Last Day of Reading Before Christmas

Today I had a closer look at the software available to me in terms of blogging. I also read two articles, one more interesting than the other. 


Software Available
I looked specifically at blogging software today. I found a site called "edublogs" which offers a secure blogging service that requires passwords etc to access blogs. This could be very good for class blogging purposes as it would ensure that pupils are kept safe online. It also allows an administrator account to be created that could see every comment left on blogs before they are posted and this would prevent bullying and other concerns. This comes at a price however but it is not expensive so it may be worth the investment if a free alternative cannot be found.


Wiki Article
Up till now I had kind of neglected reading about wikis but the article I read today really opened my eyes to the vast possibilities of wikis and the learning outcomes that can be achieved that are not possible with blogs. The overall consensus of what I've read so far though is that blogs and wikis can work very, if not most, effectively when used in partnership with each other. This, of course, is a relief as my FYP is based on them working together and luckily my first impression of their abilities to complement each other were correct.


Other Thoughts
I am seriously considering changing my focus and title from looking at the web based tools in terms of the DCG classroom to looking at it's uses in the Construction Studies classroom as it is becoming more and more apparent to me that the software could be much better showcased, and more effectively, using the content and activities involved in the Construction Studies syllabus... this of course will require much consideration and further investigation. 


This is my last entry before Christmas... So see you in January :D

A bit more reading...

Today I only read one article but it was extremely detailed and well researched. It was about collaboration in classrooms. He looked at collaboration in terms of the different theories related to it and how they have been tested. The main 4 theories about collaboration are:
1. Motivational Perspectives
2. Social Cohesion
3. Cognitive Perspectives
4. Cognitive Elaboration Perspectives


They are all different theories with different rationales but at the end of the day they all are used to varying degrees in most collaborative group work activities that I've seen. It is hard to place them within the online collaboration framework that I am looking at due to the collaboration happening online instead of face to face but as I've read before pupils communicate and socialise on the internet now!

More Reading...

Today I read 3 more articles. They were about e-Portfolios, Connectivism and the development of e-Learning.


e-Portfolios
The article I read on e-Portfolios gave me an insight into the different types of e-Portfolios and how each could be used in education. It looked at them from a artist portfolio standpoint but I don't think this made it any less relevant. The 3 types of e-Portfolio looked at were:

1. Showcase e-Portfolios
2. Structured e-Portfolios
3. Learning e-Portfolios

Each of the types above have specific rationales for their use but aspects of them could definately be used in DCG. The type of software used to create these e-Portfolios was important as feedback and review is very important to them being effective in helping the pupils learn.

Connectivism

Connectivism was a lot more complicated than I had expected. It basically looks at learning as, instead of being an internal process, it is process of making connections and networking information. It looks at knowing where to find information as a type of knowledge. A mind boggling fact I read in the connectivism article was that half that was known in 2004 was not known in 1994 and that the current rate of knowledge acquisition is that instead of doubling every 10 years it is doubling every 18 months! It's for this reason that connectivism looks at how to find knowledge as being almost more important than actually knowing it yourself.

e-Learning

This article spoke about the development and evolution of e-Learning in our society. It was really interesting and agreed with a lot of the things I think able e-Learning. Its main point was that e-Learning software should provide the pupils with a platform rather than an application. There were two sentences that stood out for me, they were:

"File-sharing, for example, evolves not of a sudden criminality among today's youth but rather in their pervasive belief that information is something meant to be shared" (Downes, 2005)

"Sharing content is not considered unethical;indeed; the hoarding of content is viewed as antisocial"  (Downes, 2005)

Today's Reading

Today I read three articles which were about Blogs, Wikis, RSS Feeds and how they can be used in education
The articles I read were incredibly interesting and reading them really made me feel excited about what can actually be achieved with these new technologies.

Today I finally learned what RSS (Rich Site Summary/Real Simple Syndication) is! I have been intrigued by the links to RSS feeds I have seen on websites but I've never gotten around to actually researching them. What they do is if you subscribe to a feed you get a message whenever new content is added to that feed! In my project that will mean that I (the teacher) can subscribe to the RSS feeds of each pupils' blog and I will get a message whenever they make a change (cutting down on the time spent reviewing pupils work as I will know who has made changes and when etc.) 


In two of the article I read the young people of today were described as "Digital Natives" and the "Nintendo Generation", both of which are very good descriptions of many (not all) young people today. Another label for the young people of today was in the title of one of the articles "the YouTube Google-Eyed Generation", an interesting synopsis...


A learning theory I encountered today was "Connectivism" which sounds very interesting and I hope to read more about it during my research. "Folio Thinking" is also a concept I want to look into.


As seems to be the case with this topic there was buzz word after buzz word used, including: Web 2.0, Wikinomics, Tikiwiki (Who came up with these???)

Reading Articles

I spent today searching for articles on collaboration, blogs, wikis and social bookmarking. I found a lot articles about all of them except social bookmaking. I'm not sure if this is because it is a relatively new software that hasn't been looked at in an educational situation or that it simply is not in the mainstream yet...


In an article I looked at today it referred to blogs, wikis and podcasts as "mindtools" because of how they can be used to aid higher order thinking in the classroom. Of course this label is limiting because it doesn't really take into account the collaborative aspect of the tools by only focusing on the individual "mind". But I liked the term non the less.


In another article it listed some educational blogging tools which I want to look at tomorrow. These included:

• edublogs
• 21 Classes Cooperative Learning
• ePals Schoolblog

I also read about a framework for Higher order thinking using blogging software (HOT Blogging). It was a 4 part framework which focused on literacy but I could adapt it in the future for teaching DCG.

Creating My Blog

Today I created my blog and wrote my first post


For the last couple weeks I've been looking at the best blogging software for my project. Blogger ticks almost all the boxes I was looking for. There are of course some features it is missing but for what I want to do it will work well.

During my research into what blogging software I could use I looked at wordpress.com, wordpress.org and blogger as they are recognised as the best from what I've read. I decided on blogger because of simplicity of design and the ease of which almost everything about my blog can be changed (layout, titles, design etc.) and it allows me to easily make accounts for pupils and easily create a network of "followers" for my blog and the blogs that I will create for pupils.


In between figuring out this blog business I met my supervisor with the rest of his FYP students and he showed us some very useful stuff for our projects. Over the next few days I hope to look at the resources he showed us and begin my project in Ernest! 

Up Till Now

As my first post I thought I should give you all a very quick summary of what I've done so far: 

1. Project Proposal Submission
2. Put together a plan of the work to be carried out and when I plan to do it (September 2010)
3. Read books, articles, websites etc. about learning, teaching, group work, active learning, DCG over 4th Year Teaching Practice.

From the reading I completed over Teaching Practice and also the experiences I had over the same period I decided to modify my Final Year Project to focus on collaboration and the use of Web Based Tools in Design and Communication Graphics instead of strategies for teaching DCG which was my original title

Since I decided to change my focus I have been really enthused by the research I have been doing. What I have narrowed my focus down to at this stage is using Blogs, Wikis, and Social Bookmarking.

Lets see what we can discover! :D