Five Food Groups

The grade five class my EPL is with is currently working on a unit titled 'Fitness Freaks' and includes learning nutrition guidelines. This covers eating from the five food groups, how many portions of each should be consumed in an average day and keeping a food diary.

This Youtube slideshow would be appropriate to use in this unit as these topics are discussed and language used would be appropriate for this age group.

Mouse

Mouse
Originally uploaded by TravellingOz

Out of all my travelling photos this is my favourite one that actually has me in it. It was great being able to enhance the image with Picnick - it was an easy to use program (easier than Photoshop I thought).

In relevance to pedagogy framework, on my first day of placement a teacher had created a slideshow of the photos taken at the learners recent camping trip (viewed on the new interactive whiteboard!) and the learners loved it. They are able to buy copies of this slideshow burned onto dvds to share with friends and family and share the experiences they had on the camp. It was a great example of relate, create and donate. The pictures showed the learners working together to accomplish tasks and the slideshow gave them the ability to donate their experience to community outside of the classroom.

Learners being able to upload and enhance their own images or their choice of images from sites such as Flickr would grant learners control of the process from beginning to completion and means to share it with wider community. This process would enable learners to add artistic elements to the images and personalise their creations - perhaps making the subject being studied more meaningful to the learners working with it.

Travellers Logbook Wiki

cindywilson2010 [licensed for non-commercial use only] / Travellers Logbook

I've started a wiki page about ten times but am only now getting an idea of how to use it. I still find myself feeling illiterate with understanding some of the concepts used, but I will perservere. The more you learn the more you realise you don't know!

Stranger

Stranger
Originally uploaded by Latyrx

Amazing

This picture to me is amazing and I am amazed that I worked out how to blog it so easily! Though I have only worked out this way to transfer photos from Flickr so far, blogging photos directly from Flickr, I will definitely be looking at how to make use of the photos available in other ways.

I love using photography as a journal of events - much more interesting than just writing things down. Unfortunately, the camera that travelled around Australia with me was lost in Rockhampton last year and so I am now using a very basic small camera that I find rather dissatisfying to use. In a classroom scenario it would be engaging for the students to post photos of their work, eg stages completed in assignments, to share with other students and the outside world. The photos themselves would be examples of relate-create-donate strategies. With the phenomenal amount of photos available on the site I'm sure most class work would find appropriate photos available to improve understanding, interest and different perspectives of subjects studied.

I noticed looking through Flickr self portraits that nearly all postings were of young people. Does this mean our older generation is just not into it as much - or do we only post younger photos of ourselves?

With digital technology real-life photos are only a small fraction of ways you can express yourself through photography. The picture above, titled Stranger, I thought a great example of how technology helps you to compose wonderful personalised images that many of us are unable to do with a paintbrush or pen. To have a scene in your mind and be able to transfer it to observable imagery through so many means we have available today (and the more we will have tomorrow) is an excellent way of engaging learners. Using software, like Photoshop, to edit everyday photos taken - I'm still in very beginner stages - is a great way to improve confidence and encourage people to share their work. My teenage son loves using Photoshop to do up skateboarding collages of himself and friends and post on his My Space site to share with others with similar interests. Incorporating digital photography and Flickr into Art KLA will really broaden learners ways of expressing their artistic talents and sharing it with the world.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

