Category: network literacy

Scratch (Coding & Gaming)

Scratch is a visual programming language. Within scratch, you can mix clips of movement, sounds, costumes, and scripts. Simple coding is used to create scratch animations, such as asking the user “What is your name” and taking the information they input and putting it into the next line (e.g. “Hi Jill”). Coding is useful to practice in the educational system for many reasons. For one, coding is used in some upper level Math courses in High School, including Computer Science 11 and 12. Scratch can introduce the concept of coding in a fun and relatively easy way, and demonstrate the interesting outcomes that can result from successful coding.

The games that can be created through scratch can have positive implications on learning in the following subject areas: biology, english, technology, math, and physics. For biology classrooms, games can be created in scratch to introduce students to various classes of animals, for example, and have students appropriately classify these animals into their classes along their journey in the game. In English class, scratch games can help students with story telling. Playing games within scratch can model the effective use of story telling in writing, and creating games in scratch can be hands-on way of actually telling stories in a multimodal way. Scratch also teaches students multiple technological skills, skills that are increasingly important in this day and age. Math and physics can also be applied to scratch games; for example, a person could explore firing a canon at various angles to hit a target, continuously estimating and re-estimating what a successful angle looks like. I am excited to explore scratch in more and more ways in order to incorporate it into my future classrooms.

0

GAFE and PLN

GAFE (Google Apps For Education) is a free set of applications provided by Google for educational institutions. It is highly valuable because it provides a workspace that is in the cloud, meaning that your work can be accessed from any device at any time as long as there is internet connection. One component of GAFE that I just started to use this school semester is Google Docs (which also includes the service of Google Slides). These two components of GAFE have been very helpful for individual work as well as collaborations. For anything that I am working on individually in Google Docs or Google Slides, I do not need to worry about the transportation of a laptop or other device with me when I travel, when I go to and from school, or otherwise. As long as there is access to an electronic device with internet service where I am going, I can simply log in to my Google account and continue to edit my work from wherever. Despite their benefits for individual work, I have found Google Docs and Google Slides to be even more helpful for collaborative work with peers. Through these two services, a person can start a document or slide presentation, and then share it with the other collaborators in their group who can edit it and/or add to it. I have used this method of collaboration in many of my classes this semester. A few other features of GAFE that I have not yet used are Gmail (for email purposes), Calendar, Drive (for storage), and Sites (for creating websites that can be edited by various collaborators).

A personal learning network is a set of connections a person forms to interact with and learn from others. As a future educator, I have realized the great importance of developing a personal learning network and I have begun to do so this semester in many ways. For example, when working on my inquiry project for my seminar class at Vic High, I focused on connecting with experts in the field that I was studying. My inquiry question was as follows: “What defines inquiry-based learning in the Grade 9 math classroom?” I spoke with multiple people who had hands-on experience teaching in an inquiry-based way, including Trevor MacKenzie (from Oak Bay High School), Math teachers at Vic High, and an instructor at the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry. I also spoke to students to develop an understanding of how they viewed inquiry and what benefits they saw in this style of learning. Becoming a successful educator is greatly benefited by developing connections along the way that can help provide insight and depth into your learning and practice. This is what a personal learning network is all about.

IMG_7204.jpeg

0

Skype as a Social Media Tech Tool for Video Conferencing, etc.

Skype is a tech program that I have used in my personal life for video conversations with someone from afar; however, I have never used it as a business tool and it has many benefits in this area as well. Skype is a software that enables free video and voice one-on-one or group calls, as well as file-sharing and messaging options. There are many great features of Skype for business – a couple that stand out are:

1) Skype will connect to your Outlook calendar, read your calendar, and will display the message “In a Meeting” to anyone trying to connect during your booked time.
2) It is possible to take control of someone else’s computer/laptop/etc. through Skype in order to help them perform something on their device.
However, there are a couple of downfalls to Skype as well, including:

1) The program can crash if many chats are open at the same time.
2) There is no ability to group appointed calendar meeting conversations with other conversations.

