QR code treasure hunt 2012...

<--can you see what it says

 Last week we had a class of Primary 6's come to Dundee University for a day of handheld learning!
Before the children came, we were told to think of a treasure hunt or such like, for the children to embark on and take photo's , video's etc., and then put them in a book using 'iBookcreator' 

We decided to do a QR code treasure hunt in which children would go around with ipods and iphones and find the hidden message behind the QR code. The messages had messages like 'do 10 star jumps and get someone in the group to video you'  then a message would read ' where is the place that is filled with books?'  which would guide children to their next location.
The QR code hunt was a success and children were excited to see what the next message would tell them. They were engaged in the task and motivated to do whatever was expected of them and there was always keen volunteers to video and take photo's of the activities.


The children then got the chance to use the iPhones and ipods to look at different apps that could be used in the classroom. Apps such as 'Catchphrase'  and 'Who wants to be a millionaire' were some they could choose from. Children engaged in this task and were enthusiastic about wanting to use things like ipods to play these in the classroom.
The iBook creator task started slow but the children who were carrying it out managed extremely well and the book in the end was a success, filled with their photos, videos and text about the afternoon.


I think handheld learning is so important and has a wealth of opportunities for children, in the classroom and at home!

What is technology going to be like in the future?...

The way we are going just now, I think anything is possible!
There has been so many predictions about the future of technology and many believe that the people will live longer because of advances in medicine through technology and what will be possible. Also, there will be less carbon footprint because of advances in car technology and technology as a whole. For education, children will rely on computers and electronics that we can't imagine just now, and teachers will be a mere supervisor rather than a facilitator and inspiration for these children because the technology they use will be their inspiration. This is what I believe!

There is a strong belief that the technology is going to somehow save children from impending doom like the laptop in the movie ‘Independence Day’.  There is a belief that a modern citizen has to have an understanding of technology to be able to function, and to be collectively in control of the development of society that is increasingly driven by technology (McCormick, 1999).




There is so many opportunities for the primary classroom in the future of technology, Gibbs(1997), in Sherson(1999), states that if these innovations happen (some that already have), virtual classrooms will become reality, 'Computers exchanging video calls as commonly as e-mail.  Three-dimensional windows that open into virtual worlds instead of virtual scrolls.  Machines that speak and respond to human languages as well as their own.  Personal "agent" 
programs that haggle for concert tickets, arrange blind dates and winnow useful information from the chaff of daily news.  And everything, from our medical records to our office files to the contents of our refrigerators, hypertextually linked via the great global network.'  (page 6)


On the date of the paper, (1999) it is clear that people have had predicitions for the future of technology for many many years and some are becoming a reality. Also, if these were the predictions 13 years ago and these technological advances are becoming reality today, what is technology going to be like in the next 13 years? This is a little insight into what could be our day in 2020....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=bBjvqnKQsTI

Mario and Sonic Olympics school visit..

Last week, we were told that we would have pupils from a near-by school coming in to be a part of games-based learning session with us.
We started to brainstorm ideas of what we would use and we were provided with wii's, nintendo ds and many games to try out. We began to try out some of the games and landed on Mario and Sonic Olympics- we thought this would be very relevant with the 2012 Olympics coming up..


Today, (16/02/2012) we had a class of 26 pupils from a primary school in Dundee come and visit us to be part of our chosen games-based context.


Our group chose to do our context as Mario and Sonic Olympics  and we used the Wii game as a stimulus for the children. We decided to use the Digi-blu cameras so children could make an animation of the race, all depending on how the race went in the game. We made a race track, audience and also Plasticine models for the children to use in their animation. If I was doing this with my whole class, I would give the the children the challenge of making their own Plasticine models and using them in the animation, but because of time constraints, one of our group made them for the children. The children would also make their own race track and audience and such like for their animation if this was a project with the whole class for a long period of time.

display

olympic rings

track and models

The day went great! Most of the children were motivated and enthusiastic about the activity.  It was hard to make the children focus on the Digi-blu activity at first, because of the game being there and being an exciting part of the session, however, we managed to remind the children the game was there as a stimulus and the main activity was working with the Digi-blu cameras. We did this by sharing the learning intentions and success criteria with the children which is such an integral part of the learning and teaching process. 
The children were extremely impressed with their finished animation and their feedback showed the majority of them found the activity challenging and fun and would like to see more games based learning opportunities in their classroom, so I believe our games-based learning context was a success!


Today showed me how much games -based learning is important and how much it can act as a stimulus for so many learning and teaching experiences and I will definitely be using these ideas in the future..

