Final Post

Final Blog Entry

My key learning area (KLA) is Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and my focus audience is secondary school students. Learning about and teaching students  ICT is my passion so it is fairly obvious that I will take the position of that it is important to take advantages of all of the affordances that modern technology offers teachers in order to improve teaching outcomes.

The two particular areas that technology is valuable for in the classroom is motivating students and supporting the needs of learners (Roblyer & Doering, 2012).  Of course within NSW classrooms in both high school and primary schools ICT skills are mandated through syllabuses (Board of Studies NSW, 2012.).

The main thing I have taken away from this subject is to remind myself that lessons that happen to use technology shouldn’t start with technology (Roblyer & Doering, 2012). They need to start with learning outcomes and sound pedagogy, the technology is there to support those two things. This may sound obvious but actually is more difficult than it sounds to ICT teachers. ICT teachers are interested in technology and often have a technological component as a learning outcome so it is easy to forget about learning outcomes and simply look at the technology for technologies sake.

My studies of in teaching over the last couple of years have led me to realise that from a pedagogical viewpoint I find Vygostski and his social constructivist approach very influential. Vygotski maintains that learning is a social process and that communications between peers is a critical factor in the learning process (Marsh, 2010). Fortunately for me, the social aspect of learning has been highlighted by both my teachers here at CSU and embedded within the relevant syllabuses for ICT. An example of this is within the Software Design and Development (SDD) curriculum, where under key competencies it explicitly states that “Planning and organising activities and working with others and in teams are integral to the development of software and are addressed  in Preliminary and HSC courses” (Board of Studies NSW, 2010, p. 13). Technology can really help supply tools that can help enable teamwork and collaboration, some of these tools include; project management tools, Wikis, various social media tools and Google Docs which allows multiple people to simultaneously edit the same document even if they are in different physical locations (Carpenter & Springgay, 2010).
I feel that one of the big appeals of using ICT in learning is that students are keen to use the technology because on the whole they have previously had a pleasurable experience interacting with it. There is plenty of literature to suggest that computers and games (Howard, 2006; Oldfield & Slessor, 2010). Zang (2008) discusses the importance of looking at what motivates people to use ICT in the learning process.

Finally, I think the key features that make ICT in the classroom compelling are;

·         Dynamic, ICT is a fast changing field and this makes it attractive to many (although scary to a few students).

·         Fun, students generally associate ICT with fun. The key is to relate the fun to the planned learning outcomes.

·         ICT facilitates communications and allows for the creating and sharing of information in a variety of formats.

References

Board of Studies. (2012). information-and-digital-technology-syllabus.pdf. Retrieved May 11, 2015, from http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/pdf_doc/information-and-digital-technology-syllabus.pdf

Brand, J. (2006, November). Games are good for learning : not just because they are fun. Retrieved May 11, 2015, from http://search.informit.com.au.ezproxy.csu.edu.au/documentSummary;res=AEIPT;dn=155943

Carpenter, B. S., & Springgay, S. (2010). Technology and Collaboration. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 7(2), 1–5.

Howard, C. (2006). Learning, study and review methods 101: A fun way to learn and study complex theoretical content. In 23rd Annual Ascilite Conference (Lina Markauskaite, Peter Goodyear and Peter Reimann 3 December 2006 to 6 December 2006) (pp. 351–361). Sydney University Press. Retrieved from https://ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney06/proceeding/pdf_papers/p103.pdf

Marsh, C. (2010). Becoming a teacher. Pearson Higher Education AU. Retrieved from http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WwbiBAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=marsh+becoming+a+teacher&ots=Ayr1Z0zggY&sig=jjsBz8h0Sb_l1Qn9dxKzqyXUg_w

Oldfield, J. D., & Slessor, A. (2010). Shades of Grey: Playing games in the classroom to enhance student learning. Retrieved from http://unitec.researchbank.ac.nz/handle/10652/1668

Roblyer, R., & Doering, A. (2014). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching: International Edition (6th ed.). Pearson.

 

Zhang, P. (2008). Motivational Affordances: Reasons for ICT design and use. Communications of the ACM: technical opinion, 145-147.