Final Course Reflection (web2.0 online course)

In this final module, we are asked to consider all the Web 2.0 tools we have learned about during this online course. We are to think of them in the context of Bloom's revised digital taxonomy as well as our own diocese contemporary learning model, in terms of pedagogy, curriculum planning, student learning and educational leadership.

I have found this course to be quite involved, requiring a deeper level of thinking about the potential uses for various web2.0 tools in education. I feel that my appreciation for the use of some of these tools has grown (say using Picasa to curate events, or wikis/GoogleSites to collaborate), whilst for others it has diminished (I see minimal effective use of Facebook or Twitter in the classroom, despite Twitter being useful in maintaining a PLN).

If I consider the iLE@RN model:

It shows a continuum that is focused on collaboration, creative thinking, reflection, critical-thinking, mathematical and literacy and questioning skills. It sees learners as knowledge creators and managers, who thrive in creative learning spaces. I feel that this constructivist approach where students are involved in the knowledge creation process, will allow for a deeper level of learning than some traditional methods will. Where students are involved in the teaching/learning process in this way, there is a deeper level of commitment/buy in to the process.

Through the use of web2.0 tools, students are able to become involved in this fashion with the learning process. They are able to design and manipulate knowledge and ways of knowing and thus have more ownership over their own learning.

I remember watching an academic at the John Monash Science School observing students conducting experiments during one of my placement's as a pre-service teacher. He was struck by how involved in the process they were, intently focused on what they were doing. This contrasted with how students often perceive the science laboratory. I mentioned simply that the students had ownership over the experiments, as they had designed and chosen them. This begins in the web2.0 classroom as well - and I have witnessed it during this term at my school when my classes were writing to their blogs and had a deep level of focus.

I think this can be developed further through collaboration between classes at a school, or between different schools. Educators need to become more au fait with web2.0 tools and use the strengths of such options - creativity and collaboration and critical-thinking. Web2.0 tools cover the whole gamut of Bloom's Digital Taxonomy, from creating as the highest-order skills, down to remembering. When I reflect on how my students benefited from their blogging experience, in some cases it was the lower-level remembering and understanding, and in other cases it was being able to create content and knowledge and evaluate others' understanding. I would like to further develop how I teach using this, to focus on developing student's ability to critique and question.

Our school is beginning to become more familiar with different web2.0 tools and their use in the classroom, and I think that is an area where we needed to continue to focus, to develop clear goalposts in terms of what we are trying to achieve. Having a student blog for the sake of having a blog might not achieve our educational aims; yet knowing that we can develop student interest and engagement through one, and use it to develop skills of evaluation and collaboration through one might. Being clear about how this is built into the curriculum is also important, as it becomes part of the regular planning/teaching/evaluating process. I would like to think I can help lead my school into effective use of some of these tools as part of our pedagogical model (we have recently develop new non-negotiables in terms of teaching - more to follow!) in the upcoming year, as part of my new role as Curriculum Leader.

Module 10 (web2.0 online course)

In this module we were required to look at various learning communities and using wikis. I found this topic quite interesting as the use of wikis in education is something that I have been investigating over the last two years. During my graduate diploma of education study I began learning about Wikispaces, an example of a site that hosts wikis. FYI, a wiki is defined as:

a website or database developed collaboratively by a community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content

During that time I developed a wiki with several other pre-service teachers based on a biology unit that we were planning for. At the time I remember feeling that it was a little cumbersome, requiring us to format and re-edit documents to display them correctly and share them through Wikispaces.

Since that time, I have developed more familiarity with both Wikispaces and Google Sites and have found them to offer a number of benefits to my classes. I wanted to use them for my classes for two reasons: firstly as a place to store digital documents for students to readily access, and more importantly, as a place to help students join in a conversation about their learning process, to enable them to see other learning process from their peers, and share feedback and strategies about their learning.

