May 25, 2012
Authentic learning is the idea of teaching students in a way that applies to their real world situations. Throughout my schooling experiences, I always found myself questioning the tasks set in front of me. Why am I doing this? What is the point? When will I EVER need to use this? Why should I want to do this? Authentic learning is about having answers to these questions.I think the main reason that it's important to set authentic tasks for students is to motivate the students. If a student sees no reason to do a task, of course they're going to be reluctant. Even as a university student, I am still reluctant to complete tasks that I feel are irrelevant, and usually just achieve the bare minimum that I have to. The problem with this is that university students are their willingly working to achieve a degree, but school students are their because they have to be. Already this creates a motivation issue, so authentic learning helps to improve motivation issues.When I was told I had to make an authentic learning task, I was a worried. In the end, my task was not as authentic as I might've hoped, but I still believe students would enjoy tackling my Assignment 3 task and would really engage with the information they're learning.Here are some helpful links on Authentic Learning: Authentic Learning Supported by TechnologyTeaching as a subversive activity
Posted by Kayla Chester.
May 24, 2012
So assignment 3 is done and dusted, and I have not blogged at all. Oops. Anyway, i'm going to do a little recap of my experiences with assignment 3.... THE BEGINNINGSo my group spent a good 2-3 weeks trying to figure out what we were actually going to do. None of us had a vague idea of what was actually being asked of us, and it seemed that almost all the ideas we threw out were somehow not right for task. Alas, we separated over break, reconvened when we got back to university and I had somewh... Continue reading...
Posted by Kayla Chester. Posted In : Assignment 3
April 27, 2012
Ok, so it's week 10 now, and Assignment 2 is due. So far, I haven't had much of a problem with it. The only problem i've had, is one involving Mac vs Windows.... So part of the task is to use EndNote to reference a report written in Word. Now, I have a Mac computer, and I have Microsoft Word, for Mac. The problem with this is, unlike Microsoft Word for Windows, Mac Word has it's own inbuilt referencing program already. EndNote can be run within MS word for Windows, but not Mac. It can still be... Continue reading...
Posted by Kayla Chester.
April 27, 2012
This is another post about an interesting recommended article I read, this time it was Top Tools for Learning 2011. What I found very interesting about this list, was that the number 1 Top Tool for Learning according to the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, was Twitter. Oh and by the way, it wasn't just number 1 for the year 2011, but also the year before, and the year before.  Now, I have a Twitter account, and have had one for quite some time now. I could not understand how ... Continue reading...
Posted by Kayla Chester. Posted In : Online Technology
April 27, 2012
I recently read one of the articles listed in the recommended readings that I found very interesting. The article, Teaching the Facebook generation, talks about how so many encourage the use of social networking in schools, yet many schools ban such websites. I already talked a little bit about using social networking in the classroom in my last blog post, but I didn't talk much about the consequences or what is preventing teachers from diving head first into this approach. In my high school, l... Continue reading...
Posted by Kayla Chester. Posted In : Online Technology
March 30, 2012
One of the ideas that I keep running into is using Social Networking as a tool to enhance the learning of students. A great example of this is Murdoch's LMS system, which allows students studying the same subject to ask each other questions and discuss the unit content. I wanted to learn more about this, so I read up on chapter 5 of our book (Meaningful Learning with Technology) as to why using these tools is a good idea (or why not).Face to face communication vs. online communicationSo the m... Continue reading...
Posted by Kayla Chester. Posted In : Online Technology
March 29, 2012
I have made a few adjustments to my website as a result of some feedback I received in my tutorial and ideas from other classmates.
Firstly, I have changed the layout of my Social Learner task on my site. Previously, I had a blog set up. I needed to do my instructions in instalments because their were so many instructions, so I thought a blog setup would work well. After using it for a couple of lessons, I decided it was too confusing as the blogs were backwards (from most recently po... Continue reading...
Posted by Kayla Chester. Posted In : Assignment 1b - Social Learner
March 23, 2012
I've been looking at readings and links lately to try and find ideas to improve my website. At the moment, I think my website is acceptable but I am trying to look for things I can improve. I found this link to Simple ideas for website design, which gave me some very useful ideas that I didn't think of. One of these is to include a contact point for feedback, which will be particularly useful considering the next assignment includes a Peer Review component. I think i'm going to add a page wit... Continue reading...
Posted by Kayla Chester. Posted In : Online Technology
March 20, 2012
So for my Social Learner task, I decided to show people how to create a My Heritage account in order to organise a family reunion. It has been a bit of a struggle, but is quite interesting so far. One of the dilemmas I have had with these tutorials, was showing people using visuals of the site how to use it. This is because my personal details are on almost every single page! It was not such a big issue in simple screen shots, as I have just blanked out the words I don't want to share (which ... Continue reading...
Posted by Kayla Chester. Posted In : Assignment 1b - Social Learner
March 8, 2012
Hello, and welcome to my first blog entry! I am a bit unsure at the moment as to what I should include in this, so i'm just going to talk about my thoughts/concerns/goals for this unit, after having a couple introductory classes. Thankfully i've done a learning journal blog before, so that's a plus. I'm finding this blog a little more nerve wracking though, since my last blog assignment specified exactly what to write about, and this one has no such instructions! Hopefully I will be able to lo... Continue reading...
Posted by Kayla Chester.
| |