Week 8

Today we had our last lecture/workshop for ICT and Pedagogy.

We began the day by looking at a video where teachers and educators spoke about the importance of placing students at the centre of the learning process and opening the door to the fundamental opportunities offered by various technological tools. Centred around 21st century learning, the video explored the concept that the future will hold advanced and evolved career opportunities for the young people of today and therefore schools need to produce collaborative learners who are capable of extending their thinking and learning to the technological needs of the future.

The next video shown to us was really interesting, he spoke about the need to make the classroom fun and challenging for children because children want to explore the world around them rather than sit down, be quiet and listen. He made a very good point by stating that although connectedness through networks can positively influence education, if we become too connected we won't be able to alter small components of the education system without changing the entire system. Therefore educators need to explore how we can integrate social networks and other means of connectedness to create significant learning opportunities for students without altering the whole education system. This, as addressed in the video, would influence a parallel learning system where students can learn through fun, challenging and social means that cater to their individual interests.

Our task for today was to address an educational scenario that we were given. Our scenario concerned the issue of labelling and categorising students, something that is already evident to an extent in many classrooms. We came up with a range of positives and negatives for labelling students and we used these as the basis for our presentation:

Positive:
- Cost effective as it enables teachers to manage their resources
- Can educate students to a level that is required beyond school

Negative:
- Teachers will only educate students to a level that they believe the students can achieve
- Students do not experience success if they feel that they have been labelled as a failure
- Limits potential job prospects and opportunities for students
- Students can be unfairly or inaccurately categorised