Changes ahead in ICT and Education

This week we took a look inside a year 2 class and how their teacher was effectively implementing ICT in the classroom through the use of blogging.

The 2M Gems class blog displayed a number of purposeful and engaging features including:

• Clear student Expectations
• Three actual class blogs; a general class blog, a writing blog and a reading blog
• Blogfolios containing students individual blogs
• Multimodal posts including text, audio recordings, photos, animation, videos and  slideshows
• A range of educational widgets.

However the thing that was most impressive from my perspective was the challenge this teacher faced in setting up the blog. It was later explained to us that the school has few ICT resources and the teacher really did everything in her power to make this happen, she has brought unused computers from other rooms and even set up a blogging cafe during lunch for all the schools students. It is examples such as this that prove to pre-service teachers that ICT can be effectively implemented in to a school even when other colleagues may be sceptical. In my own research I came across an award winning classroom blog by two team-teachers in Victoria. Their blog interacts with other classes around the world, offers blogging advise for novice ICT teachers, conducts blogging sessions with parents, offers subscriptions, the list goes on.

I thought the blogs explored this week were very appropriate as they present the cutting edge of this ‘change in education’ that is outlined in this week’s articles. The article entitled ‘Interactive Learning’ and the sister article ‘Interactive Learning: Twenty Years Later’ discussed the evolution of education systems and the drastic changes they predicted we were going to see and the actual changes that did take place. Already we see the changes creeping into primary school education settings by way of educational gaming, use of electronics and the increasing use of the internet for information and communication. However if the university settings are anything to go by, it may not be too far away before primary school students are taking the majority of their lessons online on a personalised timetable.

This week saw the beginning of our team brainstorming and evaluating ideas for our Professional Development Video.  We are looking closely at the TPACK model and have decided to challenge ourselves with a technology we are unfamiliar with.

I also started brainstorming ideas on what I need to address when implementing ICTs into my practicum.

References

Bork, A. (1980). Interactive Learning. Retrieved from: http://www.zagami.info/4001EPS/Readings/Entries/2011/3/14_Week_3.html

Bork, A. (2003). Interactive Learning: Twenty Years later. Retrieved from: http://www.zagami.info/4001EPS/Readings/Entries/2011/3/14_Week_3.html