Assessment Task #6

REFLECTION 6 WEEK 6 – Reflection Synopsis...

Zteven Whitty

This reflection regards the nascent thoughts hovering the latitude of material that have surfaced over a series of several inquiries. To both gage and refine a procedure for appraising this material – of which centred on web 2.0 technologies (a.k.a. ICT tools) – various engagement activities were evaluated upon their digital and non-digital pedagogical potential to satisfy or even confront recognized learning theory boundaries. This took place alongside considering the ethics related to their use in a primary education context. The appraisal method used for the inquiries entailed judging a range of web tools on their ability to foster SAMR Modelling into their conveyance of learning content, and, their ability to scaffold Bloom’s Taxonomical Hierarchy into their posturing of learning content. Further information and glossary found at synopsis end  (please see appendices 1 & 2).

In a recent address to CQUniversity on the notion of learning gains Professor Emeritus, Royce Sadler, marks on the importance of recognising how competency based assessments or activities can possible limit the learning gains made by students if their orchestration is poorly grasped.¹  I acknowledge this assertion as being extremely significant as a result of shifting mainstream pedagogues. Online learning presents many wonderful avenues of pedagogical profitability, however, currently, I would strongly hesitate to fully entrust that these avenues will securely lead students to generate an individual cognitive acumen due to a lack in focus on fundamental content apprehension.

...Minimizing word-counts is cool. 

...So, too, is attribution²

1 Enhancement Technologies.

The tools demonstrated supplemented or augmented change with no to little functional improvement to an original objective. These include tools such as YouTube, Pixlr, 123RF, Weebley or any autonomously created information website.

Learning with these tools is didactic and rote as task outcomes are prearranged for students. One would be correct to consider video or image online bank or editing tools like the aforementioned and autonomously administered websites as possibly augmentative yet definitely non-collaborative, technological applications. However, I feel they still serve a vital cognitivist role by housing useful knowledge from which to store, compare, contrast, comprehend, source, apprehend, and, improve upon proficiency and good-old-fashioned-behaviourist-know-how. I certainly use proficiency when I continue to maintain the informative yet non-transformative website for my small dance business that I created many years ago, ZtevenWhittyDance.  

2 Transformative Technologies.

These tools demonstrated modified or redefined change with noticeable functional improvement to an original objective. These include tools such as Blogger, Wikispaces, GoAnimate, emaze and Tiki-Toki. Also, interchangeable tools such as Spicynodes and MindMeister, where information might be accessed pre-arranged for the comprehension of individuals yet also be accessed collaboratively for the synthesis by peer networks. 

Learning with these tools is efficient as time investments and the mercurial engaging nature of the activities complement the attention spans of students. Here, students are met with rewarding learning gains. Redesigning the delivery platform of an activity allows for the creation of new task – a sense of hyper-connected-meta-functionality. I would like to make use of collaborative social constructivism to empower the confidence levels of community-minded members. 

3 Relevant Ethical Insights.

Safety

These inquires have made it blistering clear that many implications encircle the safety of teachers, students and all incidental people involved with a learning site or event. Imperative aspects I encountered were; to ensure upon written copies of everything to do with any anticipated use of delicate or sensitive assets e.g.: identifiable pictures of students, personal details of students etc; in the event of reporting an incident, do so through the appropriate chain of accountable staffs, and; to collect or ensure student assent to policies put in place by a school is verified before commencing any online activity like in the example of a school ICT policy featured here.

Lawfully

Operating within the parameters of the law should be a precedent set and demonstrated by all teachers, regardless of circumstance. Fortunately resource abounds for issue regarding online legal conduct. Important issues such as copyright infringement, attribution etiquette, website monetization, and, learning institute permissions can be consulted  with ease via a simple search engine entry of their objective topic, or, via information supplied by a participating affiliation or service provider like in the example of GoAnimate featured here. 

Ethically

I feel it would serve well for a teacher - who intends to expect their students to uphold positive values and beliefs for online ethical conduct - to establish a sense of envelopment and overflow from non-digital ethical culture into digital ethical culture like in the example proposed here by Linda Starr in her article "Tools for Teaching Cyber Ethics"  featured here.

