current trends in elearning

The 2009 Horizon Report is the work of The New Media Consortium and is a long running qualitative research project that identifies and describes new and emerging technology that is likely to have a big impact on "teaching, learning, research or creative expression".

This years report suggests that the next big things to come our way are:

• Mobiles
• Cloud Computing
• Geo-everything
• The personal Web
• Semantic Aware Applications
• Smart Objects

The Horizon Report also looks at some key trends and where ICT use and thought is heading.

Key trends are ranked in priority and they are led by:

• increasing globalization continues to affect the way we work, collaborate and communicate

The report suggests that those institutions that use technology to connect and communicate globally are more likely to advance than those who don't. I would tend to agree with this statement, schools have many opportunities to bring the world into their classrooms through the use of technology. Skype, video conferencing, email, youtube and other tools can be used to communicate with other schools or instructors to provide more in-depth experiences for the students. This could be seen at our school where a class spent a term corresponding with a school in England through email. The topic they were both studying was sustainability based on an inquiry learning approach, The project culminated in a series of video conferences through skype (hooked up through the data projector). It could be argued that this could have been achieved by communicating with a school in New Zealand. However, children were able to experience a different culture, different cultural beliefs, different ideology and different accents!

• The notion of collective intelligence is redefining how we think about ambiguity and imprecision.

People want to be active members of the learning process and be involved in formulating answers not just sitting back being passive listeners. I guess this leads to more options, a greater knowledge base, everyone feels that their opinions count? 

• Experience with & affinity for games as learning tools is an increasingly universal characteristic among those entering higher education & the workforce.

A survey carried out by the Pew Internet and American Life project found that multiplayer and online games are very common among young people. These games have led to increased social interaction  and civic engagement. Interface magazine has a very interesting article that tackles this kind of social interaction in a classroom. Southwell school is investigating the potential of online gaming while engaging students in deep learning by using social games on the Xbox 360

http://www.interfacemagazine.co.nz/articles.cfm?c_id=19&id=128

• Visualisation tools are making information more meaningful & insights more intuitive.

Having an IWB in my class has shown how important visual tools are to children's learning. Even the most mundane activity can be given a new lease of life by making it visually appealing.

Levy (2002, cited by Hall & Higgins) when discussing IWBs suggests that learners appreciate and respond to the "clarity of visual presentation"

Hall, I. & Higgins, S. (2005). Primary school students’ perceptions of interactive whiteboards, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 21, 91-101

• As more than one billion phones are produced each year, mobile phones are benefiting from unprecendented innovation, driven by global competition.

I can see that the innovation and development of mobile phones (such as the iPhone) may have an impact on some institutions, especially as they are becoming cheaper, can run more applications and can do a number of things that personal computers can do, but in the primary sector I believe that any such impact is a long way off into the future. I think that children bringing such technology to school is a risky business. Unfortunately we have had a few phones stolen in the last 3 years and I think parents would be hesitant to allow children to bring any expensive technology to school...and besides phones are only allowed at school in an emergency at this stage. 

One aspect of the article that I found particularly interesting was the development of a personal web. Various tools allow for the creation of personal customized web environments. These ca include numerous learning activities and social and professional information that pertain to the persons interests. I can see that this kind of system would benefit educational facilities by enabling the sharing and pooling of information based on various topics. It would also be useful for students to organise favourite site, activities and media

Storybird takes flight

So after thinking about Hendron's article I wanted to see if there was a way I could get my children's work right out into the aether as well as them having the opportunity to respond to other  with out setting up a blog or wiki (I did set up a blog last year but it died a slow horrid death and I forgot the login!). I happened to bump into a site called Storybird (www.storybird.com). It allows users to choose a set of art work and then compose a story based on that artwork. The story can be published and then viewed by family, friends, or anyone who is around at the time. The children really got stuck in with writing their stories but what I found the most encouraging was that most, if not all of them went home that night and wrote more stories! The children also enjoyed receiving comments from other users and it was very exciting when some of the artists replied and said how good the stories were. 

Here is an example of one of the stories

Uh DUH!!!! and the Hendron collider!

So that's what RSS is! and here I call my self fairly ICT smart, shame shame is my name!

