BETT

This week we visited the BETT Education Exhibition at the London Excel centre. Where we got to sample the best technology out at the moment for uses in education. I went with one of my friend who attends the university of East London who is aspiring to become an art teacher, so it was beneficial for the both of us. The first booth that we went to was a company which was using a metal frame of a stick person and moving it in order to make animations videos which could be beneficial to me as a language teacher. The children could create stories using animation in the target language, however it is very costly.

 

We saw lots of different companies with interactive white boards, which I think is, are extremely useful in schools. We saw 3D printers, which I found extremely fascinated.

 

As I am interested in SEN they had loads of technology available, especially for children with autism, as there was a vast range on sensory toys and equipment.

 

There was a group of American students and their teachers who were demonstrating using an interactive whiteboards and a programme where all of the students have tablets they answer the question posed to them by the teacher by sending back their response. The teacher can then use their tablet, to freeze and override the student’s tablets. The teacher can then choose a random answer and analysis it. This could potentially be the future of education.

 

I really like the learning management system called ‘frog’ it seems very easy to use, we had a demonstration and I got a free mug J.

 

There was also a booth of dance revolution the classroom edition, I don’t know how it fits in to the classroom, but I suppose it can teach students coordination and rhythm.

 

Samsung and Microsoft both had very big booths and were pushing the ideas of all schools having tablets for each student, there was also a company that provided electronic lockers, so the children can charge their products overnight and their electronics stay in school if they were allocated a tablet or laptop.

 

I also got to meet the Education minister of the UAE, which I really enjoyed as I want to go and live out there as soon as possible, he encouraged me to do so, and we spoke about life as an expat.

 

This was a really good experience; I think it would be very beneficial when I am a teacher, as some venders wouldn’t even present their products to us because we were not teachers.

 

 

HTML

Berners-Lee the started the web, the web was a connection of different networks.  We learnt a bit of the background of Berners-Lee and him inventing the web. Our task was to create a webpage. Before we did that we use a web- based programme called X-ray goggle, which allows you to edit any webpage, not permanently changing the actual webpage but it is a fun tool to use.

 

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language .

We then looked at four different web based programmes which teach you how to use HTML coding we looked at Mozilla thimble, O2 Learn Decoded, Code Academy  or W3 Schools.

 

I tried each one out, I really like the o2 Learn decoder it was easy to understand and follow, the W3schools was not as user friendly in my opinion. I used code academy for information I did not get by using decoded, and I used Mozilla thimble to input all of the HTML code that I learnt as it has a side by side view of your coding and what it will look like on the web.

 

I really enjoyed this lesson, I did no know much about coding before it, but I really like coding, and I came home and practised.

The future of E-Learning and E-assessments

There are many different types of assessments including formal assessments, peer assessment, open questioning, target setting and discussing with peers. I think my course has elements where students can discuss ideas with their peer.

Digital online badges as form of rewards, I would have liked to have incorporated this into my course if ii had more time.

I was able to record and edit videos for the online course, I used original images and audio, I recorded sound for number, seasons and letter in Spanish and uploaded them all onto YouTube and then embedded them on my website, which I put a lot of time into editing my media files. This was extremely time consuming, but was the only way I could do it, because on the website I uploaded the links but they made the audio file download rather than playing. I used Imovies to make the videos i have on the course.

I had minor problem with uploading the videos and audio to YouTube as it kept on saying that the videos where duplicate, which meant I had to re-record many of them.

I enjoyed making the games and content for my website and online course, as I think that I would enjoy learning that way.

If I had more time i would have liked to have covered more topics.

Learning Management systems

Learning management systems are ‘They take the best of the classroom and make it available at home’.  Learning management systems including Moodle or ‘Frog’- Frog is has been said to be very expensive, it also has a parental portal. http://www.frogtrade.com/what-we-do/awesome-technology/learning-platform.  They are on the cutting edge of technology.

There are benefits of a sense of community, the opportunity to look back, learn from mistakes, assessment to learning. There are benefits for teachers in order to track progress, they can access it at anytime anywhere, they are able to customise materials and personalise learning, it is easy to manage pupils work and keep organised.

The benefits for the students are that they can access the learning material anytime anywhere, they can work at their own pace, they can personalise their own learning, students can submit homework online, communicate and discuss with other students.

