Week 7

YouTube, Google Earth and SlideShare are Our Online Resources

While looking through many different YouTube clips it was so hard to decide what to use so I searched through many different topics like counting, ABC's and different songs to sing in relation to teaching children in different ages from 2-5yrs. Therefore finally coming across a fantastic song whereby children of all ages always enjoy 'Old MacDonald Had A Farm'. This clip is sung in cartoon until it comes to each animal as they show a real life picture of the animal which allows children watching to have a better understanding of what that animal actually looks like, as many children many not have seen particular animals before.

While looking at Google Earth there are many interesting concepts which can help children with this new source of learning, as the first being it would be a good navigation tool for example when on school camps we all had to do some navigating while using a compass. Many children are very interested in orienteering therefore being able to navigate and find different locations through Google Earth will allow the children to get creative and find many different and maybe unusual places while looking through Google Earth Maps. This would be a great tool to use while learning about the World and Australia.

I had already found SlideShare while trying to upload my PowerPoint presentation to my Week 5 Blog and was only able to do so using this site. When coming across SlideShare it was easy to use but doesn't show the presentation how it was originally designed as in my presentation I have special sound effects for different slides as well as animations on each page. I think that if you had just a ordinary presentation with no animations or sound effects then using SlideShare would be a great tool to demonstrate slides and information to a audience while uploading it to Blogs, Wiki's or any other personal sites.

While looking at these three different types of online resources children would be able to learn new ways to demonstrate important and relevant information on topics within there learning curriculum. Therefore allowing them to broaden there learning knowledge through online resources and by incorporating these into there learning framework would allow children to become more engaged in a activity if there is something that they can look at, watch or hear while learning instead of just listening to a teacher reading and talking about a subject. Children will learn in there own ways therefore by allowing many new resources to be used to help with different learning styles will allow all children to become more involved and interact while in the classroom. Also by allowing the children to explore all these different online resources for themselves will give them a better understanding of how and what they can be used for, therefore allowing them to take with them and use in there journey ahead.

Week 6

Flickr and Picnik

During this week I was able to use both Flickr and Picnik to change and create new looks of how my original photos looked. These programmes allow you to crop, rotate, change colour, change exposure as well as print and buy prints. By using these programmes to change and reform photos will allow students to transform there own photos to new and improved to present for assignment presentations. Many students may find this a very helpful tool when adjusting photos to maybe black and white for a older style look to a modern photo. Students will be able to use there photos in many different ways when presenting presentations to the class.

Here are a two different ways I changed my original photo while using Picnik.

Original Photo

Black and White: Was cropped and to make it black and white I put

the saturation to -100% also adding a border.

This Photo was also cropped, then with the exposure changed to -25% to make the lights stand out also added a border.

Picnik allows you to be very creative with your photos and once you get familiar with the program it takes not time at all to upload and create beautiful photos from your own originals. This would be a great program for children of all ages to be able to get more creative with there own photos by allow them to explore into different avenues while developing in there learning journeys. By making this so easy to use and upload and share will allow children to express themselves through there creative artwork that they have created from photos of there choices, and use to explain to there teachers and parents how there learning journey is going.

Week 5

POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS AND INTERACTIVE WHITEBOARDS

This week was a interesting week to be able to learn about the new Interactive WhiteBoards and using PowerPoint presentations within the classroom. I have always liked being creative with PowerPoint and had used this program on many occasions while attending school. While designing my presentation I found it took a little longer to do, as I'm not to familiar with the new version of PowerPoint but once working it all out it was a breeze. I believe children of all ages will find PowerPoint to be a creative and exciting way to present learning topics to there class, as it is a easy and fun way to present any data or information.

My PowerPoint presentation which I have created is on Fire Safety as with teaching children in childcare this is a very important topic to discuss to make children aware of the dangers and what to do in case they are in a fire.

Fire Safety

View more presentations from zrwhittaker.

This presentation was easy and fun to create as there are so many different options to go with and designs to be creative with. I have kept the colours to the theme of Fire to keep the children aware of what fire looks like, and by adding in the sound effects makes it more of a real life situation. I was trying to find a way to upload my presentation to my Blog by saving and uploading in many different ways when I came across SlideShare which allowed me to do so, but the only thing is it doesn't allow the presentation to be shown how it was designed. As I have sound effects and animations throughout each different slide. I will continue to try and find a way if there is to be able to upload it correctly and will re post it if I can.

So to bring in PowerPoint presentations into the children's learning designs they will be able to relay important information or data in there own way, while allowing each student to become creative.

