We began by watching a clip of a Year 1 classroom who utilise digital technologies on a day-to-day basis. The students took photos on the digital camera of events that took place in their classroom. They then imported these photos onto the computers to create a digital storyboard for their very own story. I find it really inspiring to see examples like this where technology is being implemented so effectively into the classroom at such an early stage of education.
We then explored a clip that addressed technology and what role it will play in our lives in years to come. After all, the future is what we must always acknowledge and consider when planning for education. The clip introduced an important concept of economic pressure whereby with the continuous implementation into all areas of life and the cost of life ever increasing, these areas such as school, home, work and leisure are going to eventually merge together. What does this mean for education? Well I believe it can only be beneficial to introduce education into all aspects of our life, as long as the process is conducted efficiently and with the best interests of our children always in our consideration.
As a group activity today, we were given a range of cards that acknowledge different areas of planning and resources in education. Our task was to make a diamond using these cards, ranking them in order from most important to least important. This proved to be a difficult task as each of the nine cards represented an important concept. After exploring the questions posed by each of these cards, our group decided that the most important one was "what sort of education to we want in the future?" because our focus for education should always be the children of the future. The next couple we chose referred to digital technologies and learning relationships because we decided that they were both integral components to an effective and successful classroom in the 21st century.
In the next activity, we looked at various questions relating to education and had to class them as either "present", "with major change" or "irrelevant".
Our group decided that some of the questions are already being addressed in some classrooms including: having more than one teacher in the classroom, making learning environments safe and secure, having flexible time and space boundaries, making learning collaborative and using learning spaces that are part of hubs or learning satellites. This is not to say that all of these questions are being explored in every classroom, but educators are starting to think about them and evidence of addressing these questions can be found in many classrooms around the world.
Some of the questions we decided could be answered and implemented with major change include designing learning spaces to maximise learner control of resources, valuing informal learning as much as formal learning, and learning from remote educators.
Finally, we grouped questions into the "irrelevant" column because we felt that they had no beneficial aspects in terms of education. These include school becoming optional, if classes had learners of any age, and if school was somewhere else.
As a follow-up task, we had to individually choose one of the questions and analyse the various aspects of it in order to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages. I chose "what if we could be taught by remote experts?" From this question, I thought of some benefits and resistances that this it would introduce.
Benefits and Opportunities include:
- Authentic learning experiences
- Engaging students in learning
- Students could interact and learn at any time of day
- Students could learn from experts in specialist areas
Resistances include:
- Availability of technology
- Time differences for international experts
- Cost for the services of experts
After weighing up all of these ideas, I feel that in the future, students could benefit greatly from being taught by remote experts.
For the rest of the workshop, groups were asked to contribute ideas from LA1 and ask Jason questions which gave us a great opportunity to clarify our ideas and ensure that we are on the right track.
No comments:
Post a Comment