A video blog I made on the fascinating story of pencils across the curriculum, a great parody of e-learning today!

“Can we imagine a time when, instead of reading about city planning in geography textbooks, children play Sim City? When, instead of sitting in a language lab, they play online games in Spanish with children from other countries? When, instead of GCSEs, A-levels or NVQs, a child can claim that having reached the ‘boss’ level of a computer game is  evidence enough of skills and understanding? “

 What can computer games teach us about education?  Children  play and learn from computer games all the time. They enjoy games and can play for hours. However while their popularity has never been in question, the benefits of gaming always have been.  Much research cites that games are antisocial, mindless fun, and damaging to traditional skills such as literacy. But not all games are the same many are very social they encourage communication with people from around the world. Games can teach many different skills including literacy, lateral thinking and planning.  One of the big appeals of games are the challenges they pose.  Educators can learn

Simulation games teach by putting the player in the moment, children learn to plan they learn the effect of their actions and they play strategically for a given goal. Now children can also write their own computer games.

Today children are part of “the gaming generation’, they are used to interaction, motivational learning.  The Professor of Education at MIT Henry Jenkins believes that teacher must utilise gaming for all its benefits.

However there are still many drawbacks to including games in education. One, is the lessons they teach, some are far from ideal and others are irrelevant. Some games content are far from ideal lesson, many peddle violence and  immoral values.  Facer jokes about the idea of using Grand theft auto to teach citizenship and of course this brings up the need for carefully choosing appropriate games for what you are hoping children learn.

Facer  concludes that  

‘Perhaps the biggest elephant of all is the question of how young people themselves will respond to the introduction of their popular culture into the classroom. Let’s face it – there’s nothing worse than your dad trying to ‘get with the kids’ when you’re a teenager. It’s like seeing your least favourite uncle ‘disco dancing’ to the Libertines – somehow it’s all wrong. Would bringing games into the classroom lead young people to turn to novels and letter-writing in rebellion? “

He is fearful that teachers and parents are missing the point with kids fascination with games. He believes that the real challenges and difficult problems that face young people in the games are their main appeal. They also offer the

responsibility for overcoming them as well as new worlds to explore and new identities to adopt.   Today young people have less freedom, risk and responsibility than children in the past. Computer games show the need for opportunities to take real risks, challenges and have responsibly. Facet concludes “The most important aspects of games which need to be applied to

learning are the motivational ones – the desire to stay in that world, to explore, to progress to the next level, to try stuff out. I haven’t come across that many creations yet with a learning intent that truly plug into this compelling energy.”

Could computer games transfer the way we learn? Is the future of learning playful?
Facer, K. (2005) Could computer games transfer the way we learn? Is the future of learning playful? Vision, 1, pp.1-4

http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/vision/VISION_01.pdf

For years research has said that education should be student-centered and collaborative. Now teens have found a way to do this and most educators are going out of their way to stop them-sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it?

However this what is happening with social networking. The commentary Don’t Tell Your Parents: Schools embrace myspace looks at the use of social bookmarking in schools. Many schools are trying to block sites that waste time and attract nasty attention-think bullies and pedophiles. However these negative views often overlook the many positives that can be gained from social networking. This is a student-centered way of learning, dialoges and conversation are generated around the knowledge. For many years we have known that group study works and technology now offers a whole new way to embrace this.

picture source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stabilo-boss/93136022/

written source:Don’t Tell Your Parents: Schools Embrace MySpace
Andrews, R. (2007).Don’t Tell Your Parents: Schools Embrace MySpace.Wired.

Papertexplores the complex underpinning of constuctionism and the importance of choice and passion. In this article Papert tells the story of how as a young child he was fascinated with gears, through his obsession Papert discovered a lot about how cars and gears work, he learnt about cause and effect, he was able to create his own simple models. I think we can all relate to this story, the idea that if learning is pitched in an area of interest it is a fun and exciting task rather than an onerous, dull workload.

When I was in school my mother was a quilter, she used to always ask me any maths questions to do with her latest project. I would draw, cut and calculate trying to work out exactly how much fabric she needed, what shape would fit together or how to create an interesting pattern. For a recent maths project we were asked to create a video that shows maths in real life, when I started putting sylabus outcomes to the things I learnt with my mother in the sewing room  and I was shocked, it never seamed like work!

Papert connects these experiences to e-learning by summarising

‘”What the gears cannot do the computer might. The computer is the Proteus of machines. Its essence is its universality, its power to simulate. Because it can take on a thousand forms and can serve a thousand functions, it can appeal to a thousand tastes. This book is the result of my own attempts over the past decade to turn computers into instruments flexible enough so that many children can each create for themselves something like what the gears were for me.”

