Learning and Teaching with ICT

I have been doing some experimenting with how to post a podcast to GCast and embed it in blogs. I am very impressed with how easy it is to do. I simply create a short mp3 file in GarageBand (or you can use Audacity) and created a free GCast account and uploaded the file. Then I clicked on the link to provide the embed code to add it to this blog. I pasted this in a post using the HTML editor. Now to think of something worthwhile to say! I am sure that you can think of some really great ideas of how to use this tool with students.

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The first week of the topic was a bit of a head spin for students as they tried to get their head around the topic requirements. However, I have high expectations that everyone will finish the topic with increased knowledge about web 2.0 tools and how these can be used to enhance learning and teaching. A quick overview of the results of the survey what what students already know about web 2.0 indicated that there is a lot of exciting learning to be done. Hopefully, I haven’t scared anyone off and they will be back next week to find out what tool they have been allocated to investigate.

This week we focused on establishing our edublog and completing our first entry. We also looked at Pam’s blog and highlighted some of the issues around child safety and filtering. We also looked at how to embedd video using vod pod. Finally, we discussed what we believe 21st century learning looks like and focused on the following three questions:

1. What will the world be like in 20 years?
2. What skills will students need to be successful in that world?
3. What are the conditions around quality learning experiences?

Preparing my topic for my students next week I have found two interesting resources related to the idea of “digital natives”. The first is a video on edublog.tv about a vision of K-12 students today. This video is not unlike one that I have seen featuring older students sitting in a lecture theater in a tertiary institution, except this version features younger students holding up cards illustrating the difference in their uses of technology in and outside of schools. Here is the video: A vision of k-12 students today

The second resource that I found is a journal article by some Australian academics that argues the grand claims about ‘digital natives’ requires further investigation and can be likened to an academic form of ‘moral panic’. This article, featured in the credible British Journal of Educational Technology 2008, concludes that:

The picture beginning to emerge from research on young people’s relationship with technology is much more complex that the digital native characterisation suggests. While technology is embedded in their lives, young people’s use and skills are not uniform. … Young people may do things differently, but there are no grounds to consider them alien to us. Education may be under challenge to change, but is its not clear that it is being rejected (Bennett, Manton and Kervin, 2008).

My point of sharing both of these resources with my students is twofold. Firstly, to raise their awareness about calls for urgent educational reform in response to “digital natives” entering the education system and secondly, encourage them to think critically about the validity and implications of these claims. I concur with Bennett, Manton and Kervin (2008) that care is needed to remember that there …

appears to be a significant proportion of young people that do not have the levels of access or technology skills predicted by proponents of the digital native idea… [and that] it may be that there is as much variation within the digital native generation as between the generations. …Furthermore, the claim that there might be a particular learning style or set of learning preferences characteristic of a generation of young people is highly problematic (pp. 779-778, original emphasis).

Finally, I think it is important to remember that technology itself does not transform learning. Thus, whilst the use of web 2.0 tools has potential to improve learning and teaching, it is how these tools are used that is far more important.

This is my first blog! I hope to share my experience with my students as we learn about blogging together. To get started I think it would be appropriate to highlight the value of embedded video and this particular video on blogging by Comoncraft.