Contextualised learning and teaching using ICT..

Today we had an input from David Miller about using a game as a context for many learning and teaching opportunities in the classroom. 
I found this extremely interesting and can't wait to try it out with a class I have in the future!
David and his colleague used the game Dr. Kawashima's brain training with the children to carry out a study about how this would help them raise their attainments in mathematics.

David told us an interesting fact about these sort of games, that they are called COTS games which means commercial off the shelf games, which means they are not made for the classroom, they are just made for general use but are extremely beneficial to use in the classroom and so to look out for these kinds of games throughout our teaching careers.


The study David and his colleague carried out was with a class of P6 pupils, at the beginning of the study children had to do a 100 number challenge and then had to play the brain training game for 20 minutes each morning. Afterwards, they then did the 100 number test again and compared the scores.


They found that the children's scores improved tremendously, their speed was faster, their self-esteem grew and their collegiality improved.
They then carried on the study with 32 schools and the results were the same. They made it a randomised control trial which means everyone was picked at random, but there was one main focus and that was children from disadvantaged schools. 
They found that the children who did the brain training had an improvement of 50% higher than the groups who did not and their speed was twice as fast as the control group. Children also changed their attitudes towards school after the brain training, their academic work improved because of playing brain training, truanting and lateness dramatically improved and more responsiblity was placed on the children. Also, children's interpersonal relationships changed as they were interested in how their friends and peers were getting on and also made new friend groups because of the game.


This highlights greatly that using a game as a context for learning can have so much impact on children and how they act academically and socially. The improvements made because of this game were immense and children were much more engaged in school altogether. Prensky(2001), states that  'Digital Game-Based Learning can play an important role in learning material that is not intrinsically motivating to anyone, but which needs to be learned'(pg 9).  This emphasises that games can provide fun, motivating learning in a way that children will be engaged in and the for a great example is this study using Dr Kawashima's brain training as it is challenging, using skills such as remembering and recall, children are engaging in the mathematics aspect throughout but in a fun filled way! 

Our visit from Fife council on Moving Image Education..

Our visit from Fife Council on how to incorporate digital literacy and ICT into our classrooms and become more confident using moving image education was engaging and motivating and inspired me to use the ideas given with my future classes and inspire others to use it too.
All presentations were extremely motivating and exciting and the different styles that were used to present their way of supporting the use of digital literacy in the classroom, made them that bit more engaging. 
The idea that enthralled me most out of the whole afternoon was the Digital music software- this was magnificent!  The music resources we can use today are inspiring and they provide so much ideas for the classroom. I was blown away by the software Erik showed us called Sequel2. This can be used by the children to create their own music soundtrack for a visual presentation or movie they have made. There is so much potential here for so many things. Children can make their own music for their own presentations or such like , giving them much more choice and ownership of their learning which serves itself greatly to the Curriculum for Excellence 'personalisation and choice' principle- where children can personalise their work, making it much more meaningful to them.  
An idea I had to use with a class when listening to Erik's presentation was a silent movie. This gives children the opportunity to use sound for emphasising thoughts and feelings without the use of speech and Sequel2 would give them the chance to do this as they have so much choice and opportunities in Sequel2 to be as creative as they can be! This is something I am definitely going to try out with a future class.














This digital music software also gives children the opportunity for challenge and enjoyment- This isn't an easy task and children should be challenged throughout. This allows children to be actively thinking and working, engaging with eachother to make something they are proud of. Curriculum for Excellence states that children 'should be active in their learning and have opportunities to develop and demonstrate their creativity,' and this type of activity does just that!


The whole afternoon with the men from Fife Council was extremely motivating and I now feel much more confident using these things than I did before and I will inspire others to use moving image education with confidence as they have so much potential for great learning and teaching experiences.


I enjoyed reading http://missh29.blogspot.com/'s blog about the skoog in which she talked about using this with nursery children. The part I found most interesting was where she talked about the fact that nursery children rely on a lot of sensory things at this stage and this would be a great resource for this. 

Introduction to Wikis and Moving Image Education..

"Wiki"  is a Hawaiian word meaning "fast" or "quick".

In part of today's ICT lesson we looked at wikis. We have seen wiki's before in first year but learning more about them was engaging and i hope to learn more as we go on! Referring back to last week's lesson, where we learned about synchronus and asynchronus media tools, we discovered a wiki could be both but it is more asynchronus. You can't do a whole collaborative page on a wiki but each person has a page and can write and edit information, so the participants are working collaboratively and cooperatively.  Wikis can be used at anywhere, anytime and can be used as a collaborative document for a specific purpose or just to share information with one another. 

