Final Reflection

I found the eLearning with the iLe@rn Model video interesting and challenging.  I think the challenge questions (listed below) from the end of the video are not just relevant for Sydney CEO as a whole, I can see that these are questions I need to ponder with for student in my class and questions that we can also address at a whole school level.

eLearning

Some key quotes from the video:

“eLearning is about engaging learning environments where the students want to learn, examining both the physical environments in which we learn and the virtual environments which we create.”

“At the core of eLearning is the ability to learn anything, anytime, anywhere.”

“eLearning is about developing reflective and responsible learners.”

“Networking is not about computer networking but instead about people sharing their knowledge and expertise.”

The skills to be developed to take full control of our own learning are:

·      Questioning skills

·      Communication and collaboration skills

·      Creative thinking skills

·      Reflective skills

·      Critical thinking and problem solving skills

·      Multimodal literacy skills

The challenge questions moving forward:

How are Catholic values embedded into eLearning?

How do students lead the learning?

How are students involved in negotiating the learning process?

What features are important in creating engaging learning spaces?

What professional development is required to extend the use of eLearning practices in and beyond the classroom?

How do students create knowledge?

How are iLe@rn skills assessed?

What learning strategies are used to develop the iLe@rn skills?

How do teachers model being the learner in the classroom?

Describe the whole school eLearning plan for creating and sustaining change

Blooms Digital Taxonomy

I find the Blooms digital taxonomy interesting.  I’m not sure I 100% agree with all of the digital terms (verbs) that have been mapped to the key terms, but even so, I do think that it will be a helpful planning tool.

I won’t be using Second Life with my students but I think it would most likely fit into the creating level.

I think Picasa would fit into the applying (editing images) and creating (creating photo collages or movies) levels.

Final Reflection

I have really enjoyed this online course.  I have been introduced to many new Web 2.0 tools that I had heard about (and some new ones) but had neither taken the time to investigate nor taken the time to think about how I could use them myself professionally or in the classroom with my students.  I started the course with the intention of completing a module every two weeks to give myself time to explore and experiment with the new tools being introduced every week.  Due to lack of discipline or simply because of busyness this unfortunately did not happen.  Also, when writing half-yearly school reports there was absolutely no chance of even thinking about the course for about 4-5 weeks!!  I have been wondering if spreading the course over a longer period of time may have been helpful for me, but I am not completely convinced of this.

What I have found invaluable whilst doing this course has been having other staff members from my school participating in the course as well.  I have really appreciated my colleagues’ involvement because we have been able to discuss the tools we’ve been learning about and use some of the tools (e.g. GoogleDocs) to collaborate on some work we’ve been doing.  Now we just need to convince all of our colleagues to ‘jump on board too’.

Google Docs has changed my practise.  I am absolutely a convert!!  I have used it to collaborate with colleagues at work, to collaborate with a friend for a presentation we were delivering and I used it for my report writing in the middle of the year.

One blog that I have commented on during the course was Megan Zanelli’s blog.  The URL is http://webtwomegan.blogspot.com.au/ my comment is on Module 7.

In my Module 10 reflection I wrote ‘I wonder if I can embed the Wiki in the Google Site’.  It makes me laugh out loud to read back over this and see how far I’ve come, not just the Web 2.0 tools I have experimented with but with my thinking about how I might be able to use these tools together.  Before this course I had heard about Wikis but not Google Sites and had not used either of them.  I am excited about what the future holds for my students, my colleagues and for me.