Thursday, 23 April 2015

Reflective Synopsis




Source: Katrina Johnston

I firmly believe that ICTs can be used to transform, facilitate, support and enhance learning. 

E-Learning is a new tool that can give today's students opportunities that will transform and enhance their learning experience beyond what we could ever imagine.
Source: Gogos, Roberta, 2013
With the speed ubiquitous technology is being developed, I can see the future of pedagogy looking like something from a science fiction movie. The tools we have looked at are a only a precursor of what will be available in the years to come.  E-Learning is a tool that has only come into being in the last 20 years, the term e-learning was actually introduced at a CBT systems seminar in 1999 (Gogos, Roberta, 2013). Defining e-learning not as easy as it seams, Sangrà, Vlachopoulos, and Cabrera (2012) wrote a paper on the definition of e-learning and found that the swiftly changing nature of technology must be taken into account and that it could not easily be defined in a single paper. They broke the definition down to four general categories;   "technology-driven", "delivery-system-oriented", "communication-oriented", and "educational-paradigm-oriented". As teachers we will deal with all of these categories in some way. To define E-learning is a means of facilitating pedagogy and is “a new way to learn.”(Sangra etal., 2012)



Teaching students to be creative is one of the best ways to engage higher-order thinking.

I discussed this in reflection 5: week 6.
Top of the Class (2013) notes that Blooms Taxonomy classifies creating as the highest level in thinking skills. E-Learning and ICT tools can be easily used to encourage students to become creative. Students go through Blooms processes of remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and finally creating when using these tools. This creates a scaffold that will enhance learning and creating higher order thinking skills. (Top of the Class, 2013)
Source: Katrina Johnston

As a teacher it is important to understand learning theories and how they can be used to facilitate the learning experience.

I firmly believe that ICTs and e-learning should be used to enhance learning. In the week one blog we talked about learning theories; behaviourism, cognitivism, social constructivism and conectivism and how these learning theories can be applied e-learning. Wikis (week 2) are a great example of social constructivism. While  Websites and Blogs (week 3) show connectivism being brought into play, introducing students to link to other sites encourages them to start to branch out in their studies and find more information that they can then use to more actively participate and understand what is being taught. Multimedia activities involving images, audio and videos (week 4) are prime examples of cognitivism tricking the brain into remembering information that it might otherwise overlook. Tools like Prezi, PowerPoint and Glogster (week 5) are good examples of behaviourism at work, using presentations re-enforce what we are teaching our students using repetition and positive re-enforcement of the lesson. Animations and simulations (week 6) can also be seen as behaviourism with an exciting version of repetition and the positive re-enforcement of winning brought into play. The one thing that all these tools have in common is that used correctly they could be great tools to support and enhance what students learn, how they learn, and when and where their learning takes place.

Source: Katrina Johnston

E-Tools are ubiquitous technology in motion, using these tools to the best of our ability in e-learning is important if we want to help our student's get the best out of the technology available to them.

Tools like Mobile digital devices  take learning away from the classroom and allows students and teachers to study and learn anywhere.  We are surrounded with these tools in our everyday lives and if we don't take the steps to use them to their fullest pedagogical ability, we are letting our students down. 


Department of Education Training and Employment (2013)

There are safety and ethical issues with any use of  ICTs that we need to acknowledge and consider in this new technological world.

The Department of Education Training and Employment (2013) have standards of practice that we need to follow in order to keep our students a safe as possible when dealing with e-learning. You can see more about these guidelines in Reflection 3 - Week 4.  Also Cyber Smart (2015) notes cybersafety issues such as cyberbullying, sexting, digital reputations, digital reputations, social networking and location based services are big issues with students that need to be addressed when teaching in a school environment.  Teaching students how important it is to protect their private information, take responsibility for their own actions and treat others appropriately online is just the starting point. As a teacher we need to be aware that these issues can be happening in our classroom and to watch out for it.Cyber Smart has resources and information for teachers to help students to stay safe in the online environment.

Source: Katrina Johnston

E-Learning has changed my life and I firmly believe if used correctly it can take today's students and transform, facilitate, support and enhance their learning experience.

When I went to school we did not have this technology and I barely passed when I finished year 10 in 1986. In 2001 I started University, e-learning was now being used and I finished my degree with twenty HDs, four Ds and the highest GPA  in my faculty. I went on to work as a Graphic Designer and in June as a Lecturer at CQUniversity. I don't believe this would have been possible without ICTs and the advantages they have given me.  We have been given these tools that will take our teaching up a level and all we have to do is reach out and take them, if we don't grab the opportunity we have been given, to take these tools and use them to transform, facilitate, support and enhance learning, we don't deserve to be teachers.

Reference List


Source: Top of the Class 2013
CyberSmart. (2015). Sybersafety Issues. Retrieved from http://www.cybersmart.gov.au/Schools.aspx

Department of Education Training and Employment (2013). Standard of Practice. Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/codeofconduct/pdfs/det-code-of-conduct-standard-of-practice.pdf

Gogos, Roberta. (2013). A brief history of e-learning (infographic). Retrieved from http://www.efrontlearning.net/blog/2013/08/a-brief-history-of-elearning-infographic.html

Sangrà, A., Vlachopoulos, D., and Cabrera,N., (2012). Building an Inclusive Definition of E-Learning: An Approach to the Conceptual Framework. Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1161/2146

Shashank Kodesia. (2014). Learning styles and learning theory. Retrieved from http://www.jcu.edu.au/wiledpack/modules/fsl/JCU_090463.html

Swiftserve (2015). Case study. Retreived from http://www.swiftserve.com/casestudy_cdn02.html

Top of the Class (2013). Higher Order Thinking. Retrieved from http://topoftheclass.com.au/higher-order-thinking.html#



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