Blog Eleven-Assignment three
Posted by Emily mcdonald on Monday, May 21, 2012
Today we were back on campus after the small break. We had guest speaker Rob Phillips again to discuss the many different ways that technology can be used in the classroom to enhance learning. He began by discussing how computers are used in learning by teachers and by students as computer can be used as a tool to support knowledge construction, explore information and reflect back on previous work( like this blog). I remember my family buying it's first computer when I was 5 now I am so dependant on it when doing homework and researching that using books from the library or from other sources would seem harder. I feel that technology is essential to learning nowadays as there are so many programs that can be used to gain further knowledge.
The second part of the lecture was on the use of multimedia in the classroom. Visual multimedia is something that you can watch, aural is audio learning such as music and kinesthetic is a form of tactile learning therefore it is more hands on. Rob than showed the class examples from the Learning Federation that support these types of multimedia. One was on the digestive system in which I had found to use in assignment 3, one was a science interaction game and the last one was a interactive sight in which you can zoom from the smallest atoms to the largest of planets.
Throughtout the lecture the thing that stood out the most was the question 'Where is multimedia useful?' I had never considered that multimedia is used because the real life experiment is too dangerous, too expensive or not possible for the student to do. I found this lecture one of the most interesting to date in this subject as I am very fond of using technology in the classroom. I believe that technology and multimedia make learning more exciting and therefore more enticing for the students to learn. I feel I have always learnt from watching something rather than reading something especially in science or maths as you are able to see how it is done and what the steps are rather than reading the steps.
In the workshop I finally got to meet my other partner for assignment three, Bianca. I was shocked that when I walked in I recieved another member named Kirsty. During the days previous to this class I had begun to research resources and Jess and I had decided on the digestive system. I think that knowing what the human body does and how important health is from an early age is essential to growing up healthy. After meeting the girls we discussed what we are doing what the authentic task would be and we assigned everyone with a page to work on. We had been talking for 30 minutes about the assignment while waiting for our lecturer to help me out with my wikispace problem when she asked each group to stand up and show what we had achieved so far. Truth be told it was horrible. I have never had a problem with public speaking but I was slightly embarressed that we had nothing to show as our group had just formed while the other groups had great ideas that we coming along really well. We had not yet spoken to to the tuturor (we were the last group and the class was almost over) about whether we were on the right track and therefore our idea for an authetic task was shut down in front of everybody as it was not 'authetic enough'. I hate being put on the spot like that and truthfully it made me embarressed. I do feel like we needed that time with the tuturor to ask those important questions. After class I finally recieve the proper instructions about how to sign onto wikispaces. It was a great sense of relief that I could finally begin on the resource page.
I added the resources that jess and I had found to the page and wrote a brief explanation on the resources. I was able to find an extra website and video to add as well. A few days later I looked at the website to see that Bianca had added a few documents to the page.
I am normally quite happy to work in groups but as we only have one class a week and each group member has a busy schedule it's going to be a little bit harder to communicate. My group will need to use the time in the class effectively to make sure we are all on the same track and we all pull our weight to make this assignment as good as possible.
The second part of the lecture was on the use of multimedia in the classroom. Visual multimedia is something that you can watch, aural is audio learning such as music and kinesthetic is a form of tactile learning therefore it is more hands on. Rob than showed the class examples from the Learning Federation that support these types of multimedia. One was on the digestive system in which I had found to use in assignment 3, one was a science interaction game and the last one was a interactive sight in which you can zoom from the smallest atoms to the largest of planets.
Throughtout the lecture the thing that stood out the most was the question 'Where is multimedia useful?' I had never considered that multimedia is used because the real life experiment is too dangerous, too expensive or not possible for the student to do. I found this lecture one of the most interesting to date in this subject as I am very fond of using technology in the classroom. I believe that technology and multimedia make learning more exciting and therefore more enticing for the students to learn. I feel I have always learnt from watching something rather than reading something especially in science or maths as you are able to see how it is done and what the steps are rather than reading the steps.
In the workshop I finally got to meet my other partner for assignment three, Bianca. I was shocked that when I walked in I recieved another member named Kirsty. During the days previous to this class I had begun to research resources and Jess and I had decided on the digestive system. I think that knowing what the human body does and how important health is from an early age is essential to growing up healthy. After meeting the girls we discussed what we are doing what the authentic task would be and we assigned everyone with a page to work on. We had been talking for 30 minutes about the assignment while waiting for our lecturer to help me out with my wikispace problem when she asked each group to stand up and show what we had achieved so far. Truth be told it was horrible. I have never had a problem with public speaking but I was slightly embarressed that we had nothing to show as our group had just formed while the other groups had great ideas that we coming along really well. We had not yet spoken to to the tuturor (we were the last group and the class was almost over) about whether we were on the right track and therefore our idea for an authetic task was shut down in front of everybody as it was not 'authetic enough'. I hate being put on the spot like that and truthfully it made me embarressed. I do feel like we needed that time with the tuturor to ask those important questions. After class I finally recieve the proper instructions about how to sign onto wikispaces. It was a great sense of relief that I could finally begin on the resource page.
I added the resources that jess and I had found to the page and wrote a brief explanation on the resources. I was able to find an extra website and video to add as well. A few days later I looked at the website to see that Bianca had added a few documents to the page.
I am normally quite happy to work in groups but as we only have one class a week and each group member has a busy schedule it's going to be a little bit harder to communicate. My group will need to use the time in the class effectively to make sure we are all on the same track and we all pull our weight to make this assignment as good as possible.