Artefact that the school could use to inform the parents on the importance of using ICT’s in an investigative play based curriculum.
So here it is! Hope you find it useful and informative!
Wow!
What a journey this is! While creating my Wix website ‘ICT and Early Childhood’ on convincing parents of the school where I will be teaching a Foundation/Year 1 class on the benefits of incorporating ICT as part of a play-based inquiry program I have actually convinced myself on the benefits of ICT in an early years classroom.
Utilising the myriad of ways children can use ICT’s through designing, making, exploring, talking, sending messages, displaying products and working collaboratively on agreed tasks on and off line with children in other areas is a wonderful way to empower children to be navigators of their own learning.
One apps that allow children to take creative control over their learning is ‘Icreate to Educate’ which allows children to create their own time lapses stories or present information they have learnt using slowmation software.
Slowmation
The discovery of this software has now lead to shaping my second assignment (without giving two much away) and has lead to a very enthusiastic response from my mentor teacher with how I would like to utilise it during my placement!
ICT – Acronyms and Terminology?!!!
Along with the rapid technological change we are living through comes new acronyms and terminology for the ICT’s we are accessing and using. As I reflect back on the weeks gone by for ICT and Pedagogy I believe I am becoming a more productive user of ICTs in my own learning with the ultimate goal of being able to enhance my students use of ICT. As KellyHartzer has stated in her blog “As technology becomes more and more embedded in our society, we as teachers need to change and adapt in order to remain relevant”. What I have discovered is that the biggest challenge I have had to face is adjusting to knowing and using new acronyms and terminologies, this is not a new concept as all throughout the Education course I have become exposed to the very notion of teacher ‘jargon’. The terminology I have come across in the subject, Diigo, Feedly, moodle etc. I’m sure if you are regularly using a variety of web based artefacts it might come as second nature to you to freely use and understand these acronyms and terminology but when I first accessed the learning path I felt an overwhelming sense of initial confusion……I now know what my Foundation students must have felt when I was trying to teach them the concept of Subitising!
I found this form the Department of Education South Australia article by on the importance of Early Years Educators understanding ICT http://www.earlyyears.sa.edu.au/files/links/ICT_in_the_EYDiscussion_Pa.pdf. It is a discussion that I found useful and other Early Years Educators might find it useful as well!
Artefact assignment – fears allayed (but for how long?).
Thanks Geoff at geowal.wordpress.com. I too have been spending the day attempting to unpack the Artefact assignment. I too have now:
•Decided on a medium for my presentations – a website using WIX builder and gave it a quick look over
•Broke apart the marking rubric
•Decided that the ’3 reasons’ requirement was the most important
•Looked at what was required for each reason
The Scootle website (http://www.scootle.edu.au) provided by Education Services Australia is a free online resource for all Australian school educators. It affords access to more than 9,000 items of digital curriculum content from the The Le@rning Federation . It is a very accessible and user friendly way to find and use digital curriculum content in the classroom.
It gives teachers the opportunity to:
I have provided below a link of an example of a teaching resource that would have been useful for me on my first teaching round in a Foundation classroom:
https://www.scootle.edu.au/ec/resolve/view/M008812
It is a teacher resource from AMSI (Australian Mathematics Science Institution) which has developed guides that provide the mathematical developmental continuum background to enable teachers, together with other resources, to plan for sequential development of mathematical ideas in their classrooms. The modules introduce students to the use of place value; counting; skip counting; one-to-one correspondence and ordering of numbers.
Ref The Le@rning Federation is managed by Education Services Australia on behalf of the Ministerial Council for Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs (MCEECDYA). Copyright Scootle
Using concept mapping in ICT as a way to organise, graphically, knowledge that is both, linked and hierarchically structured has presented many initial challenges to me. However, once I did some research on its objectives, terminologies commonly used; and descriptive ways to develop concept mapping it became clear that it was a clearer way to organise what was previously mental computed by me. As Danielle Chapman blogged on her post http://danielllechapman.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/concept-map/ it too has enabled me to develop a basis for my first assignment in utilizing ICT in Early Childhood.
I have never used concept mapping at a large scale: if I used them they would consist of a few cross links and a basis flow from say left to right or from start to end on paper. It kind of represented an organisational hierarchy chart. However, I did have a mental picture that would support various processes at work.
Despite the initial complexities in using any new ITC tool to facilitate teaching and learning, such as concept mapping, I am faced with the argument of whether the evidence is substantial for the effectiveness of concept and mind mapping. Another thing I wish to address is their effectiveness in education and if the evidence is there also.
Brian Holland, Lynda Holland and Jenny Davies (2004) conducted a project to investigate this very concept and its use in supporting and improving student academic performances. They concluded that ‘there is scope to improve the academic performance…. by providing students with the ability to plan and structure their projects more effectively’ (2004, p. 94) however it is pointed out that it is dependent on the software, for example, the difficulty in using it and obtain it in the first place.
I have found this software to be readily downloadable as well as a freeware application. The resource link is http://www.mind-mapping.org/blog/2012/07/news-about-cayra/ or http://www.mind-mapping.org/VicsPicks/Cayra.zip
http://www.mind-mapping.org/VicsPicks/Cayra.zip
References
Holland, B., Holland, L., & Davies, J. (2004). Learning and Teaching Projects: An investigation into the concept of mind mapping and the use of mind software to support and improve academic performance. Universtity of Wolverhampton, UK. Retrieved from http://wlv.openrepository.com/wlv/bitstream/2436/3707/1/Mind%20mapping%20pgs%2089-94.pdf
