Rhiannon2912’s Weblog

a)      Whenever a teacher conveys new information to their students it is imperative that they ensure they do a number of things. First off they must ensure that the information they are trying to present is clear and succinct. It is not effective to overload students with information that is not relevant or is above their knowledge level at the time.   Piaget’s theory of constructivism is built on the idea that students build knowledge on knowledge they already have. Essentially learning is like building blocks where new information must follow on from what students have already learnt. When looking at Web2.0 this is definitely a logical process to follow. It will do no good to simply expect students to understand the technologies on offer they must be lead through them until the knowledge starts to build.  

http://www.uib.no/People/sinia/CSCL/HMM_Constructivism.gif  

It is also known that students learn best when they teach others.   

“Tell me, and I forget. Show me, and I remember. Involve me and I understand.”

  This is an excellent theory for use in collaborative learning. Each group member is ultimately going to be given an individual task in which they become an expert and then have to report back to other group members and teach them what they have learnt.

  

b)      The encouragement of collaboration among students is all about motivation. The group is only going to be efficient of each of the members are individually motivated. Motivation comes form many different sources both internal and external. Hopefully most motivation is intrinsic however as this is not always the case it is often the teachers responsibility to ensure that the motivation is present.

  

http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/motivation/motivate.html

   

The follow video describes some of the advantages of collaborative learning in Web2.0 and reasons to provide this motivation.

  

As well as this reasons to motivate as well as motivational methods can be seen in this video.

 

 

As Dreikurs theory indicates much motivation and human drive comes from the need to be respected. His theory outlines four main reasons for misbehaviour.

  

http://eport2.cgc.maricopa.edu/published/t/wa/twahla11/collection/9/3/upload.pdf

  

The need for attention, revenge, power of avoidance of inadequacies are what Dreikurs says drives are human beings. In students this means that when these needs are present then the student begin to misbehave. As the above report indicates when teachers take measures to ensure that students are given power, freedom and respect then this need to misbehave diminishes.

  

When students have their needs filled and feel that they are respected and needed within their group then their motivation and overall effort will increase causing this intrinsic motivation to encourage the group collaboration.

 

 

c)      One of the main concerns when dealing with students interacting with Web2.0 is the maintenance of classroom management, focus and constructive work.

  

As students are given freedom over their work they are bound to be distracted b the many technologies that Web2.0 has to offer. Facilities such as Facebook and MySpace are far more easily available to students when operating in the world of Web2.0. For the teaching and learning to still be effective within Web2.0 this must be monitored closely. Of course the collaboration and communities provided by such facilities is considered a vital part of learning they can still be distractions to the learning process.

  

It is simply the teacher’s responsibility to ensure that students are always motivated, engaged, and knowledgeable and focus on the task at hand. Web2.0 is a huge advantage in this instance as even though it is the provider of such distractions its technologies mean that education can always be made as interesting.

  

By using theories provided by Glasser, Gardner, Dreikurs and Vygotsky the same theories of classroom management can be applied to using Web2.0.

  

http://www.theteachersguide.com/ClassManagement.htm

  

By appealing to student’s needs, intelligences and drivers a teacher can ensure that the balance and equality of their classroom is maintained despite advancing technologies and changing educational environments.

 

http://www.teachervision.fen.com/classroom-management/resource/5776.html

  

d)      Blooms’ taxonomy is an extremely important theory for teachers to be aware of and implement within their classrooms.

 

  

It considers the processes that need to be undertaken by student in order to achieve high level learning. Bloom indicates the process that assist only shallow learning such as remembering. This shows that students have rope learned information given to them.

  

However as the students follow Blooms taxonomy and reach the top they undertake process that allow for deeper learning. These processes include evaluating and creating. Creating being the highest most effective method for assisting deep level learning.

  

Web2.0 uses advancing technologies to allow for sharing, collaborating and creating. All of which assist this deeper learning.

  

Below are just some of the example of how Web2.0 and its technologies do this.

   

www.flickr.com

 

 

Flickr is an online sharing site for images. It allows the collaboration needed in this deep learning process.

 

www.tellingthetruth.pbwiki.com

 

 

A wiki is a site where a group is able to create a space in which they can gather, share and teach information to and with others.