Source The Gears of My Childhood. Extract from Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas
Papert, S. (1980). The Gears of My Childhood. Extract from Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas (Basic Books, 1980).Retrieved March 16, 2007 at: 

I know I have already posted some blogs on why it is useful for students to blog and the research supporting the use of blogs.  Now I have some real peoples experience I want to add.  I have just read Twittering with Sue Walters and wanted to read why other teachers blog. I have shamelessly admitted that I only started this blog as an assignment, but lo and behold I may have really gotten something out of it! In Share your blog experince bloggers were asked the following questions

• Where you blog and how long you have been blogging for?
• Why you blog? How does it benefit you or your work?
• How blogging has helped your students and how long have you been blogging with students (if applicable)
• Why you feel blogging is important
• What are the 3 most important tips you would share with a new blogger?

I was amazed at the diversity of answers especially to question two and three. The final question was of course the most informative. Many bloggers expressed the need to be yourself and let blogs flow naturally. They stressed that your blog voice will evolve, I can’t believe how much easier blogging has become with time and I wish I read these tips when I first started blogging. Another common tip was consistency and keeping the blogs flowing. Many thought it was more important to have short, frequent blogs .

Okay, well not a normal blog today. I have been reading others blogs and found a lot of talk about twitter, I signed up but I still can’t understand the craze. I was reading the blog Is twitter shifting blogging to a new phase,when I just had to laugh, the widgit on the side of the page said translate this page, I had a sudden urge to try it because the blog made no sense at-all to the computer illiterate fools like me. So I have watched the tutorial twitter in plain English, I know that twitter is all about keeping people up-to-date on what you are doing, but is it possible that someone can recommend me a good site to read which will explain this to me more fully. This seams to be a common theme amongst the advice pages on promoting blogs although the justification is often unclear.

Sorry this blog is more questions than answers but I’d really like to find out more!

I was discussing my blog with other students in my course when some-one mentioned they haven’t got any comments yet  their blog. It made me realise I had no idea how you find other blogs and how to generate interest in your blog. So far I have been connecting to others through my blog-roll and sheer dumb luck when I unexpectedly stumble on a fascinating blog.

I had a read of two recommended teacher’s blogs which deal with this issue. In batting for 1000+  Mrs W. talks about how in two months she has built a blog up so much that now she is getting over 1000 readers through her site. She uses twitter to generate interest and connect with like minded people on the web. She aldo cites reading  and commenting on other’s blogs as another important skill.

This brings me to the second part of the question, where do you find other relevant interesting blogs. In Why does technorati still mock me I learnt that there are blog search engines.  Sue Walters recommends visiting technorati and google blog search. Hopefully these will take the guesswork out of finding good blogs for me and make searching for blogs a skill rather than a lucky dip!

I hope my comic really speaks for its self. Today the students in my prac class used the website makebelief comix, all but one student was highly engaged. In fact all were concentrating so hard on their stories that the teacher reminded them they could discuss their ideas if they wanted too! Comics are a great text type and they get students to think creatively, using langauge and telling stories.  

BubbleShare: Share photos – Play some Online Games.

Sources http://www.cabrillo.edu/~nstucker/images/zits.gif> & www.cartoonstock.com

 I have just read Ten Web 2.0 Things You Can Do In Ten Minutes to Be a More Successful E-learning Professional, perhaps I’m a little behind because I’m not sure I will be able to get through the list in 10 minutes. However the idea is simple, e-learning is not just a subject for students, it’s a subject for teachers. Teachers must keep abreast of new technologies and must make an effort to try and incorporate these technologies into their classroom. Of course this will only seam natural if you incorporate them in you life. So what’s my new challenge you ask?  Read item 4 on the list that’s going to be my first challenge, then I’ll keep it up from there! Post a comment back and commit to one of these challenges for yourself!

I just read Hayley’s post on smart-board and I have to admit it does seams a very dived and topical discussion. While on my first prac I was lucky enough to have a smart-board and a teacher who was keen to make use of all they had to offer. On prac I was shown how to use all the tools and to make the most of this fantastic resource in the classroom. One of my first lesson has a very interactive smart-board presentation on grid references, I found the students were more engaged than had I done the same lesson on the chalkboard or using worksheets, it also was a real confidence booster for me as the lesson was well planned and easy to deliver. As a student teacher it was slightly overwhelming as I spent a lot of time learning from the students as they corrected me on how to use the smart-board. 

I really liked how it was conducive to whole class discussions and allowed the teacher to prepare the lesson from home and then just download it straight to the board.  All perspective teachers should download the free note-ware software and have a play, it’s easy to pick up and once you start thinking you realise the possibilities are completely endless!

So far most of my blogs have been about the possibilities and opportunities in ICT.  However I just read Cathie’s blog Are Children safe using online blogs?  And it made me think about the negatives of using the internet and especially the safety issues.  In my earlier blog “Blogging possibilities”   I mentioned students could use blogs as a journal, teachers need to be careful that students understand that this is in a reflective manner on their learning or if it is a journal that they do not identify themselves or their family and be careful about giving out too much information. It is obvious that this is a very important subject that students need to learn about.  Internet safety and manners should be a compulsory part of the primary curriculum.  I found a website I liked about internet safety for children called nettys world and cybersmart kids online, as a teacher i think it would be important to dedicate several lessons to issues of internet saftey.