Assessment Task #2

REFLECTION 2 WEEK 3 – Exploring Group 1 Tools...

Zteven Whitty

This reflection regards the brief interaction, building and exploring experiences I have had over the last week exploring the web 2.0 Group 1 tools. These tools - available and appropriate forboth teachers and students - have very much altered, for the better, my approach, attitude and projections for designing lessons. Specifically, these online tools have inspired pedagogical design applications previous uncontemplated for my desired focus teaching area - Primary school, dance. 

The following three major group 1 tools under inspection were, Blogger.com, Wikispaces.com and Weebly.com. All free. All amazing. And, all different. Inside their individual accounts I will scatter some technical briefing, and, some of Ruben R. Puentedora’s SAMR modelling viewpoints. Link to corresponding site found in the heading of each account… 

1. Blogger  - content is locked and only editable by the author as part of an interior chronology. Interactivity surfaces on a substitution level. Tangible collating tools like a folder are being replaced by a cyber file cabinet. An author lodges a post and others can comment as they could in tangible forms of the procedure. Additionally, comments and postings are presented according to their time of entry. This lends itself limited functionality for the task of welcoming a user will prove awkward when welcome blogs end up lodged in the sidebar drop menu - relying on the user to search for it as opposed to being constantly introduced to the valuable information it could contain. On the flip side, this may be of value when trying capture to genus of a task - perhaps this could be justified as an augmentation on the abilities of non-digital educational tools as data and meta-data can be easily collected and examined. Data examples being that of the literacy level of student comments or postings of stimuli or activity responses. 

2. Wikispaces - here content can be edited by any user - substituted or even augmented in itself  - leading to possible misdirection and time consuming activity mishaps despite the password protected feature of the user interface. This actually opened up another concern: permissions issue - solved here  and example being U&P: englishsocle. It really pinned the importance of keeping online learning site operations fluid, tidy and simple to use if ones goal is to adopt TPACK to effective levels. When creating a wikispace for my classroom context there are three applicable types from which one can choose. The classroom type has an assessment feature - I felt this may be too involved to explore right now, however, would certainly assume it to have some valuable augmentation application down the track. Like a blog, a wikispaces could be used on as a substitution tool for classroom teachers to post their scheduled/anticipated coursework that require responding. However, the method of responding ties in with collaborative activity practice and students may participate in augmented platforms of interaction and engagement and may lead to modification level applications such as collaborating or contributing towards producing an online dance video where all members upload a section of dance work designated by the group. A transformative level could be where students devise this new work via a multifaceted approach using the manipulation of data made only possibly by what surfaces throughout the life of an activity - i.e.: capturing the response to a performance art stimulus at a certain time location then 3D-rendering it to a juxtaposing placement inside a new work where it carries significant artistic allegory - a living, cross-temporal, physical diarization of group choreotopogrpahy. This would all be under the facilitation of multiple tools and software such as image capture technology, however, ya never know! 

3. Weebly - can be viewed as being a static website. Like a Blog, a Weebly provides pre-designed templates for fast and easy site generation. Again, like a blog, one single administrator chooses and controls the life of the content by selecting desired placement fields and inserting desired materials on their own and has little application for user input. Substituting a notice board or poster-wall. This level of technology may possess vast possibilities across all levels, though, as the adding, linking, redirecting and editing of extension pages are performed with guidance and simplicity. I simply chose the other two to look at in detail this time around. So, I will balance the text mass with some notes on other things I found along the way... As a current student, the supportive and developmental benefits of greater access to various time management skills and methods are easy to recognize. Online web 2.0 tools like Dropbox and SendToDropbox are great tools for students of all learning stages for the reasons such as mobility and connectivity – constant changes to routine can compound to an unfamiliar level hindering ones study practice and overall learning management. 
   
   
   
   

A little digital diarizing ... 

Some specific considerations on legal and ethical matters... 

