Practitioners Skills and ICT

Although technology is the future of education, it is the teachers’ guidance that allows this way of teaching to be successful. Hew & Brush (2007) said, “integration of technology is typically affected by the following three factors: teachers’ technology skills, teachers’ technology beliefs, and teachers’ perceived technology barriers.” Therefore without the correct technological skills and knowledge, it is uncertain whether or not the true impact of learning with technology will influence children, “teacher inexperience and skill deficiencies may often be an important factor inhibiting the effectiveness of ICT use in education by students,”( http://www.infodev.org/articles/teachers-teaching-and-icts, no date)

     With the continuous evolution in the world of technology, it is clear that the skills set that teachers presently have will no longer suffice.  “Children should be finding out about and identifying the uses of technology in their everyday lives,” (Siraj- Blatchford, 2000), therefore it is obliged for teachers to expand their ICT skills to accommodate children’s rights to learn with various multimedia. Therefore it is important for the pedagogy to change in many schools. In comparison with my personal experiences, the ICT skills that my teachers had were very limited compared to what is required with teachers in today’s classrooms because the quantity of multimedia in my class were very limited and occasionally absent so the teachers’ and the pupils ICT skills were very basic. In my primary school, the teachers’ skills were limited to just the computer and maybe an Interactive Whiteboard. But for the future of education, practitioners need further training to use Interactive Whiteboards, ipads, apps and become familiar with the futuristic virtual tools that are becoming more common in classrooms to keep up with the technology rather than the technology taking over their occupations, which is already proven in existence with the Steve Jobs Schools and the increasing influence of Gamification in schools.

Hew, K., Brush, T. & Glazewski, K. (2008). Development of an instrument to measure preservice teachers’ technology skills, technology beliefs, and technology barriers. Computersin the schools. Vol 25. pp.112.

Siraj- Blatchford, I. & Siraj- Blatchford, J. (2000). More than Computers: Information and Communications Technology in the Early Years. London.

http://www.infodev.org/articles/teachers-teaching-and-icts (no date) Accessed 18 January 2017.

Podcasts and Vodcasts

Podcasting is defined as ‘the process of capturing an audio event, song, speech or a mix of sounds and then posting that digital sound object to a website or blog’ (Meng, 2005) On the other hand, Vodcasting is described as more or less identical to podcasting where the content is displayed as a video.  

Podcasts and vodcasts have become a more commonly used within the education sector by investing a considerable amount of resources and money after success has spread across several different domains such as healthcare, nursing and science. By using podcasts and vodcasts in their lessons, educators can create a learning environment which can engage and stimulate a child’s learning experience by allowing them to access material they need where ever they are. (Gay et al, 2006).

In addition to this, modes of technology such as a podcast can benefit a child who is visually impaired or learns better through narration as they have the capabilities to provide audio stimuli. Comparable to this, vodcasts can also assist children who learn better by watching.

Meng, P. (2005) Podcasting & Vodcasting: A White Paper, Definitions, Discussions & Implications. Available at: http://www.tfaoi.com/cm/3cm/3cm310.pdf (Accessed: 18^th December 2017)

Walls, S et al. (2010) ‘Podcasting in Education: Are Students as Ready and Eager as We Think They Are?’ Computer & Education.Vol.54(2) pp.371-278 

Podcasts and Vodcasts

Podcasts are becoming very popular in people’s lives these days on a daily basis, they are created for people to enjoy whenever they want, whether it is commuting to work, exercising etc. some are created as mini talk shows and some are introducing you to the latest news, whether it is music, politics etc. Podcasts can be created by anyone who decides to show their passion about a topic as it could interest others too. However, vodcasts are very similar, but they provide images and videos (Orden, 2013).

People listen to podcasts and vodcasts to get ideas, learn about new things, and they are able to gain knowledge whilst commuting. Podcasting/vodcasting in schools allows children in groups to create a podcast/vodcast, all they need is an electronic device with a camera to record, people and a topic to talk about. Teachers could set tasks and review at the end of each lesson to see if the students are understanding the topic. It is a fun way of learning and explaining what they know. Educational podcasting can be highly effective, it could potentially build a child’s confidence and self-esteem, they could work with a group of friends they feel comfortable in, and express their opinion without the rest of the class seeing (Poore, 2016).

‘Flipped learning’ is highly beneficial towards teachers and also students, teachers are able to have a head start with their lessons and students are able to learn more within their lessons because they have done the work beforehand. However ‘an effective flip requires careful preparation’, therefore, time and effort still needs to be put into this (Educause, 2012).

This video shows a school in America using flipped learning, I have decided to use this one as it mentions about flipped learning benefitting pupils with different levels of abilities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a7NbUIr_iQ

Educause, (2012) Things you should know about flipped classrooms. [Online] Available at: https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli7081.pdf Accessed on: 17/01/17

Orden, J (2013) How to Podcast. What Makes Podcasts Different and So Popular to Listen to? [Online] Available at: http://www.howtopodcasttutorial.com/what-is-a-podcast.htm Accessed on: 17/01/17

Poore, (2016) Using Social Media in the Classroom. London. Sage

Podcasts and Vodcasts

            There are many new advances in the technological world that could potentially increase the worries that technology is replacing teachers. This could be because new ways of delivering lessons, research and education are arising in classroom settings, such as Podcasts and Vodcasts. "Podcasts are media files that can be distributed via the Internet and played on computers and handheld devices such as iPods or other digital audio players,"  and Vodcasts can be recognised as having the same principles, but rather with images and videos, (Mathieu, 2009).  In my opinion, I think that these new ways of distributing information could be good for children and teachers to gain access to any files or videos that they require quickly and efficiently and can gain access to a wide variety of sources outside of the country to facilitate in learning which can enhance their interests in the specified topics. Examples of  digital learning in some educational settings are Ted Talks, Times Educational Supplement, Newsround, Flipped Learning and The Bedley bros, all of which seem to have an impact on how individuals learn now and in the future.

