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Saturday, September 4, 2010

VIDEO REVIEW

VIDEO REVIEW

Introduction
A video from Teacher's Tv (http://www.teachers.tv/)A website contains the latest information in teaching methods and material for educators and students. The chosen video titled"  Better Learning With ICT" focusing on Online Communities in the Classroom.

Main characters:

Marie Guymorach - Modern Foreign Language Teachers in Cavendish School.
Lisa - Spanish teacher- who is very expert in using Social networking in the classroom activities.

Synopsis:

This video is highlighted a foreign language teacher who has been working for 5 years in Cavendish School, which is an international school at United Kingdom. Marie Guymorac’h had difficulties to teach the language using the current technology even she has been teacher for years. Therefore, she is looking for an alternative to upgrade her pedagogical knowledge and develop her skill in integrating ICT practices in her classroom. Then she would be able to build herself confident in her language teaching. This problem will be a challenge for her to improve herself.

Marie met Lisa to get help. She went to Lisa's classroom to experience how Lisa conducts her class using the technology. Both of them are teaching languages, so there will not be a problem to share their experiences. Lisa introduced Twitter; one of the social networking and how it benefits her students.Twiter enables its users to send and read other users' messages and comments on their own or friend's post. Then Lisa showed how E-Language works in creating attractive class activities. This website enables students to interact with the other community throughout the world. There are Spanish, French, German and English Language software provided. In E-Language website, the teacher able to set up the project and able to share or discuss with the community around the world. So Lisa took this opportunity to apply the other teacher's project into her classroom. Students enjoyed creating their animating character or avatar which can record their voice into it. Finally their avatar can speak!

Marie raised a question about the personal privacy when they involved in the social networking. Lisa eliminates the worries by advising her not to picture herself directly in the community. Discloses her personal contact number or direct line and other personal identity.

Lisa also introduced the usage of the school website where teacher can create their own wiki-space for the information sharing. Lisa creates their own wiki-space and create a celebrity avatar to attract her students. It is like a scrap book where teacher can decorate and arrange the pages on the own creativity. All the information is accessible by the students. Lisa accessing online community through website. It offers multimedia slide shows with videos and comments. For example, Lisa create a Spanish Food video so the students able to comments on every photo and share with their friends.

After visiting Lisa, Marie returned to her school and practiced on what she had learned. She had the idea to start her lesson and became more confident to speak French. She able to concentrate on her student's pronunciation and encourage them to create their avatar with adding their voice together. Through their voice, they can identify their pronunciation problems.

Discussion

The usage of Twitter or other social networking like Facebook, Friendster, Hi 5 and My Space in the classroom is one mode of the modern pedagogical practice. This social networking classroom activity will employ critical thinking and engage students to develop a better understanding of concept. From the video, Lisa used Twitter in her classroom and it was becoming a mainstream in many schools around the modern country. To this end, the successful of Twitter is about making connection with other teachers and students around the world to support the significant learning events. Twitter also can be use by the teacher to improve their pedagogical knowledge by collaborating with other teacher in the communities. They also can share their pedagogical self-reflection and professional development activities.

As for the students, social network activities focus on research, data gathering communicating with experts, examining other points of view, and dialogue within all curriculum areas uses online tools. From the video, Twitter can be use as a networking to support students’ collection of scientific data, historical facts, geographical information and poll data. For the language teacher, they may create a creative story theme by selecting any genre and begin a story opener which is tweeted around the class network of participating school for contribution to the story line.

Other benefit of Tweeter is students able to develop polls by using the conventional issues. This method is applicable in Mathematics teaching. Once the data is collected, students can perform them in a table, graphs and use the mathematical reasoning skill to explain poll finding.

Moreover, in language teaching, students can develop their grammar by tweeting the world around their network. In this activities teacher can select a word of the week and tweet it to the committee in the network and requesting their synonym and antonym. During the lesson, students able to communicate with the expert. They will be able to discuss their learning problem in the network. In this online technology, the twitter’s impact on engaging students in this activity is unlimited and very valuable tools for teaching and learning.  

Modern Pedagogical approach by using new technology is social constructivism, as it is builds on social interaction and engagement. Social networking provides a new ways to connect and share information and creates network of interest. Compared to the traditional classroom, teacher have to form a group by selecting them, and assign task but when using social networking tools, this level of connection happen immediately.

Although social network is very useful for teaching and learning, it still has limitation. While this level of connection and shared is a great first step in community building, it does not necessarily lead to learning communities or sharing ideas. This is intentionally happen and the instructor is very much to support the process of learning. There are several important steps the instructors have to pay attention.
·         Teachers should avoid “8 to 5” networking connection. Means that teacher have to be open for the connection even after office hour.
·         Teachers have to use a variety of supporting tools to process information. Students are used to multitasking learning activities. So teacher can use blog, audio, You Tubes, Mp3 and others.
·         Teachers should actively synthesize broadly scoped ideas into workable focus area. Teacher intervention is crucial in making sure those ideas are managed and well grown and that students stay focused on their goal.
·         Teachers should continually engage students in the activities. They should aware of all their students base on their basic needs and level. By customizing an activities which considered all level of students, will make them feel appreciated and connected with the other friends. Frequently, integrate the new ideas that the students offers as a part of the engagement so that they understand their participation in the learning community.