Why should we use wikis? A few reasons why wiki's should be used.

Wikis can be used to capture knowledge from those who have it, so it is a good learning tool where information can be shared and gained through working collaboratively. 

Another way wikis can be used is for linking knowledge to knowledge so again, gaining knowledge through others and using the knowledge you have to enlighten someone and give someone else the information they may be looking for.

Moving image education (MIE)- 

Moving image education has a wealth of opportunities for children to experience and get stuck into! It provides children with the opportunity to give their learning another dynamic and gives their teacher, parents or carers full proof evidence of their learning through the filming of particular things they have been doing or a particular project or experience. 

I think movie image education is such a good way to bring the classroom to life, giving children a new and fun experience that will encourage group work, creativity and imagination. 

Moving image education is split into 3 parts

Analyse

Explore

Create

 and http://www.movingimageeducation.org  goes into depth about each part, giving ideas for the classroom and a guide of how to use moving image education.

Analyse-

Movingimageeducation.org give the idea that teachers should start with something children are comfortable with, maybe a class novel that is being read or a nursery rhyme or song they have been learning, and turn this into a whole new experience by incorperating moving image. 

It is also discussed that it is important for the experience to be visually exciting and engaging so that children are motivated to take part in this opportunity and not shy away. 'The visual stimulus of a film can fire children's imaginations' MovingImageEducation(2009). It is also important that children know the concepts of movie making and so can make their own decisions when the time comes. It also needs to be a clear and structured process so the children have a clear path of thought and understanding. 

social media tools and working together as communities of practice..

In ICT today, the topic was social media tools and working together as a community of practice. In 1CM1, communities of practice was a part of the module and so I read up on it throughout the module and then in depth for my assignment so was quite aware of what it was about and mostly about Wenger's work. 


When we talked about social media tools the main focus was if the particular social tool was synchronous or asynchronous. These both, I feel can be used in the primary school setting and with classes all throughout the school. Things like Facebook are syncronised,  such as Facebook chat which means replies will be instant to one another, also, it is asyncronised as one can decide to leave a comment or message and the recipient can reply at any time - this can be seen as a disadvantage as information that is required will not be passed instantly. Syncronised social media tools are a good way for people to get information in an instance and can be a great tool for sharing information, ideas and pictures and videos- this would be a great tool for the classroom as children can communicate with others such as children from other schools, sharing information about themselves and daily life. 
Asyncronised tools are also a good way for children to communicate in the classroom with others using things such as email, to share info, however the replies will be slow, but this may encourage and motivate the children as they will be excited to hear back from their 'email pen pal', or other school mates.


On communities of practice, I believe they are everywhere! Johnson and Johnson (1999), state that ' cooperative based groups are long-term, heterogeneous cooperative learning groups with stable membership whose primary responsibilities are to provide support, encouragement, and assistance in completing assignments and to hold each other accountable for striving to learn' pg 59. I believe this is extremely true as it highlights that working collaboratively is such an important thing and that people benefit highly from working with others and supporting each other's learning. Etienne Wenger states that there is 3 characteristics to a effective community of practice : The domain - the people in a collaborative working environment have shared domain of interest 'They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their expertise.' (no page given). This is highly important in every community of practice and for example, in our ICT elective group 'BEd'  we all have a shared interest in working together to complete every task given, based on ICT and working collaboratively.  The second characteristic is The community- 'In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other'(no page given) -I think this is important as a community of practice cannot be, unless everyone is interacting and learning together. This again is highly important in our 'BEd' group as we all need to interact and engage in each topic to the best of our ability and appreciate each other's ideas and values. The third and final characteristic is The Practice- this again is highly important as this is what brings everyone in the group together and gives them a focus and allows them to share ideas, experiences, resources etc. with the rest of the group.
Etienne Wenger.


Reflecting on Belbin's Team Roles, I believe I am a shaper. In relation to Belbins Team Roles, I feel I provide the necessary drive to ensure that the team keep moving and do not lose focus or momentum. I believe I am committed to achieve a successful end result that motivates and benefits all. 


References


Belbin, M. (undated). Belbin Team Role Theory. Available at http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=8 [Accessed 16.01.12]


Johnson, D. and Johnson, R (1999). Learning together and alone. Massachusetts:Viacom Company.


Wenger, E. (2006). Communities of Practice. Available at http://www.ewenger.com/theory/ [Accessed 16.01.12]