As a group, Sophie, Jodie and I represented the idea of podcasting and vodcasting by creating a video of a tour around the campus of the University, using image and audio. The link is below:-

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAZZ1tf0cU4

Mathieu, J. (2009). Blogs, Podcasts, and Wikis: The New names in information Dissemination. Journal of the American Dietetic Association. Vol.109 (5).pp.6-8.

Multimodal and Multimedia

Our conceptions of language and communication have increasingly been changed by the introduction of technology and its digital capabilities. Also, by the increased availability of different modes of displaying digital information, it is no surprise that many more schools are encouraging the ideas of multimodal and multimedia in classrooms. "Learning environments that provide learners with multiple representations offer opportunities for greater interactivity, and complementarity," (Gilakjani et al, 2011).

    The correlation between multimodal and multimedia is crucial because it allows teachers to not only use several ways of producing content but also allows multiple ways of displaying information to support the needs of all children. Beauchamp, (2012) suggests, “Multimodal capability describes the facility of ICT to combine various modes (multimodal), such as visual, sounds and text, which are displayed through a variety of media (multimedia).”

The different modes for teaching act as ‘vehicles for learning’ because children can participate with their preferred way of learning, such as Visual, Aural, Gestural, Spatial or Linguistic through various ways of media such as Screens, tablets, noticeboards, apps, etc.

Due to the expanding nature of multimedia that exists, it is not surprising that innovative methods are being used in schools. Many of the methods that are progressively being used, include, Virtual Reality Headsets, Aurasma, QUIVER which is increasingly popular due to its ability to bring images to life, and Holograms. These methods are based as the future of education and will certainly impact on the individuals learning because it will expand their minds with the unthinkable. The exposure to these methods will inevitably become important because children can experience different worlds within the comfort of the classroom and expand their minds for the good by using their own creativity without the need for teachers to be present in class. But it should not overshadow the importance of the basic writing and language skills that children require to experiment with the new technological ways of learning.

Beauchamp, G. (2012) Chapter 1: What is ICT in the Primary School?: Tools and Techniques. In ICT in the Primary School: From Pedagogy to practice. Pearson- Books.

Gilakjani, A., Ismail, H. & Ahmadi, S. (2011). The Effect of Multimodal Learning Models on Language Teaching and Learning. Theory and practice in Language Studies. Vol 1 (10), pp. 1321- 1327.

Multimodal and Multimedia

Multimodal and multimedia is a very common way of learning these days throughout compulsory education. This way of learning is highly beneficial to a child’s development in education as it allows the child to engage more in the tasks as it seems to be a ‘fun’ way of learning for the children. This type of learning allows the teachers to teach in many different ways to help the children understand. ICT has many unique features which enable teaching more beneficial, such as, speed, creativity, automation and interactivity (Kennewell and Beauchamp, 2007).

The difference between multimodal and multimedia are combining the different modes (multimodal) and then the way these modes are displayed through media (multimedia) such as an app, website etc. There are five different modes which are; visual, linguistic, spatial, gestural and aural (Twiner et al, 2010).

Compulsory education these days involves using many apps on the Ipads, most apps have multimodal learning included, and they enable children to engage with all different modes and to feel more motivated. Children can create their own stories by using ‘book creator’ and ‘story dice’, this allows children’s imagination to expand. Classrooms are now bringing ‘skype’ into learning, a way of communicating, in my earlier post I mentioned technology is becoming an issue for teachers as technology could possibly take over. Skype has a stable audio quality and allows group video chats, I think multimedia will become more popular in the future years (British Council, 2016).

However, multimodal and multimedia do have their challenges, such as the internet isn’t strong enough to work properly, and the cost of the technology, some schools may struggle to pay for Ipads, laptops etc. A big issue with this way of learning is the teachers not being trained to teach the children. Teachers tend to stick to the way they usually teach because they are unaware on how to use the technology.

British Council, (2016) Teaching English online: opportunities and pitfalls. (Online) Available at: https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/teaching-english-online-opportunities-pitfalls Accessed on 15/12/16

Kennewell, S & Beauchamp, G (2007) 'The features of interactive whiteboards and their influence on learning', Learning, Media and Technology’. Swansea School of Education, UK. Pp.231

Twiner, A, Coffin, C, Littleton, K. and Whitelock, D. (2010) 'Multimodality, orchestration and participation in the context of classroom use of the interactive whiteboard: a discussion', Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 19: 2, pp.211 — 223

Multimedia And Multimodal Technology

Multimedia and Multimodal Technology is known to play a fundamental component in the learning and development of a child within the classroom setting. I have created a multimodal presentation through a piece of multimedia known as EMAZE.. https://app.emaze.com/editor/@AWQIQFRZ.