Infrastructures for learning include, lectures, readings, journals, blogs etc.

Learning designs and lessons

We learnt how to use the resource ‘lesson’ where you could plan a lesson and embed it into Moodle. This is how you can make it interactive, its similar to a PowerPoint presentation, in which you can link the slides to one another.  I created a lesson using Google drive rather then the lesson resource on Moodle. Miles did show us how to use the lesson resource and how we can make it interactive by giving the students a choice, so they create their own path to their learning. Moodle also contains activities like quizzes, Wiki’s and games.

 

I had decided on the content and which topics I wanted to cover during the course. I then decided what I wanted to put on my website. I used Go daddy to host my website, and found it pretty easy to use, and upload videos and move the content around the page.

I only used original images on my website, apart from two, the clock on the practise page for telling the time and the picture of a guy with all the flags on the home page.  I used picture that I took when I lived in Spain from Barcelona.

 

When decided what to put in our online course we had to consider learning design Conole (2012) says that we have to consider the seven c’s when designing courses they are, conceptualise, capture, create, communicate, collaborate, consider and consolidate. And Laurillard says that we learn through acquisition, inquiry, discussion, practise and collaboration. I prefer Laurillard’ ideas of how we learn as there has to be elements where the student have to use inquiry to find out more information, I have added an element of inquiry, where the student are to add to a vocab list every week, and look for the multiple meanings of the words they find.  Student have to have the space and time to acquire worthwhile knowledge and be able to put it into practise and have the space to discuss with other students, which is why I have a forum space on my online blog for students to discuss their issues for the work. Collaboration is the last stage in way we learn, we have to collaborate and draw together all the idea that we have learnt.

 

Interactive content

We all had a chance to use Google drive, 2DIY and zondle to enhance our online course by adding interactive elements.

I used all three to create different elements for my online course. Miles showed us how to use each type of interactive resource and then we went to practise and create our own.

I did make a game using 2DIY but I did not end up putting it into my online course because I preferred the quality of the games on Zondle, however some of the Zondle games where complete unrelated to the topic types.

2DIY would also work best with a course for younger children.

I used games from Zondle for the interactive element of my course; I used games in relation to relevant topics to practise what they had learnt. Zondle is easy to use.

I also created a Google drive presentation, it is very easy to use and for E-learning it is practical as it is easy and to embed it on to online mediums.

Working with media

the uses of multimedia, this week we started to think about what media we could incorporate into our webpage.

Having high quality multi media resources on our webpage gives our online course an advantage. Different types of media include images, audio, videos and interactive content.

This week I had to consider what kinds of media I want to include on my online course and on my website.  I would like to incorporate videos and interactive content like slides and games as well as original images. I used Google drive to create an interactive presentation about days of the week in Spanish.

I never used Youtube to create videos, so I would like to use it at some point in my course.

i also learnt how to embed media onto the moodle site.

CSS

By using CSS it allows you to design a webpage CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets Styles define how to display HTML elements, it’s the way you make your website look presentable and nice, not boring and bland. By using CSS you can use different font, colour, size of text etc.

We were given an HTML code to edit and add CSS to. We could change anything we wanted on that webpage in order for it to looks as unique as we wanted it to. I used decoded and listening to the tutorial about CSS and then I used Mozilla in order to edit the HTML.

We had to download a program called bootstrap, which is a resource to help with CSS.

We spent most of the lesson changing the HTML and CSS on our own web page as well as the practise one.

The next two weeks we worked on our webpage, and I linked my pages together and was the first to create a website.

Behaviourism

This week we looked at behaviourism, which is a learning theory and something I have come across before in my studies in Education. The famous theorist synonymous with Behaviourism is B. F. Skinner; he was an American psychologist and professor of psychology at Harvard University between 1958-1974. Skinner believed that the best way to understand behaviour is through conditioning- operant and classical conditioning.

Operant conditioning is where the changing of behaviour by the use of reinforcement which is given after the desired response. Skinner identified three types of responses or operant that can follow behaviour.

