What education should be like!

Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education from sam seidel on Vimeo.

this blog post by Vickel Narayan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand License.

Models for Reflection - ePortfolios

Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (Read the original post)


Stages:

1. Description - What happened?
   
2. Feelings - What were you thinking and feeling?
   
3. Evaluate - What were the positives and negative of the experience?
   
4. Analysis - What did you understand/learn from the experience?
   
5. Conclusion - What else could you have done?
   
6. Action Plan - if it happens again, what would you do differently?

(Picture source: http://distributedresearch.net/blog/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/gibbsmodelreflection.jpg)

Peter Pappas' Taxonomy of Reflection (Read the original post)

Very closely aligned with Bloom's Taxonomy.

Stages:

1. Remembering
2. Understanding
3. Applying
4. Analysing
5. Evaluating
6. Creating

(Picture source: http://peterpappas.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341d880253ef0120a7a4dd53970b-pi)

Technology and Literacy

The use of technology in learning is increasing and it will grow to be an important tool for the students. Not to say it is not at the moment. Some schools have really embraced learning technologies and really see it as the tool to improve learning. It is no different at Unitec, New Zealand. The eLearning strategy that is being rolled out this year together with the Living Curricula will certainly put technology as the tool for improved learning and teaching.
While talking about a project I am involved in today at a meeting, I was asked how the use of technology in this course was meeting the literacy needs of the institution and other interested stakeholders?

Well for me personally any learning that is driven by technology has to be better than the old traditional transmission method. Technology empowers the students, helps them form their own identity and also helps students identify how they learn best.

It is all good to say a questionnaire can help determine or find the literacy need of a student but is it a matter of asking someone who knows no better? For me literacy is a transformational journey, the needs of a student changes, it does not remain the same every time. Well for a transmission style teaching the questionnaire will work wonders! Things are prescribed for the students hence the literacy needs of a student can easily be determined.

True learning for me happens when a student is responsible of its own learning. The teacher is facilitating learning by encouraging student generated content. 'If I am creating, I am learning', student centred learning hence is the platform you want to be building on if you went to improve literacy in students.

I came across this interesting blog post by Clive Thompson about Andrea Lunsford. Lunsford is a professor at Stanford University where she embarked on a project called Stanford Study of Writing to analyse students use of written and spoke language. Lunsford collected 14,672 student writing samples dating from year 2001-2006, the samples were made up of in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails, blog posts, and chat sessions.

Having reviewed the samples Lunford states,"I think we're in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven't seen since Greek civilization". Technology was identified as the catalyst that was driving the revival of writing and not only this, it is also creating use for it in many different ways (you can read more about this here).

If you would just take a step back and reflect on what's driving the Web 2.0 craze? Communication, collaboration, creation and networking all of which is underpinned by use of language either written, spoken or visual.

CAME Project kicks off

Last week I took the first lot of students from the Certificate in Automotive and Mechanical Engineering course through Google Apps and Blogger. We had about 20 students in class and they all had their own laptops. I wasn't at all ready for this. David Clarke (lecturer in the course) gave me a call early Monday morning asking if I could do something with the students the same day. I was anticipating this but later in the week. I am happy to report the 2 hour session however went smoothly and I managed to achieve what was very quickly planned.

I have since put together a wikispaces resource centre for students. This will make the next session later this week easier for me. Here is the link to the wikispaces website.

Yesterday we gave out Dell Mini 9 Netbooks to a select group of students. It was very interesting to observe how excited and quick the students were to to jump on the net. The Netbooks which were given out were pre-configured hence it made it easy for the students to be connected. I have to say the first site they all opened (most of them did) was Youtube. It is suprising to see how Youtube is replacing Google as preferred search or reference website in the younger generation. The Dell Minis come with a built-in camweb, bluebooth, and Wifi, the only problem with it is limited storage space (it has a 8 gig main drive storage).

The storage space shouldn't be a big issue since students are making extensive use of Google. However we have supplied the students with a 8gig SD card so they can use this to store any video and pictures they may take during to course. Students are to use Picasa to storage pictures and Youtube for videos.

The aim of this project is to embed technology on the learning process hence enabling students to create their own content. Students use this content to create an eportfolio which they submit at the end of the course for assessment. We are also hoping the students will continue working on their portfolio in the courses that follow.

In all we have more than 80 students in this course. They are divided into 4 groups and each group will be looked after by one of the four teaching staff. The students however go through a rotation, all four teachers teach different topics in the course.

Last week I attended a session where students were to present their findings on safety (personal safety in a work environment). Almost all groups had drawn very neat pictures to relay the message, unfortunately the students did not have any equipment to digitally capture this. They could have used the webcame on their netbooks but the problem is, the webcams on these netbooks are facing the user every time, it is fixed.

I sent out a request to the head of department, asking for fund so that we can buy 8 of the compact digital video cameras that doubles up as a camera. I was so delighted to see the support, the head of department approved the purchase in a few hours. So this is what we bought for the students to use to capture what happens in and outside of the classroom.

I'll be shortly adding another page in the wikispaces site: Using the JVC HD Video Camera. I bit about the compact vidcam, Full HD, easy upload to Youtube, 8 Mega Pixel still capture, 90 minute battery life. 3X digital zoom. Only problem with this model is it doesn't not have much built in storage. We now need to buy SD cards, it can take up to 32 gig. This in-fact could play to our benefit since the Dell Mini 9's have a SD slot, hence it will make it easy for the students to transfer files from the camera.


It is an exciting project and a first in the trade school. The four staff involved in this project so far have enjoyed the journey and appreciate the change from the old way to new way of teaching. Early indication from students has been good so far. Most of them have bought the laptop and the use in class has been good.