What I have found so far is that Google Sites works more effectively with the students from my school, in comparison with Wikispaces. The difficulties my students found with Wikispaces was that they had to remember another login for another site, and often the school server blocked students from accessing the website. Whilst the first is easily remedied, the second really impacted on the students taking it up. Google Sites on the other hand was more easily taken up by students due to using the same logon details as their school email, which is already required for all their subjects. I also found that the layout presented by Google Sites was more user friendly, and a more simple interface.

As I have used these websites, my awareness of what they can be used for has developed. Initially I thought they would serve to outline the 'course' and subject materials; which is such a small application. Since I have been using them regularly, I have seen their potential in getting students to complete groupwork collaboratively, in a way that I can observe each students contributions. I have also been able to blog to the class discussing why we are studying certain things in class, presenting students with feedback and discussing class survey results. I feel that they can help my students to see that I can meet their needs outside of the classroom.

I feel that I am able to more easily see more of my students achieving/satisfying requirements of a course through their interactions with a wiki. Several of my students have provided feedback, saying that they enjoy using the websites, but would prefer to use them every class or not at all. I think they find it difficult to add another literacy (digital/use of wiki) when they might already be struggling. Some of them would prefer to use a wiki in place of a notebook, recording their class notes etc. Some of the year 10 science research projects really worked heavily on developing their group page, seeing it as part of their overall project assessment.

Overall I think that I will continue to use a form of wikis in my classroom, and expect that my usage of them will develop with my teaching. I look forward to helping students see different ways of learning, through what they share with their peers. I look forward to establishing a sense of collaboration in my students. I look forward to developing their digital literacy as well.

How do you use wikis in your classroom?

Self-assessment in education

Over the last few weeks a lot of things have been happening at my school. Year 12s finished their studies with end of year exams; Year 11s have had their final assessments and are beginning Head Start classes for next year; Year 10s have had final assessments; including their research presentations; Year 8s have had camp; I have been teaching Head Start; I have spoken at my first assembly for year 11 in my new role as curriculum leader; and I have begun moving office into the VCE centre.

Oh and reports and finishing marking.

So apart from feeling a little:

I am actually quite excited about teaching my Head Start classes. This week I have started teaching year 11 biology and chemistry. In my chemistry class today, one of the things I was doing was getting my students to self-assess a timeline that they had produced in groups in the previous class. The timeline illustrated development of atomic theory, hopefully showing understanding, content knowledge, and presentation skills (in order of relative importance).

What I found was that students were quite on the mark in terms of assigning 'grades', compared to what I assign. More importantly, the discussions that ensued were particularly revealing. Through a conversation I facilitated, they indicated why and why not they thought particular posters were well done- several students were corrected by peers for praising well-presented work that showed no understanding. They began to auto-correct and critique the work beyond a surface/superficial level. Some students misidentified information (dates/names etc) as understanding, and were able to be corrected by their peers, who explained that the posters did not in fact show the experimental evidence leading to the development of the different models.

I know that Hattie ranks student self-assessment as an important and powerful element of education, yet I do not think I had experienced just how powerful it could be in my classroom. To watch students reflect and change their thinking in front of me was really satisfying. Taking the time to think, to really slow down and look at a piece of work, was something that benefited my chemistry students. I will definitely be employing this more often in my classes, with the intention of developing self-correcting, deeply understanding students.

Module 9 (web2.0 online course)

In this module, we are asked to explore social networking sites including scootle (educators online community, Australia based), Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. The module also reviews what social networking is, in case we had forgotten!

There are some interesting social media statistics out there...

I think that social networking might offer some benefits in the classroom, although given that teachers need to maintain a professional boundary with students, social networking tools are of more benefit to a teacher connecting with other teachers. Establishing an online presence can serve to connect teachers to a large professional network that operates 24/7 around the globe. Beginning teachers can seek advice from expert teachers, and there is a sense of not being so alone knowing that many other teachers are blogging about the idiosyncrasies,  the particular demands of, and ways to develop teaching.

