I agree with Mel about the impacts and the changes of social media in the past 5 years. Check out what she has to say about this.
This week I read an interesting article by Mary Meeker voicing the Internet trends report. Please take the time to read this and have a hard think into how these devices effect children and their learning. Some interesting information for you:
- 15% of Internet traffic now occurs via mobile devices. It is growing at a rate of 1.5 times a year and will continue at this pace or faster.
- Sharing of photos via mobile devices has exploded, with mobile video-sharing increasing.
- The notion of a computing platform is moving away from laptops/desktops with rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets and a move into wearable devices.
- The suggestion that each new technology cycle supports 10 times as many devices as previous cycles.
- Facebook is actually losing users.
- On average, 24% of people from across the world say that they share everything online
How do you think these changes might impact society? ‘
The impact that springs to mind to me is; probably more a positive that students are learning to take control of their own learning and finding information by themselves. Teachers are becoming more of a facilitator, teachers will always be needed, no matter the device. Students are able to work at their own pace and move on when they have understood the concepts being taught.
The Negatives: Students become less socialised and work more one on one. Social bullying will increase inside and outside of the classroom which could lead to more suicides. Students fine and gross motor skills may suffer if there is no balance with physical learning and only using ICT’s,
Teachers become more under the watchful eye of parents, media and government as they could be taped and it be released and could only hold half the story etc.
What are your thoughts?
NMC has a list of the new devices and programs that are available and items of the future!
Reading through what is expected of us over prac, I find it amusing that we should read on how to be critical about ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I am my own worst enemy, I am very hard on myself and find it more difficult to find the positives in my teaching than the negatives. You know when a lesson has been a disaster or the areas that hasn’t worked, I find myself correcting them as I go along as well. But anyway if you do have problems being critical here is a website for you.
Reflecting on my placement and the ICT’s I have used in this time are some positive and negative feedback, listed below.
1. IWB, This prac, the interactive whiteboard was not interactive as it was broken and one of the first IWB the school received. So it was challenging and interesting at the same time to how to work around this glitch. The children were use to using other strategies to enhance their learning. This also challenged me to think of other things to do with the children to get them involved with their learning.
I also believe that even though I am older then most students I have kept up with technology and use it on a daily basis myself. However using them daily has not taught me the new innervations that are available and I find myself using the same ones over and over again instead of actively finding new things. My saying is “if it isn’t broke, then don’t fix it” :o)
2. Digital Camera,
I taught a lesson called my story, the children were allowed to chose a small group of toys take a photo of it and then write a reflection on the story. The lesson was a big of a disaster as we didn’t have enough cameras to cater for the 25 students. A lot of time was wasted, I think next time over the week I would have the children do this task one at a time in spare time and then print all the pictures out and take the lesson as a writing lesson.
This week Promethean Planet was mentioned in our learning pathway. I had no idea what it was, so I did what everyone else in the world does when they have no idea about anything and used Google to find the answers. It lead me to the Promethean Planet website, its the worlds largest interactive whiteboard community. What a find it was, it has information on resources, jobs, professional development with free online courses information and lesson ideas. Some of the downsides of this website and many other international websites are that their curriculum is totally different to ours and some of the resource and information can be irrelevant or unattainable.
A big part of Practical placement is finding resources, I never have time with running a house, children and work to fit in creating my own resources (as much as I would love too). So through creating lessons and looking for resources I decided to blog about some of the great websites I found resources from. My lesson was on time. I originally started looking on Pinterest , which my mentor told me about. It is overwhelming this website to start with, but once you pinpoint your interests things get a little easier. From here it sent me to a website called Teacherspayteachers, This is a fantastic website where teachers upload resources and you can either by them or some are for free. It has a great search engine to find what you are looking for. I found it very easy to navigate around, and you are supporting fellow educators. Fellow student http://lindsaychapman.edublogs.org also found a great site called ABC splash, I agree this is a great site for information, games and resources. Carla also agrees that ABC splash is very useful http://carlafrohloff.edublogs.org/
Hotel is a Holistic Approach to Technology Enhanced Learning (HoTEL). Take a look, they have analysed theories and perspectives and created a mind map. I would of loved to have found this in my first year of University.
This week we looked at a framework called Technology and Integration Planning, also know as TIP.
Mrs Frintzilas makes great points regarding Mike Wheadon’s (2011) adaption of the TIP framework. This is food for thought and I would defentely take this into consideration throughout my studies and work life.
Today I found a fantastic free program called ReadWriteThink this allows the students to document information as they read it and place it into an interactive timeline. Check it out and see what you think. I believe this could be used for all years and a great way to incorporate ICT’s into the classroom, instead of the students just writing it into their books.
As we start to think about heading into prac, Janine has some great tips on how to survive prac. I think this will help with the stress and
As Anzac Day draws near and you aren’t sure how to incorporate it into your day, the Australian Government Veterans Affairs has a fantastic website that lists resources, other websites, facts, figures and teaching activities.