- Ten Principles to Active Learning (http://www.idecorp.com/teacher/documents/dowling_002.pdf)
We'll first look at Slideshare. I am still in the initial phase of this application but I believe it to be similar to that of youtube. It provides various information in a multimedia format but that similar of a PowerPoint presentation. Being able to post live scholarly PowerPoints for everyone else to view and use for academic purposes is something that is promising. I believe that this could more effectively used in a secondary schooling phase for teaching students, but be quite effective for older primary student to form assessment presentations here. The only difficulty that I associate with providing the use of students on this program is that significant teacher guidance is required because at times it is difficult to navigate throughout.
Wikispaces for me is just like a standard Internet site but with the ability to have multiple administrators altering the content of the site. This program could be effectively used in the association and creation of webquest type tasks where students are easily able to work in groups, individually work on separate pages and collaboratively formulate the entire document with the incorporation of each individual page. This positive to learning has been identified in the Ten Principles of Active Learning. Students are required to "engage in collaborative, open-ended problem solving with peers as well as working independently when needed" (Ten Principles to Active Learning) This type of technology allows students to engage in this principle quite effectively. A minor problem I noticed with this is that minimal design features are available for alteration. Also those students with extended computer knowledge are the ones who are able to completely benefit from this program.
Finally Powerpoint was also discovered. I believe that I have an extended knowledge in this program. Creating master slides, drawings and altering colours on images are something that I can associate with. Something I was disappointed with was the introduction of the "drag and drop" feature. Honestly you can complete this to the same success in Microsoft Word. Macromedia Flash is a program that would provide results with the drag and drop feature. In this you can program that thing that is being dropped to complete an action if it is dropped in the correct position. This would provide better results for prep students when completing such tasks like connecting animals to their matching sounds that they make.
I'm hoping next week we will be introduced to programs that will be as useful as those in the first week as quite frankly I believe that the uses for the programs explored this week are poor (to name it harshly).
Anyways until next time, don't be afraid to critically analyse new programs and not just say "Oh yeah this new program is so good!" Be weary!!
To Dare Is To Do
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