One of the problems I see in networking and social media sites, is that as 'new media' voices can be echoed and teachers can begin feeling as though everyone feels the same way, even though only a small minority of people are joined to that conversation. This bias is something that needs careful scrutiny - how many teachers at your school are actually connected to Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter? Probably less than you might think.

Our school has a mix of staff on any of these social networking sites. A majority use Facebook, but not for teaching purposes. Some are on LinkedIn, as a form of online/digital CV, whilst very few are on Twitter.

I find Twitter a great network for teachers, particularly with conversations such as #edchat and #tmmelb being some useful ones close to home that I follow. The ability to have these ongoing conversations with other education professionals is something that I have found beneficial as a beginning teacher. I also particularly enjoy being able to find teachers' blogs and reading about their experiences and opinions.

Overall I think the benefit of social media in the classroom, at this stage, belongs to empowered teachers being able to connect and share ideas, support and stories.

Contextual learning

We have just finished a semester long course at year 10 in advanced chemistry and physics, a subject we called Future Energies and Sustainability. The focus of this course was a research project into our local suburb, Ferntree Gully, to investigate different aspects of energy production, usage and sustainability that could be improved for the year 2040.

Josie Hopkins and I came up with the idea of contextual unit to teach science at St Joseph's College because we wanted to achieve several things:

1) We wanted to students to engage with science as an inquiry based subject, rather than a content based subject (although there is a need to teach content as part of science).

2) We wanted students to be involved in a learning process (the research project) that is authentic (solving real world problems, engaging with real people)

3) We wanted to use assessments (the research project, the student blog) that allow for deeper learning through reflection and collaboration in an ongoing process for students.

Last Monday we came to the end of the course, finishing on a high with student led presentations in our learning centre, Chieri. The students put on a science fair of sorts, presenting their research into future energies and sustainability for the suburb of Ferntree Gully. What they presented was of high quality, with deep understanding evident in many presentations. Some groups had made posters communicating their ideas, whilst others had conducted experiments to test and refine hypotheses. We provided the boys with an authentic audience - Lisa Loulier and Sam Sampanthar from Knox City Council's Community Sustainability Program; Kate Evans, Director of KIOSC at Swinburne University; as well as a member from Energy Australia; and a long serving member of the engineers' institute of Australia. These visitors were full of enthusiasm about the program after speaking with the boys, impressed by the level of their understanding and knowledge in their project areas. Several students have been asked to present at an Expo at KIOSC early next year.

What really hit me with this course finishing up was that it could work. Science education could be contextualised and allow for deeper understanding. Students could have a longer term exposure to the themes underlying a subject and move beyond surface or skill learning. It was by no means perfect, and I can already see ways to improve how we ran the course, including: how and why we use the student blogs, incorporating more practical work, building more links between students and the community. Yet the overall results of the project encourage me to think that we can positively engage students in science, and achieve better understanding of science through making it real in the classroom.

A cheeky demo!

Here is a little taster of something we have been working on at the ECCN... Enjoy!

Module 8 (web2.0 online course)

In this module we are asked to develop a familiarity with RSS and different RSS tools. In particular we looked at Feedly (a popular RSS service that replaces Google Reader). I think that having another service to help manage new content from the web would be useful for the avid user of the internet (although somehow I have survived without using any kind of RSS service for years!).

I struggle to see how the majority of classrooms would benefit from using this kind of service at this stage. Many of my students are less au fait with technology than might be expected, and trying to get them to use something like feedly, when they see the internet mostly for connecting and communicating, rather than researching and learning, does not seem like it would be effective at this stage. I am happy to be wrong in this regard, and perhaps there is a way in which students would use this.

I currently use feedly to keep on top of various sites of interest, including various science and education blogs. I think that some of my students would read blogs, but perhaps not as much as would warrant using feedly. Perhaps they could use it as part of research into a given topic - but I am still unsure...