Wednesday, August 11, 2010


Learning with ICT is best when ICT is integral to learning.
ICT is integral to learning as a method of being able to efficiently find what is sort. Consulting the essential learnings for ICT, there are no ways of working, or knowledge and understanding as such; rather there is an emphasis on enquiring, creating, communicating and operating using the opportunities that Ict presents.
Kearsley and Shneiderman (1998) suggest in their paper "Engagement Theory" that highly effective learning is best achieved by providing small student teams with authentic, real world problem tasks that they can relate to, create a solution/product and then donate that back into the real world for authentic feedback.
Collaborative ICT tools are important to learning because they support collaborative, constructivist online learning.
Web 2.0 technologies offer significant advantages to educators and students in that there is now a fast growing repertoire of excellent resources designed and uploaded to public areas of the Web.
Authentic learning allows students to see real world applications in their learning.
When comparing a student-centred learning environment to a teacher-centric learning environment, the key difference is learning is negotiated between students and teacher.
ICT is integral to learning when effective integration is essential, not peripheral to the learning activity.
Guidelines for safe, legal, ethical operation online include protection of intellectual property, copyright, privacy and child protection.
"I have a responsibility to get through this content by ..."(a certain time) is not an example of student-centred teacher discourse.

The previous was one of the online quizzes we had to do for this course. As well as being a method of checking what has been learnt, it also represents a good way of acquiring knowledge. Because the questions by nature can not be too long, and the answers fit in them, they represent a good summary of what has been learned. They can also be used as a method of formative assessment, and simply as a method of remembering the important points of a topic. In a classroom, they would be useful to keep students engaged, and also may provide motivation for a reluctant participant. By having a variety of quizzes available for students after they have finished a task, they could be a method of extension, if not re inforcement. Mathletics online and reading eggs are two online sites that deal with Maths and reading respectively. Mathletics appeals to most primary age groups, reading eggs is useful for students who are just beginning to read, probably prep to yr2. It would also be possible to make verbal quizzes that could be loaded to I tunes, as a podcast; there could already be a variety on there (I haven't had a good look yet). Nintendo DS's also have a variety of educational games available.

1 comment:

  1. Very true, Pete. The pedagogy used with the tool, be it technological or hands-on needs to be sound. Just using technology or ICTs in the classroom doesn't necessarily mean that it's helping. However, the attitudes of some teacher towards some technologies such as Interactive Whiteboards (IWBs) also needs changing, as they have the boards installed at teacher height rather than student height, thereby making it so that it is hard for students to interact with the IWBs. After all, one of the primary uses of IWBs is for students to be able to interact with learning objects, and other interactive content that is shown on the screen. Hard to do if it's not positioned so students can use it!!!

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