4 Relevant Pedagogical Insights.

Admirations:

Technologies like those used in this series of reflections have the ability to commit young students to an affirmative position on study. In addition to facilitating access to get work done anywhere in many forms and on a range of devices, students are provided learning scenarios complemented with a sense of self-navigation. A social constructivist collaborative based learning scenario like the example with which I experimented here in emaze with, Bangarra Mutton Birds, opens and caters for multiple learning sites. They do this through redesigning an objective, and, by platforming compound positive learning experiences among students through peer feedback and group cohesion. All amounting to very admirable traits of which I would indeed consider worthy of employing.

Concerns:

A point of increasing social constructivist, mediatisation of youth scrutiny faculties is amounting at an alarming rate. I find this worrying as other faculties relating to discernment and judgement are receiving decreased attention. It can be easier, sometimes, to follow the crowd. A connectivist, competency based learning scenario like the example with which I experimented here in Tiki-Toki with, MOOSECLUMPS PoemTrail, might attribute excellent scaffold spaces for high-level thinking, however, elucidates this concern well. Any student could easily copy the responses of other students. So, when devising activities I feel I need to try to make activity responses call for social construction with an individualized perspective layered in as much as possible. As in, at the very least, base the tense or mode of an activity response in such a context that demands of a student some form of personal positioning on the stimulus.

Inquiry Summation

To concisely condense how the queried material has influenced my many significant concepts and appreciations that are currently providing some coagulation to my continually forming digital and non-digital pedagogue is challenging. However, I assert split intuition towards the use of ICT in a primary school classroom setting at this stage of my forming an ideal digital pedagogue in their implementation for learning design. This design would be guided by curriculum and assessment requirements set by ACARA. All together, they inspire me to approach change with both professional caution and to accept indications of rewarding and appealing pedagogical orchestrations on positive continual technological shifts. A shift can be read as a prelude to change. I hope that with any pedagogical changes I make - I keep some old, good stuff.

Appendix  

1) 

SUBSTITUTION

Activity definition: a demonstration of topic knowledge in response to an activity.


AUGMENTATION

Activity definition: an interpretative or reflective response to an activity of which calls for added comprehension, and, the application of extended concept avenues.

MODIFICATION

Activity definition: a demonstration of topic analysis in response to an activity.


REDEFINITION

Activity definition: an investigative or diagnostic response to an activity of which calls for added evaluation and, the synthesis of extended concept avenues.

2) 

Bloom's Taxonomical Hierarchy:

Image Credit³ 


Glossary

ICT:

Information
Computer 
Technologies

Website Monetization:⁴ 
- is the process of converting existing traffic being sent to a particular website into revenue. The most popular ways of monetizing a website are by implementing Pay per click (PPC) and Cost per impression(CPI/CPM) advertising.

Mediatisation:⁵  
- is a theory which argues that it is the media which shapes and frames the processes and discourse of political communication as well as the society in which that communication takes place.

ACARA:⁶  
- is a the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority.

References 

¹Taken indirectly from presentation, accessed 08 April, 2014: 

Royce Sadler.

²Attribution example: Attribution, image credit: screenshot edited image from 

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6628111162550924093#editor/target=post;postID=3148035416923174249;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=link 

³Attribution example: Attribution, image credit: image from 

http://w3.unisa.edu.au/gradquals/staff/program/blooms.asp

⁴Attribution example: Definition, quote credit: quote taken directly from  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website_monetisation

⁵Attribution example: Definition, quote credit: quote taken directly from 

http://knowledge.sagepub.com/view/key-concepts-in-political-communication/n29.xml
⁶Attribution example: Definition, quote credit: quote taken directly from 
http://www.acara.edu.au/curriculum/curriculum.html

• Starr L. (2003). Education World - Tools for Teaching Cyber Ethics. Retrieved from: http://www.educationworld.com/a_tech/tech/tech055.shtml

Thank you for reading my reflective synopsis. 

Good Energy !! 

Zteven Whitty 

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