Skype is a form of social media, as there are the options of writing a status, sending a personal message, group chatting, sharing files, sharing photos, and sharing a computer screen within the program. These qualities all fall under the concept of a social network, and display similarities between Skype and Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn, etc. Skype is also considered a tech tool. It is a tool, as it helps people to carry out plans, get tasks done, and collaborate. And it is a tech tool since it a technology-based program. Using one of its main functions, Skype users can have video conferences with each other. So, instead of in-person conferences in the typical business world, conferences can be had via online group chats in business Skype models.

0

Multimedia Learning Theory, Augmented Reality, & QR Codes

The multimedia learning theory (or dual coding theory) focuses on the power of the combination of verbal and visual media to help process information and transfer that information more easily into long-term memory. It has been seen in studies and observations that people remember information better if they receive both visual and verbal information than if they receive only one or the other form. This is thought to be due to the fact that there are two key separate channels for processing information: an auditory channel and a visual channel. Activating both of these channels at once and integrating the information received by both channels helps to solidify information in the moment, and remember this information more accurately in the future. In addition, if people are presented with material that can relate to information that they already know, it is easier for them to get that information into their long-term memory. If you can relate information to what students already know, it will be easier for students to get that information into their long-term memory.

QR codes, or “quick response” codes, are arrays of black and white squares that can link to a URL or other information through the camera of a smartphone. These can be very useful for business cards, printed advertisements, flyers, posters, or other forms of advertisement. QR codes can store much more data than barcodes, and thus serve as a useful tool for storing videos, text, images, URL links, or geo coordinates to name a few. I think it would be useful for me if I made a professional business card for teaching, and linked a QR code to my blog or an introductory video about myself.

Augmented reality is the superimposition of a virtual image on top of a real world image. It is a way in which people can interact with a hypothetical world that does not exist, a world that existed in the past, or a potential future for the world in years from now. It seems to be that it could be added into certain educational settings. One that stands out in particular is history class. As a class activity at Kitsilano High School, students looked at real-life events that occurred in the past to put themselves in the shoes of 1944 graduating students who had to make a decision on whether or not to join the Canadian Forces. They used the app ARIS and the “Dilemma 1944” section within the app. They were then guided to different locations by ARIS, and guided to watch videos, look at period photographs, and more from the American Dilemma period. Below is a video summarizing this experience. This could serve as a neat interactive hands-on learning approach in high school social studies or history classes.

References:

Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning

What is a QR Code and Why do you Need One?

0

Blogging, Trello, and Twitter

Three key technological elements to my learning this semester have been: blogging, using trello, and using twitter. Two of these are completely new to me (blogging and trello) and one is familiar (twitter). As a future teacher in this age of technology, it has been great to get some hands-on experience with different elements of technology I can potentially bring to the classroom.

In my personal experience of blogging so far this semester, I have found it to be very helpful in solidifying my ideas and tracking my progress in my different courses. Because my blog can be read by anyone, I feel pressure to write down my ideas clearly and concisely. This pressure helps to solidify my thoughts and experiences; I am sharing with the world what I have learned, and by doing so, I am learning it better. I have found that blogging also helps to curate information about certain topics. Through the “categories” feature, I can search for a specific topic and see the things that I have learned on that topic all curated onto one page.

In my use of trello this semester, I have found it to be a game-changer for organization and time management, especially when working on inquiry projects. Since I will be trying to incorporate inquiry projects into my own teaching, I am looking forward to introducing trello to my students. Trello allows a person to create online “post-it” notes, listing all of the steps they would like to take in figuring something out or answering a question. They can set a due-date for each note, and drag each note into one of the three categories: “to do,” “doing,” or “done.” Trello has been so helpful for me to stay on track with my inquiry projects this semester.

Finally, twitter has proven to be a very effective way to get class-related information from both the teacher and classmates. By using a class-specific hashtag, twitter curates the information that is relevant to my tech class into one stream. This is a useful tool to share videos, articles, or anything else relevant to a specific class.

0

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started