Class Blog

I have just started another blog, for use with my ICT classes. There is now a considerable quantity of class work which cannot be printed off and taken home to show parents, so I had to think of another way to do this. The blog seems to be the easiest way at present.

• I started off by bringing all my Year 10's animations together in Movie Maker, adding some music from Freeplay, and creating a short movie. This could then be put directly into the class blog.
• I've included presentations - PowerPoints added to Slideshare and embedded in the blog, and the Google presentation created by a group of Year 11s.
• The use of labels, previously unexplored by me, will enable students to look at postings relevant to their year level.
• A clever Year 11 student, with a keen interest in using Photoshop, will create a photo banner for the top of our blog.

After considerable thought, I decided to create a second Google account, for use by students. Unfortunately, however, my students are currently unable to log onto Blogger at school. I really hope to be able to let students make some postings, so hopefully we can overcome this problem.

Instructional Design

I am currently facilitating Producing and Integrating effective ICT resources into the classroom, with a group of teachers from our cluster. This is part of the GradDipICTEd previously offered by the College of Education and now, since the merger, a University of Canterbury course.

While this course has always had a very practical focus, there is also an expectation that resources are not only created, but are based on sound learning theory. Discussions amongst our group have been a great way of refocusing on all the things we know already, but can have a tendency to gloss over when busy.

This week we looked at two different Instructional Design models: ARCS and ADDIE. The PowerPoint presentations we will be creating are to be designed based on one of these models. As I prepared my presentation to this group, I decided to base it on the ARCS model - the end result was a session that ran smoothly, with participants going away feeling that they had achieved what they set out to achieve. There were only a couple of small things I needed to add to my presentation to ensure this happened - nothing new, but techniques from the classroom which I sometimes forget when talking to adults. These included:

• a short video to get everyone's attention
• explicitly defining the learning objectives of our session
• explaining the relevance of the readings and how they fit into their projects
• maintaining attention by asking a question at the beginning, the answer to which was included in the following slides
• giving opportunities for them to share their knowledge and relating this prior knowledge to the new system we were looking at
• working together to complete the presentation, for sharing afterwards
• modelling the system we were talking about
• reviewing learning objectives at the end of the session.

We came up with this summary of how we could apply the ARCS Instructional Design system.

AttentionRelevanceConfidence
Satisfaction
ATTENTION

Key Characteristics:

• grabbing learners attention
• providing sensory stimuli
• inquiry through questioning
• maintaining attention through a variety of stimuli

Examples:

• thought provoking questions
• 'hooks'
• videos
• links
• audio: oral/music
• photos
  

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RELEVANCE

Key Characteristics:

• what's in it for me?
• advance organiser
• setting direction for learning
• stated learning objectives
• so what?
• tying instruction into learners' experience

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Examples:

• sharing learning intentions
• choice of presentation tools, according to learning styles of class

CONFIDENCE

Key Characteristics:

• setting students up to succeed
• explicit success criteria
• high level of student control and involvement
• scaffolding for success

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Examples:

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• rubrics
• feedback/feed forward
• 1-1 conferencing

SATISFACTION

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Key Characteristics:

• evaluation and self-assessment
• intrinsic rewards
• extrinsic rewards
• enjoyment

Examples:

• opportunities to present
• opportunities for further exploration
• gain a certificate/award
• students describe how their new knowledge/skills have helped them

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