• Neutral operant: responses from the environment that neither increases nor decreases the probability of a behaviour being repeated.
• Reinforces: Responses from the environment that increase the probability of a behaviour being repeated. Reinforces can be either positive or negative.
• Punishers: Response from the environment that decreases the likelihood of a behaviour being repeated. Punishment weakens behaviour.

(McLeod 2008)

Classical conditioning was coined by John Watson a famous Behaviourist, he built up the idea of Classical conditioning based on Pavlov’s observations- Pavlov did an experiment with salivating dogs and a bell, the dogs would be fed after a bell rang, so they started to associate the bell with being fed. So Pavlov would ring the bell and the dogs would start salivating because they though they would be fed.

‘Everything from speech to emotional responses was simply a pattern of stimulus and response. Watson denied completely the existence of the mind or consciousness.

Watson believed that all individual differences in behaviour were due to different experiences of learning. He famously said:

“Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations and the race of his ancestors” (Watson, 1924, p. 104 cited in McLeod 2008).’

 

‘Classical conditioning theory involves learning a new behaviour via the process of association. In simple terms two stimuli are linked together to produce a new learned response in a person or animal. There are three stages to classical conditioning: before conditioning, during conditioning and after conditioning‘ (McLeod 2008).

 

Conditioning is a learning theory which underpin many of the things we do today, for example and online quiz is a great example of operate conditioning- we are given positive reinforcement when we do something right e.g. Moving on to the next question and negative reinforcement when we get a question wrong e.g. Repeating the question until answered correctly. The person is then given immediate feedback on what they have done. Many people like to operate in this way, they enjoy getting an immediate response to whatever they need/ do. We live in a world where people are able to access the Internet in seconds so there is no need for delayed responses.

 

Today our task was to make a quiz relevant for our course, I did mine on number and colours in Spanish and I uses the resource tool on Moodle to create my quiz, it gives students immediate response of how they did overall, so they can track their progress.

 

 

McLeod, S. A. (2008). Classical Conditioning. Retrieved from simply psychology.

 

 

Learning theory

Piaget ideas of assimilation- trying to understand the new information in term’s of ones existing knowledge, by sorting or fitting ‘new knowledge’ into groups we already have and accommodation- changing existing concepts in response to new experiences, by accommodating room in your knowledge for new information and creating a new storage space. I liked the pictures that Miles used, it helped me to understand Piaget concept.

 

  

Piaget believed that there were four different stages of development for children:

 

Birth – 2 years	Sensori-motor
2-7 years	Pre-operational
7-11 years	Concrete operational
11 years and up	Formal operational

 

Piaget believed that accommodation and assimilation could only take place from the second stage, pre-operational because in the sensori-motor stage the child does not have much knowledge in order to sort and sift new knowledge into.

 

Vygotsky came up wit the idea of social constructivism, the three main themes are:

1. ‘Social interaction plays a fundamental role in the process of cognitive development. In contrast to Jean Piaget’s understanding of child development (in which development necessarily precedes learning), Vygotsky felt social learning precedes development. He states: “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (interpsychological).” (Vygotsky, 1978)’ (Learning theory.com).  So the child has the opportunity to digest the same information twice, which makes the memory process worthwhile.
2. ‘The More Knowledgeable Other (MKO). The MKO refers to anyone who has a better understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, with respect to a particular task, process, or concept. The MKO is normally thought of as being a teacher, coach, or older adult, but the MKO could also be peers, a younger person, or even computers’ (Learning theory.com).  So the less knowledgeable person will learn from the more knowledgeable source by working along side each other.
3. ‘The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD is the distance between a student’s ability to perform a task under adult guidance and/or with peer collaboration and the student’s ability solving the problem independently. According to Vygotsky, learning occurred in this zone’ (Learning theory.com). Vygotsky undermines a child’s ability to do anything for them selves.  Children are very capable of self-playtime, this allows them to explore, entertain themselves and gain independence.

Learning theory

 

Constructionism

Was influenced by constructivism and Piaget. Papert believed that ‘individual learners construct mental models to understand the world around them. However, constructionism holds that learning can happen most effectively when people are also active in making tangible objects in the real world. In this sense, constructionism is connected with experimental learning’ (Wikipedia 2014). And there is also social constructionism where learners construct tangible items together for a shared learning experience.

 

I added a forum to my moodle course to allow learners to use social constructionism  and learn and build together.