Interactive WhiteBoards are becoming more popular in schools as most schools now in Rockhampton have these in place in all classrooms and teachers have now begun the new learning journey with there students. With the Interactive WhiteBoard still being very new in most schools many teachers still say there is much more for them as teachers to learn so that they can use the boards to there full potential. I believe that the Interactive WhiteBoards will be a great way to get the children more involved and interacting while becoming more interested in the subjects being thought. Many parents I have spoken to about the boards have said that they had a parent night with there child's teacher to learn and be shown what Interactive WhiteBoards are all about. This has now allowed them to be more aware of what there children are learning about and how the are learning while attending school. They too found that the boards are very good by allowing all the children in the classroom to become more involved and interactive while learning. Therefore with this new piece of technology already in play in many schools it will not take to much longer for many new ICT programmes to come in to play with teaching children new ways and styles of learning.

Week 4

Becoming Creative with Voki Avatars

This week was a great week to get creative while learning what Voki Avatars are and then being able to put you imagination into great use and design your own. Once I got started I found so many different animations to use which is great to see that there is such a vast variety, which only leads the imagination to go wild. After I completed my Voki I thought to myself how useful this will be with children of all ages as it's a simple and fun way to get creative and to get any message across to any audience. Children will find these very interesting as they can use there imaginations and can send them to who ever they wish, as well as use them for assignment demonstrations and presentations etc. I think Voki's will be a very interesting learning tool to introduce to children of all ages.

Week 3

Well this week was very interesting and daunting at the same time as I would of never though I would be setting up a Blog or Wiki. As before starting the term I had read through the course profile and seen that our assessment was to do a professional blog and my first reaction to this was, oh my what and how do I do a Blog. But now once the term has started to come along with being in week 3 I am beginning to understand more and more about how blogs, wiki's, the Internet etc are becoming more part of our new world of the 21st century of modern teaching then what I realised.

So starting to set up a blog isn't as hard as what I first thought and the more time I have sat down on my blog site I have found many things you can do with your blog, no wonder people get so involved in writing on there blogs if they do have one. Therefore this is a excellent tool for students to begin to use while at school and at home as not only can teachers, students and there own parents see what and how they are learning, they the student can also follow other students learning and learn from them also. This is a wonderful tool as many students may feel more confident while using a blog to learn, then being interactive within the classroom. Students will be able to extend there learning through new resources teachers may post of activities, sites, YouTube clips, PowerPoint presentations etc, which can help everyone in the different areas which they may be finding a little hard to understand. Allowing students outside access to learn at there own pace is a great incentive as sometimes a classroom is very full on and is often a little hard to have all that days information sink in and to be able to fully understand what was discusses therefore by being able to go home and continue on your learning at your own pace will be a big incentive to many students.

So starting a blog for me has been a great experience as this allows me to share my opinions to everyone who may be following my blog at the time. So I hope everyone has also enjoyed beginning there new learning journey's through the use of our blog learning tools.

Week 2

The 21st Century learner will be and is becoming the e-learner when it comes to introducing more technology into the school curriculum through ICT's (information communication technologies). By introducing these ICT's into schools this is to help engage, enhance and extend students learning in more flexible ways for now and for there future development. After reading through this topic on e-learning designs it comes across to me that the economy is changing at a fast past as the more people I talk to from teachers, parents and students they are already saying how there child or school is introducing technology experiences to there children now. This is being shown from prep students learning how to save onto a USB stick. I was a little blown away at this as they are only prep, as I remember back when I was in preschool as it was called we never did computers at school I don't think computers came in to context until about grade 4/5. But the way the 21st century is going all students will have there own computers/laptops from prep age then through to grade 12. As good as it is to see that the times are changing for the better we still need to be aware of the dangers when it comes to children using computers, especially the Internet safety, harassment and bullying and privacy while using a computer.

As the way I look at this is yes it is a great way to get kids involved more in classroom activities but I think even thought schools have NetAlert that schools should have all programmes which may cause some harm blocked. As you can't always control what children are looking at as you have to many children in a class to keep a eye on all of them. Whereas while at home parents can monitor this more closely as they only have in most families 1 or 3 children. Once ICT's come into schools as a whole I'm am sure the schools will do the best they can to stop any type of unsafe Internet use from occurring before it is all brought out for students to use even though there is the NetAlert which helps schools now. I believe something more will most likely need to be done within the future once ICT's becomes more and more involved in the schooling life.

