nicole’s ND blog

This week was the first week that i really felt confident in using a program. I have previously use powerpoint throughout high school, and hence had a good understanding. I found it quite funny really becasue many other students were asking me for help, and usually it is the other way around. The only thing i really struggled with was adding sounds to my powerpoint, i tried to get them to work, but i found that each time i added one, the sound would not  work, even when the powerpoint was runing and the speakers were on.

Powerpoint is one of the best waysof teaching i personally believe as it is so engaging for students. Even for myself, i find it very easy to learn whilst a powerpoint is displayed rather than just a teacher or lecture standing out the front talking and writing on the board. However in saying this, the degree of engagement students have varies depending on the animations used to attract their attention. This is the main reason i tryed to use a different animation for each slide.

Powerpoint would be a great tool, particularly for older primary grades to present information on assignments to the rest of the class and teacher.  Learning how to make a powerpoint also assits in students presentation skils as well as their speech and interaction with the rest of the class. It can also be used to build students confidence. as students realise that their peers are not always watching them, instead they are focussed on the powerpiont.

Overall i believe this program has many uses within the classroom and is simple, functional, and easy to use and gain information from.

 Interactive whiteboard powerpoint presentation

interactive-whiteboard-2.doc

This week, as i had expected i learnt even more than last week, in knowing how to record data in this manner i strongly believe this will be of great assistance to me in the future, as it was to the teachers and office staff at the school i am attending for prac.

In this particular lesson/ workshop i was able to really understand the concept of using formulas, as last week i still a little confused. The only thing i really struggled with was that of the graph, and the word ’series’ used to clasify the information presented in the graph. But thanks to a little help i was able to fix this issue and realise my mistakes.

Overall i found this exercise to be forfilling as i can see how it can be useful in future classroom and school situations as well as learning pracitices.

An example i produced on excel, is based on classroom assessment results, which is just one of the many uses for excel as i explained in last weeks blog.

excel-blog

This week, yet again was a new experience for me, i was completely unaware as to how simple this program was to use and i often bipassed it as a tool for publishing. i really enjoyed playing around with all the different layouts and formats that can be used. The other interesting thing i found was how many different types of texts could be produced such as business cards, title pages,  and just the usual word documents. After creating my document and discovering just how simple it was, i now look forward to implimenting my skills into the classrooms and creating some fun and exciting projects for students.

The works hop wad also very helpful, im finding that the more I go the more i realise how ignorant i was to many programs before hand, however i feel that these workshops are very helpful as they explain more of what i need to do, and allow me to understand the progams and why they do certain things differently alot more than i would without them. As an example i would never of figured out why my publisher document would not appear on my blog, if it wasn’t for the explanation and demonstrating given in the workshop.

Overall i really feel like am progressing through these activities and projects.

Here is my : autobiography.jpg p.s you need to enlarge the size of the page to read the writing on the publisher document

This week, i found to be the best week so far, as i had no idea that WebQuests even existed, let alone how to use one and incorporate them into a classroom situation. In observing other people’s WebQuests i was able to determine for and against points present in each WebQuest and why they were positive and negitive. The use of the rubric as a form of evaulating the WebQuests, was a great idea as learners such as myself were able to determine what is required to produce an effective and informitive WebQuest. The Study guide was also a very effective tool for me in understanding the idea of WebQuests, i found that in looking up some of the WebQuests listed i was able to further my understanding of what a ‘good’ WebQuest is.

By having the resources supplied by the teacher or WebQuest designer, compared to having students find resources for themselves creates many advantages and disadvantages for students and teachers.

Positive points:

• allows teacher to evaluate students method of locating information
• allows students to sort out relevant information from non important
• can easly determine if students are plagiarising
• provides the same information to all students and thus all are on an equal, this is of great use for students in particular who don’t have access to the internet at home.
• teachers can control what sites are avaliable to students and thus students are unlikely to locate inappropriate information
• objectives and outcomes are very easy to comprehend

Negitive points:

• Students are unable to improve on their researching techniques and exploration of the Web
• Teachers are unable to assess outcomes concerning the use of the internet, in terms of effective research, as the websites are already provided

As seen the postives for webQuests far out-way the negitives for their use as an eduational resource.

WebQuests are suitable for most types of learning situations and scenarios, however not all learning can be done via WebQuests. A concept or idea must first be taught and explained by a teacher in order for a child to succeed in this type of learning. Learning is an ongoing process after birth and young children are also not always suited to computer based learning, as many are too young and inexperienced.

 WebQuests are very effective resources for a constructivist approach to learning, as they provide an interactive environment for which children can be apart of their own learning. The two particular WebQuests i studied, were very effective in this area, as they assigned students specific roles within a group and as a result students are not only interactive with the WebQuest, but also with other students.

Lev Vygotsky’s idea of scaffolding, is very evident within the process or task page, this page is often a summary or outline of what the students need to do. This is very effective for children, as it allows them to easily understand what is is they need to do to achieve a satisfactory mark.  

 Overall i found both WebQuests very valuable in terms of resources, and WebQuests in gerneral to be very effective and interactive for both students and teachers.

Two webQuests i studied on Ancient Egypt:

PORTFOLIO ITEM: 3

WebQuest 1    

WebQuest 2

Today was quite an interesting lesson, despite already visiting the presentaion link i did not realise the widgit link, and to be quite honest i had no idea what a widgit was but now after the workshop i am understanding a bit more about posting and how the blog site operates.

Despite reading the study guide for this week i was still slightly confused on hyperlinks however through the portfolio activity i was able to understand the hyperlinks and how to be more effiicent in creating them. As previously i had heard of them but never actually created them correctly, as in they never actually linked to the designated website.

PORTFOLIO ITEM 2:  portfolio-item-2-search-engines.doc

Here are the results of my ICT competency test. To be quite honest i was surprised as to how little i knew about the programs listed on the competencies sheet. Despite being ok at word processing, i seem to have very limited knowledge of visual design programs such as photoshop and programs such as imagine which i actually have never heard of before. Clearly i have quite a lot of work to do to be able to pass this unit and be able to pass my knowledge on to future students.

I honestly believe that this course will be of great help to me as technology is becoming more and more apart of primary school environments and students lives.