Welcome to the EDC3100 blog of Mikaela Ingram. I look forward to sharing my learning path with you all as I learn the ins and outs of ICT and Pedagogy.
Happy scrolling!
Professional Experience Time…
Week 12, my final week of the course before heading off to professional experience and my goodness I am drowning. Since meeting with my mentor I have a strong feeling this experience is going to be a positive one, hopefully that will make the next few weeks filled with life’s commitments a lot easier! I am frantically studying up on content that I will be teaching, considering the ICT integrations I can employ as well as juggling the demands of assessment, sporting commitments and general life. I hope I am not alone in this feeling?!
In saying all of this, I am still thoroughly enjoying this course as I continue to work on my website development for my 3rd assignment. I enjoy the creativity that I m able to utilise to make an engaging and worthwhile resource for my hypothetical year 7 English class. As I nervously await my assignment 2 marks, I am adding as much information as I can, avoiding putting too much time yet into elements that may require adjustments once receiving my marks. However, all in all I am already proud of what I have been able to achieve. For this reason I wish to share with you my website link which is a working process in the hope that feedback between peers can occur.
https://u1074144.wixsite.com/missingram
Finally, I wish everyone an enjoyable and successful professional experience period in which you are able to reach into your new and developing ICT toolbox of tricks. Let’s hope we all leave happy with our time spent at the schools, yet sad to leave.
Enjoy,
Miss Ingram – Signing out
Cybersafety
Week 10 and we have now reached the same month as professional experience. I always love my time spent at professional experience, however I am nervous about this one! This time round I have extra commitments and I worry I won’t perform at my best. In saying this, I have a few more weeks to get my head around it.
This week whilst examining the eBooks I came across the safe, responsible and ethical use of ICT. This content brings with it another element to ICT within education. Although the integration of technology in our schools and classrooms are important, explicitly teaching how to use it safely and ethically is vital.
Cybersafety is an area of education that should forever be revised through the years of schooling. This is supported by the Australian Government’s Office of the Children’s eSafety Commissioner who provide a substantial amount of resources for both teachers and students regarding this important area of learning. Although it is said that this is taught throughout schooling, it was only last year when teaching students about cybersafety myself, the lack of knowledge the student in junior secondary held. As a result, I will ensure that just like the embedding of literacy and numeracy across my subject areas, that I will also integrate important cybersafety elements into my teaching. This will in turn prevent the little red riding hoods being intercepted by the wolves of the world.
See you in a weeks time,
Miss Ingram – Signing out
Worthwhile Assessment
Week 9 and wishing for a longer semester break! For many, the break only eliminates the time spent in university classes, however luckily for me, I work in a school and also received a little holiday from work. Unfortunately though, I am already regretting my inability to use my time effectively to get ahead in university work! In saying that, I had a well rested break and used the time to catch up on some of the social aspects I miss out on as I knuckle down for the semester.
So the weekly question, what was the learning that I achieved since my last post within the course? Well, I don’t believe this week was heavy on content however an important question was addressed – why are we required to develop a website and create an ‘artifact’ for our final Assignment. Although I didn’t question why we had to do it personally, I didn’t reflect upon what I would gain out of doing so. However, now that I am, it seems like a course that has worthwhile assessment. I believe that we often are expected to identify the curriculum requirements and either, write about it, make a task sheet and rubric, or a sequence of learning whether that be a lesson plan or a unit plan. Being asked to do all the above, and then further implement it in a practical element provides as with a realistic experience. It is too often that I believe our assessments at university lack a practical element so crucial to being an effective teacher both within our professional experience and more importantly when faced with the job of teaching independently.
As a result, I have been turned. Prior to beginning the course, I was dreading what it would involve, to now being a positive Polly towards it.
See you again next week,
Miss Ingram – Signing out
ICT Enriched Learning Experiences
Week 6 and university is getting crazy! I have never been one to juggle multiple assignments at once across courses. Although very inconvenient, I seem to find myself HAVING to finish one assignment before moving onto the next. This little quirk of mine however has definitely been put to the test this semester already. This professional experience scheduled towards the end of semester, I have noted that I need to start pulling up my socks and get started ahead of time! I won’t lie though, I really am struggling!
This week in EDC3100 we are further exploring what ICT rich unit plans look like in preparation for assignment 2, as well as the further planning of assignment 3 (inner me having a small twitch about doing 2 assignments at once – within the same course!). During this week I had a squiz at the ‘Enhacing your ICT Enriched Learning Experiences’ eBook and was particularly pleased with myself. I had set myself up for success when developing my ICT rich unit plan within assignment 1 as I planned the assessment around the use of ICT. My unit plan being designed will be for year 7 English students. Instead of teaching and assessing language features in traditional ways, the developed unit will allow students to take their knowledge of both language and ICT software to create their very own digital story. Not only does this providing an engaging platform for students to demonstrate their learning, due to the enormous array of ICT strategies and programs, the unit can be easily adapted and differentiated for any learner.
I took the time to consider the below questions and I think I may be onto a winner:
- What’s going to make this unit of work exciting and engaging for the students?
- What’s going to drive the students to be wanting to work all the time on the Learning Experiences of this unit of work, rather than sighing in disappointment when they are told they have to do this unit of work?
- How does your unit of work bridge the interest gulf between your learners’ interests and the learning objectives of your unit?
- Have you drawn on literature and analysed your unit against frameworks to be able to answer these questions?
- What do you need to add to your unit plan?
Until next time,
Miss Ingram – Signing out
Debbie and ICTs
Week 5 and counting down until the Easter break.
Wow, what a crazy few days as the back end of cyclone Debbie came to town. One thing is for sure, she made her presence known. Debbie left North Queensland with a trail of destruction, before heading down towards Brisbane causing more damage and flooding. During this time, schools and business were closed across Queensland and emergency efforts began to take place. Usually attending my job at a school and university during this time, I received a few days off. During my bunkering down period, I have contemplated what this weeks post would be about. Although it should consist of what I learnt during this week’s content, I decided on something more appropriate for the recent events.
The vital role of ICT in an everyday, real world scenario was greatly highlighted for me. The ability to keep up-to-date with information regarding the weather events meant people were informed and safe. People were able to access weather radars, media coverage, important safety announcements and ensure people they knew were safe. In order to avoid leaving the house, I personally received a text and social media message to inform me that work, as well as sporting commitments were cancelled for the day. I mean, we would not have had the ability to that back in the day!
During the events of cyclone Debbie, the positive influence of ICT on crisis communication was quite evident. Social media and other technologies including live broadcasting provided a valuable platform to delivering timely information to large audiences. Prior, during and in the recovery phase, technology such as social media is particularly helpful in allowing communication between not only family and friends, but between the community and emergency services. This is not to mention all the technology that is utilised in gaining weather information etc in order to provide the audiences in the first place.
Although this may not explicitly link to ICT pedagogy in the classroom, I believe this reflection is of great importance for such a ICT skeptic like myself. By developing technoliterate learners in the classroom, we are creating learners who can efficiently utilise ICTs such as the resources used such emergency events. Perhaps even the people who retrieve and deliver the information.
Although written in response to cyclones which occurred in 2015, this article made very valid points in which I think makes a great read: http://theconversation.com/the-role-of-social-media-as-cyclones-batter-australia-37835
In the hope this finds everyone well with internet and power,
Miss Ingram – Signing out
EDC3100: ICT & Pedagogy 