Week 6 Reflection 5 - Technologies

This week we have been introduced to many more new toys (tools) to play with. The ICT unit has definitely provided us with opportunities to engage and become familiar with resources many of which may be suitable inclusions for our own teaching areas. I have found through participating in this blog reflection activity that I have not only learned through the course content and materials but through having the opportunity to view the blogs of other students and learn from their ideas and presentations. The creativity in the blogs has been amazing and I am now building a bank of ideas on how ICT would be best utilized in a classroom environment to reflect the learning outcome desired.
 
I spent some time experimenting with the technology tools this week and through my brief interaction with them (I could of easily spent hours playing with them all) I created the followingText2MindMap pretty quickly.

Body Organ Systems

 

My subject teaching areas are Health education and Physical education so naturally when I am considering these tools I am thinking of how they would be useful for achieving learning outcomes in these two disciplines. I can see where tools like Google maps and Earth would certainly compliment subjects like Geography and Science. I quickly applied the text2mindmap to health by using it to identify Body Organ Systems.

There are many ways where these Group 4 tools would be useful in a classroom setting with the text2mind map I created useful for study purposes and helpful with memory retention. As standalone tools they don't stand out for me in my particular subject areas.  If I had more time experimenting with these tools I may find more potential use for them in Health and Physical education study areas.  These tools are interactive, engaging and interesting and technology like this can always be useful during stages of the learning process.

Over the course of the last six weeks the unit’s learnings have required students to experiment with a wide-ranging assortment of ICT’s with many of these tools have been unfamiliar. The tasks have been well scaffolded which has helped me acquire strong learning gains.  The tasks required me to work with online activities (many of which I did not realise even existed) that have had me absorbed with their interesting content and creative systems. I am at the stage now where I am thinking about the future and the use of ICT’s in my subject areas. Being a visual learner, like many of our students today I can see how helpful our ever evolving technology is in the learning environment and how it can make learning process easier.

As mobile learning is included in the course materials for next week I thought I would include a brief wind up with my opinion on the use of mobile learning in the classroom.

If technology like mobile phones and the IPad are used in daily life then why shouldn't they be used in the school setting?  Like all other tools they should be carefully selected based on what outcomes are needed in the best interest of the students. 

It’s a short post this week but think I recall Heather mentioning in one of her tutes that blogs tend to start out quite long and then end up getting shorter so I guess I am in with the norm.

Mercia


References: Engagement Activity 10, retrieved April 8, https://www.text2mindmap.com/ The Horizon Report 2011, Edition, p.5.