 

 

This blog is another example of who students are able to create and share their ideas and information.

 

http://del.icio.us/rhiannon2912

Del.icio.us is a technology offered by Web2.0 that again allows the collaborative sharing that promotes learning and relationships, motivation and drives that are needed to reach the higher levels of Blooms taxonomy. 

http://www.google.com.au/ig?hl=en 

i-google, such as my own above, is a site where a student can create a sort of homepage. However i-google, allows for additional and personalisation’s to be made. Sharing of favourite sites, photos and applications are all allowed with technologies such as i-google. 

All such applications allow for creation, evaluation and collaboration by students and viewers. The advantage if such not only allows for the inclusion of Web2.0 in learning but also facilitates a higher level learning amongst both the creator of such projects and the people who share with them.       

a)      The wiki address for our group learning project involving Web2.0 technologies is:

 http://tellingthetruth.pbwiki.com  

b)      This project was a group project involving creating an assessment for our students using Web2.0, its technologies and inclusion of the students parents within the assignment design. One of the issues we had was actually including the parents in a constructive way but still ensuring that they would not bear the brunt of the work. It is imperative that parents are involved in their child’s learning so as to ensure continuing relationships, greater understanding and motivate both parent and child to learn as they are interested in the relationship and rewards. 

Another issue we encountered was one that is always occurring within teaching and learning and that is the motivation of the students. Our project is set for Year 12 Advanced English students so there is a hope that at this stage a great deal of learning motivation is intrinsic for the students at this stage. However as this is not always the case we had to take motivation into account whilst planning this assessment. Much of our project is based upon social interaction and Vygotsky’s theory of learning that “social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition”. These students are able to interact with their family and ultimately their friends in the process of this task. A great deal can be learnt through the conduction of adult relationships as would be expected of these students once they graduate into the adult world. We also aim aimed to centre this assessment around an engaging topic. Although all stories are fabricated they involve people, topics and situations that are not only relevant to the students but also of interest to them. Again looking at Glasser, we decided to give the students a far amount of power, freedom and fun within the assessment. Although they are given a topic they are allowed free reign with how they present that topic. They are able to create, dramatise, present and manipulate their story any which way they like in order to convince their audience of its authenticity.

Another issue we had with the assessment related to Gardner’s multiple intelligences and ensuring that we appealed to a majority of them.

 

 

It is imperative for teachers to be doing this in order to facilitate higher level learning. That is why we included a number of aspects to this assessment. There are visual, audio, interpersonal, logical and written aspects to be covered by each group under each headline story.

 

The aim of this assessment is obviously to achieve effective teaching and learning. To do this be followed the structure of Bloom’s taxonomy.

Students are asked to analyse the headline they are give, evaluate how it could be manipulated and then create an expression and presentation of their story.

 

As this project is constructed around the use of Web2.0 it was also important for us to include the use of its technologies in a constructive and relevant way. To begin with the project is created in a wiki and the process that each group undertakes must be continuously documented on the wiki for all of their peers to access. The use of flickr and YouTube will allow the students to access footage of their subjects, manipulate it and then reload it on to these applications for sharing and presenting. It was important for us to not just load the assessment on to Web2.0 but to also include it and its facilities in the process and completion of the group’s individual work.

 

c) The entire reasoning behind this project is collaboration its worth and value and extremely important in effective teaching and learning. As mentioned a teacher would hope that at this stage in the students education mush of their motivation would be intrinsic, come from within. Rudolf Dreikurs based his educational theories are human drivers and motivation, in particular the motivation within children and adolescence to misbehave. Obviously this is what teachers aim to avoid within their classrooms. Dreikurs theory centred around the idea of mutual respect. He said that a student feels they have the respect of their teacher then they are less likely to look for attention and power and therefore misbehave. This is a very important idea within collaboration as they only way a group can function effectively and perform their task is if they have balanced and mutual respect with and for all group members. Tasks can only be given and accepted if the group members understand that they are respected by the task giver and respect that person in turn. If this respect is missing then Dreikurs theory will play out and students will begin to misbehave in order to gain power, attention, revenge or to avoid feeling inadequate.