Hendrons article (2008) raises some interesting points, especially when discussing the Read/Write Web in schools. Hendron offers a variety of reasons why the Read/Write Web should be used in schools and classrooms. Firstly this is where both "business and society have turned to learn". No matter what tool you use, be it Google, you-tube, Wikipedia or any other number of search engines, people now have a staggering amount of information available at the click of a button. Schools need to acknowledge this by embracing the opportunity to expose (with precautions of course) children to this information and allowing them the chance to interact and add to this global knowledge. I can now understand why many employers have banned the use of Ebay and Trademe from the workplace! Its astounding to think that one million people (in 2006) quit jobs and now make a living selling items on auction sites full time. (Tapscott & Williams, 2006, p.100 cited by Hendron)

Hendron also offers that many schools promote "life long learning" where students go on to self education and using the Read/Write Web has become a more desirable skill to have in the future, whether it be in business or further education (take this blog for example). To be honest I had not really thought of the use of blogs, podcasts or Wikis as being part of what should be a large component of what children should be taught, but having read Hendron I can now see that these tools are an important way for children to express views, obtain information and generally open themselves up to the world. 

Away to think about possibilities!

I had heard teachers mention Wordle but hadn't had the opportunity to see or to use it. So I thought I would check it out. Wordle is a Web 2.0 tool that can generate "word clouds" which are images made up of words. After inputting individual words or even a whole body of text Wordle generates a word cloud, resizing and highlighting prominent words. The cloud can then be altered with different fonts, colours and layout. You can then print them out, save as a PDF or save them to the Wordle gallery.

Here is an example that one of my students made (with the help of an online thesaurus) consisting of "sad" words.

I also had students compile a word cloud about themselves which we then proceeded to make into a slideshow that I have as a screen saver which is displayed on the board through the projector. Looks like quite an interesting little tool!

IWBs and some benefits

Where to start, where to start??? How about IWBs! Mysteriously I was put in charge of Mimio implementation in our school. This was due to the fact that we decided to trial them out and the teacher next to my classroom was meant to have one but she was taking on a new position so I was lucky enough to get the chance to have it installed in my room and I haven't looked back since! We now have 25 Mimio units school wide with ceiling mounted data projectors, teachers create many of their own resources as well as using content that is available online. I have found that there are many benefits to having an IWB in the class. These include:

• Global Communication-Using skype for video/audio conferencing.
  
• Access to all forms of media- video and audio from various sources (youtube/nationalgeographic) Images available from numerous sources.
  
• Save and view written or annotated work from previous sessions.
  
• Lesson can be enhanced by easily integrating video, animation, graphics, text and audio
  
• Notes, diagrams and entire lessons can be saved, archived and added to the school intranet.

Beauchamp and Parkinson (2005) highlight several ways in which IWBs can help enhance both learning and teaching in the class. The first is focussing the attention of the children. Having a large screen at the front of the classroom allows the children to focus their attention to one particular area, this is useful for engaging children's interest at the start of a lesson.

As well as helping focus children’s attention, IWBs have enabled teachers to more effectively scaffold learning. “When one begins to unpick some of the distinctive features of scaffolding it becomes apparent that the features of the IWB fit the bill admirably” (Beauchamp & Parkinson, 2005, p. 99).

Daniel (another member of the course) poses some questions about IWBs on his blog:

* Will my students learn better because I have one? - Maybe

* Will teachers need training to be able to use IWBs? - Most Definitely

* Will it effect the way I teach and make me a 'chalk and talk' rote learning teacher? -Possibly!

I would like to offer my answers...if I may!

• Will my students learn better because I have one? - Absolutely!!!!

The change I have seen in my students through interactions with the Mimio has been astounding. They are keen to be involved, enthusiastic about the use of the Mimio and the amount of discussion that it has promoted when working in groups has been incredibly impressive!

• Will teachers need training to be able to use an IWB? - Absolutely!!!!

Ongoing training is vital for keeping up to date with what is happening in the IWB world. It is easy to reach a level of proficency and then plateau out if you do not keep up to date with new innovations and training options. It will be interesting to see how schools deal with PD for ICT in the coming year, especially since funding for PD in all areas except Literacy has been cut.

• Will it effect the way I teach and make me a "chalk and talk" rote learning teacher- Absolutely!!!! Well...only on the "effect the way I teach" part.

I now see my role in the classroom as more of a facilitator, the Mimio has allowed greater children ownership of activities and the way things are run in the classroom, we interact together with the Mimio and have established a more reciprocal relationship. I don't think an IWB would lead to "chalk and talk" at all. I believe quite the opposite, it allows for more creativity, freedom and more child involvement.

First post!

Well here we go, my blog on E-Learning and other sources of wonder and excitment!...well...hopefully. This blog is in conjunction with the current university paper I am studying, E-Learning in practice which looks at current trends in ICT in the classroom and the various philosophies and pedagogues that come into play. I am hoping to learn a lot about how others use and view the use of ICT in the class and look at the various research that is available in various technological areas, especially IWBs which is a passion of mine....more on that story later!