My Powerpoint

The first challenge I had was thinking of a topic to use for the PowerPoint. I wanted to follow the Learning Engagement Framework and use a topic that the learners would deal with in life experiences. I know that nutrition is an issue that is broadly discussed because, in Australia especially, children's guidance in it seems to be lacking. I then had to decide what age audience I would address it to, so decided upon lower primary - probably grade one. I then went looking for what media to use in the PowerPoint presentation. Many websites offered excellent information for the discussion that would accompany the PowerPoint, but found that the actual images I wanted to use were found in the clipart on my computer. Recognition of food groups I feel is a basis for nutrition understanding so, because this presentation is being aimed at a very young audience, I decided to focus on the ones that are being recommended most highly for all age groups - fruit and vegetables. As soon as this was decided upon one song kept going through my head - it is played constantly in this household - and that was Wiggles' Fruit Salad. I found the ICT PowerPoint tutorial very helpful for being reminded how the soundtrack could be added to the presentation and how the animation can be varied. After going through the PowerPoint design several times I decided to automate the timing in the slides so those viewing could stand back and observe it. In the classroom I feel it would be more suitable for the PowerPoint to progress by each point being clicked on and so having time to be discussed with the class. For the presentation of the presentation on my blog I have left it automated - so you can just sit back and boogy with the Wiggles!

Fruit Salad

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Technology in Distance Education

I feel so much better for finally posting a blog. I have been having trouble understanding how you link your wiki site to your blog but I will work something out! I have found that one problem I have when using technology is that if I get stuck on one problem I have great difficulty moving on to something else. Will have to learn to move on and perhaps return to problem when I have greater understanding. Another problem is fighting my kids for my computer! They just can't understand why my university studies seem more important (to me at least) than their myspace or facebook postings.

Wish I knew as much about technology in the classroom while travelling around Australia with my kids as I do now. At that time we really only used the laptop and Internet for communicating with the distance education teacher during lesson assessment. We could have used it for so much more! Might just have to travel again...

Above is a photo of one of my jobs while travelling. It is the only photo I have of me feeding my crocodiles - a tourist very kindly dropped off a copy of it at the office before he left. I loved the job, very challenging, but don't know if I have the courage to ever do it again.

Technolgy in a Student-Centric Paradigm

Technology in the education system is essential for students born into the knowledge economy paradigm that the market place is developing, at a rapid pace, globally. Technology plays a large part in a very large percentage of global day-to-day life and so today's learners develop user knowledge from a very young age and benefit from it replacing conventional schooling methods. Technology, and the multi-source media it provides for learners, encourages a student-centric learning environment.

As stated in the 'Edutopia' sales pitch, technology provides the means for students 'to learn to communicate, collaborate and resolve conflicts together'. In conventional schooling a large part of the time spent was just the teacher actually getting the information to students (eg chalk and talk methods),and so little time was available to actually enable the students integration and extension of the knowledge provided. Technology provides means for students to access information from multiple sources through their own efforts and with this more efficient time usage learning managers are able to focus better on facilitating the students use of the knowledge meaningfully.

The relate-create-donate components in Kearsley & Schneiderman's 'Engagement Theory' highlight the necessity of technology in the classroom for student-centric education system. As noted in many pedagogical research articles, collaboration and communication skills are an essential basis for working practices in the 'real world' and students are better able to acquire and integrate knowledge when this is factored into the learning process. Emailing, blogs, wiki and phone texting provide avenues for this collaboration and communication to be carried out more efficiently and not limited by hours spent in classroom. When students share their work with, and work is reviewed by, their peers it has been shown that students will work harder as peer approval is more important to many learners than marking by a teacher. They are better able to relate to each other through shared life experience and expectations and so better able to facilitate their own and others advance in the Five Dimensions of Learning with the sharing of knowledge through digital networking.

Technology in the class room also provides the means for learners to express creativity in diverse areas and so comprehensive assessment of learners' progress in curriculum benchmarks is better monitored on the wider grounds provided. It enables learners multiple means to adapt their learning styles, synthesise information acquired and express their comprehension and analysis of tasks undertaken, in complete contrast to the limitations applied when pen and paper were virtually only instruments available.

Dale's Cone and the 'input-process-output' system is much easier accomplished when technology allows active learning to replace the large part verbal symbols played in the education process in conventional schooling. Active learning, combined with opportunity to apply learning experiences to authentic environments through technology, will see education systems better suited to the learners they are provided for and far less teacher-centric in their application.

Intro