A wiki is a website that allows the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked WebPages via a web browser using a simplified markup language or a WYSIWYG text editor (Wikipedia). Wikis are typically powered by wiki software and are often used to create collaborative wiki websites to power community websites, for personal note taking in corporate intranets, and in knowledge management systems (wiki). By using wiki, teachers are able to invite the students to edit any page or to create new pages within the wiki website like what Lisa did in her classroom. Wiki will promote a meaningful topic between different pages by linking them. Teachers must usually update their page before allowing students to alter or comment. Only registered students or user can participate in the pages. In terms of privacy, the server sometime requires the user authentication to edit pages and even to read them.

Marie seems to be very curious about the trustworthiness of these pages. Most people, when they first learn about the wiki concept, assume that a website that can be edited by anybody would soon be rendered useless by destructive input. It sounds like offering free spray cans next to a grey concrete wall. The only likely outcome would be ugly graffiti and simple tagging, and many artistic efforts would not be long lived. Still, it seems to work very well. (Cars Aaronson)

Blog are like online journals where users can post updates in the form of text, pictures, audio or video files as often as you like. Teachers can use their blog for the reflection writing diary. The advantages for students include the fact that they are writing for a wider readers / audience. The blogger may receive comments from the readers. So this could be applied in the classroom where the teacher write the knowledgeable post, and publish them to the students. Blog can be easily and promptly set up without any developing or registering cost. Free blogging services such as Blogger, Edublogs, Live Journal, Word Press, and others.
Blogs are surprisingly easy to use. They require minimum technical knowledge and are quickly and easily created and maintained. Unlike many traditional Web sites, they are flexible in design and can be changed relatively easily. Best of all, students will find them convenient and accessible via home or library computers.

By using blog in the classroom, teachers may integrate multi tasking activities to accommodate all students. The application of Howard Garner’s theory of multiple intelligences varies widely. It runs the gamut from a teacher who, when confronted with a student having difficulties, uses a different approach to teach the material, to an entire school using MI as a framework. In general, those who subscribe to the theory strive to provide opportunities for their students to use and develop all the different intelligences, not just the few at which they naturally excel. (Wikipedia).

Class blogs can be a portal to foster a community of learners. As they are easy to develop and update efficiently, they can be used to inform the class requirement, to post handouts or assignments, notice, notes or can be a poll to collect data.

Blogs can be a space where teachers and students can work to further post their writing and other information for the instant audience. Teacher may offer an instructional hint and students can practice the exercise with the help of their peers. Therefore online monitoring is possible. For example, Form 5 students can help younger students in their writing skills.

Students will have an opportunity to sit for a discussion outside the classroom. The discussion would be at anytime and anywhere. Students have an equal opportunity to share their thoughts and opinions. Students also able to react to the post and reflect on learning. At the same time, students are participating in cooperative learning activities that require them to relay on the finding, ideas and suggestion.
A blog which is present, organize, and protect students work as a digital portfolio. Students will be motivated to produce a good writing when they realized that it would be posted in the blog. They will work hard towards it. Teacher may ask other teacher from the shall or outside to read the blog and give comments to the students and to correct them.

Besides discussing the benefits of blog, it also has a few risk to be considered. Blogs will be viewed widely as any other web sites, so there is no privacy to access. Students should be taught to be more careful to consider the security and free expression. They must not write a post which is infringing upon others right.

Blogs are created for various purposes. Some of them are written emotionally to express their feeling, and some of the article posted is just the opinion of the blogger. So there are no factual post necessary in the blog. Hence, the content should be filter before accepting as useful information to be stored in mind.


E-Portfolio

            E-Portfolio is a collection of documents often in multiple media, relating to the achievement of individual. In education, teachers and students will tailored online space then the learner will assemble their set of collection of individual work and collaborative work. Their page are regularly modified and updated during the period of study.



Conclusion
         The movie brought a very clear concept of integrating online tools in educational purposes. This benefits both teacher and students. This online tools teaching in the classroom will promote students centered approached and teacher as a facilitator or instructor.  While constructivist or student-centered instructional philosophies are not unique to any one teaching mode, there are several advantages to the use of online tools for promotion of critical thinking using this type of philosophical approach (Astleitner, 2002). As highlighted by this review, there are a variety of ways to utilize online technologies to supplement traditional classroom activities and promote critical thinking in the virtual classroom. With the primary goal of promoting students’ critical understanding and analysis of course information, the focus should not be on the technology itself; rather the emphasis must be on the careful selection of appropriate online instructional strategies to meet course content and process goals.












BIBLIOGRAPHY
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             
  1.  London: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc, 2007, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1192819/wiki, retrieved 2008-04-10
  2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences#Use_in_education
  3. Astleitner, H. (2002). Teaching critical thinking online. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 29 (2), 53-77