While looking at the Learning Engagement Theory is states that the learning environment needs to RELATE to the real world, CREATE solutions to this problem and then to DONATE the solution back into the real world. I find that by engaging students in real life opportunities to learn about something as either small groups or larger groups they will be more interested. Therefore this will only create a opportunity for you the learning manager to help them to explore more deeply into there interests to then find a positive outcome which in the end shows how everything we do and learn relates back to the real world and how we live, learn and grow while learning for the present and future. By engaging students in things which they find interesting will help with the behavioural problems in classrooms, as many students are hands on students whereby if they can be more actively involved in activities then they are more likely to listen and participate to achieve a result which they desire, instead of be a disruptive student as just sitting writing and listening to a teacher doesn't engage there brains enough to stimulate them into learning. By bringing more ways of learning technique into classrooms especially through the use of ICT's is only going to help learning managers to see how different children learn and what best suits the class group as a whole which will ensure that the class stays engaged and eagar to learn more on a daily basis as being able to come more and more actively involved in there own learning styles.

Week 1

ACTIVE LEARNING AND LEARNING DIVERSITY

The Active Learning and Learning Diversity is a very interesting topic as I work in childcare and have worked with every age group from 6 weeks to 12 years and have over the years realised what really stimulates a child's brain when it comes to learning. I have found that in the preschool and kindy age groups the children are at a age stage in there development whereby the more hands on activities they can do the better there learning experience outcome. Therefore if everyday the group was involved in a activity as a whole where they are going to learn something that in the end will have a result which they have help produced only makes the children more engaged in the activity and more willing to participate. Most children these days don't have the time while at home to experience hands on activities such as a basic one of cooking (many families are to busy to allow there children to help cook even if it may be baking a cake) Cooking is a wonderful sensory activity for children to learn many new concepts within a variety of learning experiences, as they are not only learning what actually goes into foods to get a end result, but also the measurement concepts whereby mathematics comes in to play, as well as how a product is prepared and looks before it is place in a oven, on a stove or cooked on a BBQ. Children enjoyed being involved with mixing, pouring and preparing during a cooking activity even children as young as 15 months. Many children are unaware of many things in life even from a simple thing of where do fruit and vegetables come from? As a group discussion the answer is always the 'shops'. Children are missing out on the learning of the where, how and when of many things as parents are not spending the time to talk to there children in relations to many things as they most likely just think well they should know. Instead more and more children are fixated on TV, computers, ipods, Ds games etc and not as worried about the real things in life.

Therefore I find that with Active Learning it does increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the teaching and learning process. (www.acu.edu/cte/activelearning/howdoes.htm)

INPUT!

Active Learning involves input from multiple sources through multiple senses (hearing, seeing, feeling, etc).

PROCESS!

Active Learning involves process, interacting with other people and materials, accessing related schemata in the brain, stimulating multiple areas of the brain to act.

OUTPUT!

Active Learning involves output, requiring students to produce a response or a solution or some evidence of the interActive Learning that is taking place.

These three processes in the Active Learning framework does work in many ways as children love being involved and there are many ways you as a learning manager or just as a parent could allow this to happen on a daily basis. I also find that the more involved the group is the less behavioural problems we have.



So for Input a great idea for children's involvements could be a simple task of volcano's, children are always interested in a topic where they may have only seen this on TV or a picture therefore being able to act this out for them is a excellent experience. Firstly once finding a topic which interests a child or group then find out information in regards to this which will allow you to extend more and more on the topic. Ask for the children's input on what they think, know, seen etc. You could also ask the parents for there contribution to the topic with getting information from home if the have anything on Volcano's this also helps with the children then continuing the discussion at home and seeing that there parents are interested in something they like.


Process is whereby you sit down and discuss the topic in more context allowing all children to ask a question, this gets the children involved and eager to learn more.


And lastly the best part of the end result of Output where by all research and discussion which have gone into the subject finally have had a purpose and now it's time for the making of a volcano and allowing it to erupt. This is a very exciting time for both the teacher and children as you never know what the outcome will completely be whether it be big or small eruption.


I have noticed that in Dale's Cone this also demonstrated through the Direct, Purposeful Experiences which is most effective as this is shown at the bottom of the cone. Therefore demonstrating what I have just discussed in believing that active learning is they way of teaching children of all ages.

Hi to all,

This is my very first time using a Blog so very new to me. So I thought I might have a muck around and see how it all works before getting completely started.

I have a great liking for frangapani's so while mucking around I tried adding a photo. Too easy this all isn't as hard and daunting as I thought it would all be. Well that's about all for now and I'll be back soon with more to add.