Final Course Reflection

This has been a great opportunity to become familiar with concepts, tools and aspects of I learning that I kept hearing about but remained largely ignorant of. If nothing else it has created an awareness of a world of educational tools that I can take tentative steps towards fully utilising as a part of my teaching practice. I must be really conscious of actively going back and exploring each of the aspects covered in this course so I will not lose the knowledge and skills I have developed over the semester. My digital vocabulary has certainly expanded and I have found myself referring to googledocs, tagalaxy and wikis in my general professional conversations.
I realise that students need to develop skills and sensibilities (guidelines) before using the Web 2.0 tools - otherwise the educational value will be overtaken by novelty/entertaining/game-playing mentalities that could undermine the learning experience. These are TOOLS to be used alongside more traditional methods of pedagogy as part of a whole learning experience. As mentioned in previous blogs, primarily students need to ne aware of privacy issues - that anything posted on the web can be there for a very long time. Students USE the skills developed during their educational experience - skills of analysis, communication, reflection, collaboration, literacy, creative thinking, etc. Web 2.0 is a pathway to new understanding, to organising knowledge, to utilise and further develop skills.
I can easily see the application of Bloom to the digital world - in fact an application of the taxonomy places the tools we have explored in perspective. We need to encourage students to move well beyond the basic ideas of just listing and recognising. A proper application of these amazing tools will assist students climb the ladder through explaining,comparing, organizing to critiquing, judging and, hopefully, to the point of actually designing and planning.

Module 10

This unit covers digital learning communities that are available for us to use for educational purposes. Wikis have the advantage of allowing each student to set up a page within the wiki created by the teacher. I accessed ulearnceo.wikispace to see an example of how a range of contributors can create a page within a specific wiki (in this case a teacher representing their school on a conference held in New Zealand). An obvious application would be to set up a sample response to a past paper question and get students to contribute modifications that would build the response to a higher band level. Obviously a relatively high level of monitoring might be necessary so student contributions are relevant and accurate - but students commenting on each other's suggestions in this format can create a more active and non-threatening learning community.

The payment aspect of Nings may now seem prohibitive but the Facebook like interface might make it appealing to students - just the use of images makes the site more visually appealing.

I will explore the role of the wiki "creator" further as it would appear that I can then moderate the contributions - but this could well be self defeating as it restricts the freedom of contribution that seems to be one of the most valuable aspects of wiki and the use of constant emails to get you to accept the modification too time intensive.

Wikispaces seems easy to use and set up.

The use of blogs as a classroom tool could involve setting up a topic blog that is followed by students who may be out on work placement and incorporate hyperlinks for revision purposes. Students could even create a blog as a journal if they are lucky enough to travel overseas - informing others in the class about their experiences.

I really like the idea of creating a "Fakebook" at fatewall.com - where students could create a facebook like page for an historical personality and give background details, a list of "friends" and even an imaginary dialogue.

Module 9

Scootle seems particularly impressive because it relates so specifically to a community of educators. The very fact that it is not "free" is encouraging because it limits the nature of postings and accessibility. This is geared to Australian curricula and even from the few resources I have accessed so far the sections on "educational details" and "educational values" are relevant, practical and well composed.
The concept of the "learning paths" very much keeps the teacher as a guide in collecting the most suitable resources for your individual class into a specific folder - perhaps not just for individual topics, but concepts within topics (such as Augustus' building programs, the growth of the Roman Empire and the imperial family). Scootle has wide applications because it gathers the resources into interactive learning objects, collections, videos, podcasts, etc).
To see the resources gathered from Australian museums and galleries can encourage students to visit locations like the Museum of Ancient Cultures, the Powerhouse and the Nicholson.

Module 8

I always like the icon attaching itself to an obvious word association - and Really Simple Sindication has the newspaper image and the semi satellite that makes it east to remember. I mostly envision RSS Feed as a time saving tool that allows me to get updates from the blogs that I am following without going to each blog separately or even on a regular basis. Although I am only following a few blogs at the moment, as this expands it will create a great opportunity to maintain links with colleagues (professional sharing of ideas and research for example) and keeping abreast of new information and comments on blogs associated with my teaching subjects as well as education generally.
From a classroom perspective, I can see a great application in getting students to follow the developments in a particular topic - such as new postings relevant to an archaeological site.
The google reader seems very user friendly - and I was pleased to see how easy it was to "unsubscribe" when the updates from the Sydney Morning Herald started to overwhelm the window.