Rob Priddey indicates (please see appendix 1) there is a moving trend in incidents regarding online reputation management and a reduction in cybersafety. This finding is simply indicative of recent trending online activity and is to be read free from inference of the suggestion that attention or respect can be lowered from one issue or the other. Both issues will forever deserve and demand professional diligence and thorough attention whenever the broader triadic intricacies of e-learning and teacher ethical conduct are concerned. The following very brief comments relate my experience and considerations on teacher ethical conduct thus far with points such as observational and preventative measures. Comments are general for all the tools and can apply to ones online conduct in a broader sense. 

• A way of facilitating transparency and student-guardian-teacher involvement would be to set each student the task of visiting a site like Netsafe and summarizing the information they find on the website when looked at with their guardian or dorm supervisor in the first week of every school year or whenever commencing a unit comprising heavy online-based activities. 

• Something of concern relating to online safely experienced after learning how to embed a vimeo here. When embedding a vimeo video into one of the activity pages of my Wiki classroom space it generated a written text link to my logged in version of the vimeo home site. Yikes !! So, I felt obligated to learn how to go into the html coding, locate the area requiring alteration and replace the link code with the simplified coding that will link the written text to a generic version of the vimeo homepage. Maybe I was signed-in, maybe it wouldn't work from a different terminal - I would probably find out after some investigation, however, I acted upon the situation with haste. When embedding a web-link it can help with time management to be aware of the required coding and extension of the coding -required as in the full hyperlinking embed code may be too extensive and the placement field might only be requiring the url belonging to the site location. 

• Giving appropriate attribution to images, content, music etc. is mandatory. This issue extends into areas concerning matters where the reposting of student work of which most likely contains well-intentioned or unknowingly borrowed copyrighted material. I found the information at www.smartcopying.edu.au helpful in following-up copy/communications guidelines, however, I did come across slight confusion in this matter in regards to ownership. For example, images placed in my “Things to remember when attending Arts classes” blog entry found here, contain one wordle image – or, is this to be one Wordletm image? - I generated from the fantastic free to use website wordle.net and several images (such as the one below) of which I purchased and downloaded through my 123RF account in the fantastic image bank website, 123RF.com. Unsure with the required lengths of lawful attribution in this situation I embedded a caption in their respective image box properties and listed a connection to the source at the bottom of that blog. It has become something I would like to investigate further for my own practice. 
  
  

Time for a picture... 

         

...Dance is cool. 

...So, too, is attribution1 

The Arts are part of creative industries…  

A quote from Primary teacher, SA from the “There are far too many descriptors. Far too large and cumbersome for Primary teachers who are not specialists and who will combine areas” found on the ACARA, Learning Areas, The Arts website1  

A recent ACARA survey found that 57 per cent of 134 respondents from 324 participants, felt strongly that the links between the Arts and other learning areas (F-10) were appropriate.2 

Identifying effective pedagogical approaches when drawing parallels between classroom subject coursework becomes potentially precious when attempting to fit so much content from various unit schedules into the available learning site classroom time. Many schools have approached meeting the ACARA requirements for this Key Learning Area by employing guest teachers like myself to collaborate with classroom teachers in covering the content. I find drama and dance truly capable of complimenting other areas of learning found in the curriculum. This point is followed further in my Wikispaces welcome page, however, for the purpose of linking the group 1 tools to my teaching area I will continue with an example of I how I found usefulness. 

Currently working with many schools I feel much class time is gobbled up with the constant need to deliver class procedures or activity instructions - as well as - providing a basis to the importance of dance (The Arts) in the context of life, learning, study or career. One could say that the students are having difficulty in recognising The Arts as a relevant subject as a setting where one can learn in and through the unit content. This disposition of the students coupled with the immediacy nature of performance arts participation can be a formula for low-efficiency learning environments. Also, this issue is particularly pertinent for students across the learning spectrum who learn more effectively when notes, instructions or guidelines are reiterated or readily accessible. Collapsing all of these factors into one simultaneous point of consideration makes for a substantial task bestowed upon the teacher. What if there was something on a modification level to benefit classroom operations and overall student learning gains? Something like a constantly updated, online resource to recap or check on unit work.  

