Am I a true stakeholder in my own education?
I heard this question on the YouTube link that I had posted from the ICT Conference held in Qatar - and it made me think, am I ?
Well I suppose I am.
Here I am a 38 year old, never finished high school , wife and mother, deciding that I want and need more and find myself quitting my job and standing at the door of CQU in Bundaberg - so that would make me a stakeholder in my own education?
Wouldn't it?
It's a shame life works in reverse, when you want to learn, schools over, but does it? Life in reverse that is? Is 'what we are doing now' going to change all that, in generations to come are we going to hear " school and uni were the best thing I have ever experienced, I am onto my PHD now" from 40, 50 60 year old's?
I fortunately have children who love going to school, the content and the way it is delivered is very different to my days at school. We never left the desk, only to go to the bathroom or morning tea or lunch, no wonder we fidgeted, we were so bored and so "un-engaged". Sometimes it was only the flying blackboard duster that brought us back.....
I am a firm believer that Kearsley and Shneiderman
(1998 Engagement Theory) have it in a nutshell -
"The fundamental idea underlying engagement theory is
that students must be meaningfully engaged in learning
activities through interaction with others and worthwhile tasks"
so that's it ! we all know that's it - we have known if for ever and ever - so why has it taken this long to change.?
RELATE - - CREATE - - DONATE
Seems simple? Well it is now ..
Now its ALL different - thankfully...
Now we aim to create a exciting environment that fosters creativity and is exciting, we strive for more education and impact, we provide digital opportunities and therefore are transforming education as we know it - it is no longer I teach, you learn.
We have the power and the ability to innovate and create whilst constantly challenging and empowering the learner.
Its all about learning - as Doug Brown commented during the ICT Conference 2009
'Learning without technology is just not learning"
But how? How DO we do this??
Rewind to 12 weeks ago - I knew it ALL (or so I thought) - no Windows Vista for DUMMIES for me, I can mail merge, hyperlink within a PowerPoint, download photos and maintain a web page. Well well well wasn't I in for a nasty shock! However in hindsight I am glad I could do all those things, and am so amazed and excited by the new technology I have learnt since. I am wondering how I will keep up with everything now as no doubt "something" is new even since I have started this course!
It started with a blog - never blogged in my life - struggle to answer posts on Facebook, but blog you wanted, blog you got. As a person who never shuts up and has no problem communicating with people I know, "blogging" with "strangers" doesn't really do it for me, and I have really struggled to maintain and correspond within the blog - both my own and my fellow students. Not to mention the lack of hours in the day - blogging and learning all these new technologies takes alot of time - and Internet usage!
However hopefully throughout the term I have managed to share my experiences and ideals within my learning journey through my blog.
My first "newey" - well no that was the "blog" , my second "newey" was creating a WIKI - having used Publisher and PowerPoint extensively the lack of "tools" brought me a bit unstuck, none the less I managed to create a lesson plan of sorts for our
Healthy Harold visit.
I would LOVE to be able to use Wiki's more effectively, I feel after trailing through the other "Wiki's" that they are and will be a fantastic learning tool for me to use. I notice on the
Wikispaces home page that they too are embracing the education revolution and have designated pages for K-12 teachers and students. I particularly would like to use Wiki's with special needs students as I feel that they could be catered for the individual needs of the learner.
I subscribe to an RSS feed for the local paper as stated in my
RSS blog, and I have managed to set up an RSS feeder on the website that I maintain, so one would assume that I am on the right track. How wonderful it is to be able to subscribe to up to date information without trolling through pages and pages on the WWW!! Fantastic for use in the classroom - imagine an RSS feed from a space shuttle mission!!!
Loved the Voki software - I actually used the Voki application for the beginning of our group presentation for Learning Management 1 as an introduction to our presentation. Voki has many different scenes and characters which appeals to younger students, in particular I loved the way we could change the sounds of the voices from a Scottish accent for example to chipmunk talk!
Picnik, Flickr andSlide Share were all new to me, however after fiddling around for a while, the possibilities are endless - the ability to manipulate images and create your own personalised pictures is a wonderful learning tool to use in a classroom situation. The ability to have a student create their own masterpiece something to call their own, is truly taking ownership of your learning journey.
Mahara meaning "think or thought" has many advantages over other EPortfolios - namely the ability to show or hide files from users. I am looking forward to working with my Bundaberg Group on Assesment task 3 to fully utilise the Mahara application and be able to provide information for my students for them to appreciate the true capabilities of Mahara.
Teachertube provided a whole new outlook for me, having been shocked quite a few times by what can be found on
YouTube, it never occured to me that a site would have been set up to assist teachers within the classroom. The IWB at my EPL school are pre-programmed with numerous lessons already to go. Last week we had the story of "Little Red Riding Hood" - the children listened to the story, clicked to turn the page - therefore being actively engaged in constructing knowledge for themselves.
Before I had heard of "digital storytelling" I hadn't imagined that that in essence was what YouTube was about. Everyone has a story to tell, whether it be about the holocaust or a "walk though" for Mario Bros on the Wii! Again people sharing and helping me, and others on our journey to learn -whether it be to learn more about World War 2 or to learn more about completing the latest Wii game, its all learning and sharing - again RELATE- CREATE - DONATE.
The ability to show a student a time or place became a reality when Google introduced Google Earth. It would be great to engage students with well known localities and landmarks right there to see - a visual masterpiece. Google earth, together with Wikipedia have really brought the world to our fingertips, everything is available to learn.
The Moodle framework that I have used throughout this course is very new to me, however it has been wonderful to have all the information there, readings, course work, Youtube & Ken clips which has throughly helped me on my learning journey. It sure beats 10kg of material being delivered to my door for me to try and filter and process.
I as a teacher will aim to create a really exciting and invigorating environment that will in turn provide the best learning outcomes for all my students. I feel as Learning Managers we will need to be constantly providing engaging digital opportunities, that innovate and create each and every student.
I feel that by providing these opportunities to students we are helping them to fulfill Mazlow's Hierarchy of needs. Norman Kunc whilst describing
The Need to Belong stated that
"
There is an enormous amount of evidence, surprisingly form the field of corporate management, that providing a person with a sense of belonging is pivotal for that person to excel".
This is because to excel, we have to feel that we belong. By providing varied mediums, innovative and creative opportunities to learn and grow, we would be helping develop positive self esteem and self worth and in turn help students to excel.
The impact of technology on teaching and learning in the 21st Century is constantly evolving, and in turn this will impact on how we organise schools, teachers and students. We need to strive to be "lifelong learners" to have positive relationships between teacher and student and be able to engage and empower our students to be actively be a stakeholder in their own learning journey.