Technology applications in my teaching area… 

Because dance can be examined through both psychomotor (Simpson, 1972) and cognitive (Bloom, 1956) domains, a redefining application example to the study of dance could be Choreotopography. I acknowledge that a learning site furnished with such facilities will be extremely rare. However, a resource rich connection with a learning institute, Deakin University for instance, is simply one click away. Inside this connection, capabilities of sourcing data for collection, anaylsis or even imagination sparking have been opened up for any student. The source area of image capture technology could concern the psychomotor domain in direct relation to transformative tools for drama/dance/physical education, creative industry applications, and, concern the cognitive domain more broadly by allowing students the chance to hypothesize on these aspects in the context of future uses and usefulness. Ongoing advancement updates, study results, or, general information may all be a feature of a project for subjects such as Dance or Technology. This link could be placed in a list of possible research topics from which a student is tasked to select and explore. 

SAMR Concerning my group one tools.. 

For the purposes of this task I made up an acronym SOCLE: Student Online Collaborative Learning Environment, to express a way of viewing the interactive manner of the group one tools. Then, in an attempt to appear “English Teachery” in my Weebly I thought to look up the word socle and WHOA! Perfect! It really is a bit of a forgotten term – especially when one hardly finds the time to build structural columns in lieu of writing blogs. Anyway, I certainly appreciated the coincidence. I thought something along the lines of constant access to notes, guidelines and procedures – apart from general school policies and expectations - would help with the runtime and efficacy of classes.  

In exactly the same way this GDLT program is effectively implementing the learning content across the various courses, e.g. finding out about and implementing ACARA criteria in the Literacy reading assessment and solidifying the significance of doing such a task here in ICT’s for e-learning design. I feel, as a aspiring teacher I need to take this as an expression of wisdom and insight, and, implement as many relevant cross curricular criteria as relevantly possible to make best use of time constraints, and, effective use or valuable resources. In acknowledging this I feel online spaces - like this one - to be extremely valuable in relationships including Teacher/Learner, Learner/Learner and, also, Teacher/Teacher.  

The result of this weeks experimenting is a web of sites, links, and, activities. Hopefully, if the objective was met, all contributing to a sense of place and context for the participant. To extend this technology to a possible redefining level lies with wiki spaces joining the largest teacher network in the world the potential for collaborative efforts and resource sharing will be phenomenal.  Here is a statement to summate this reflection on the potential of online tools like Wikispace taken from TSL Education CEO, Louise Rogers on the TSL Website “We believe that teachers around the world are the single most important influence on a child’s education and that they need to access the very best content and resources to inspire their students.”3 

  

Appendix  

1) 

Rob Priddey, Ausgust 2012. Cybersafety and reputation management: Managing inappropriate online behaviours 

References 

1Attribution example: Attribution, Image credit: <a href='http://www.123rf.com/photo_26383552_tasty-butter-isolated-on-white.html'>belchonock / 123RF Stock Photo</a> 

2Quote and Result taken from ACARA Website DRAFT AUSTRALIAN CURRICULUM: THE ARTS, FOUNDATION TO YEAR 10. Report created: November 2012. http://www.acara.edu.au/curriculum_1/learning_areas/arts.html  

3Quote taken from TSL Website http://www.tsleducation.com/who-we-are/   

• Bloom B. S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc. - See more at: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html#sthash.fGifs6wr.dpuf 
• Netsafe kids website: http://www.nap.edu/netsafekids/index.html 
• Rob Priddey, August 2012. Cybersafety and reputation management: Managing inappropriate online behaviours. 
• Simpson E. J. (1972). The Classification of Educational Objectives in the Psychomotor Domain. Washington, DC: Gryphon House. -  

See more at: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html#sthash.fIgSuXO0.dpuf 

Thank you for reading my reflection. 

Good Energy !! 

Zteven Whitty 

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