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الاثنين، 27 مايو 2013



Part A:

1. Digital storytelling:



''Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling. Throughout history, storytelling has been used to share knowledge, wisdom, and values. Stories have taken many different forms. Stories have been adapted to each successive medium that has emerged, from the circle of the campfire to the silver screen, and now the computer screen.'' (The Digital Storytelling Association, cited in DeNanale & Traynor, 2008). In other words, digital storytelling is to use technology to make meaning of stories  in specific and leaning in general which is created in an interesting way adding certain multimedia that attracts learners' attention towards learning and creating as well. Adapting digital storytelling in education and specifically in the classroom, Bull and Kajder (2004) ''found that the following sequence of steps works well: write an initial script, plan an accompanying storyboard, discuss and revise the script, sequence the images in the video editor, add the narrative track''. Digital storytelling is very useful in engaging students to use their personal experiences in a form of story and benefiting from technology to understand the subject. ''The process of developing a digital story is not only deeply engaging for students, it also fosters a type of reflection that is difficult to accomplish through print assignments. These types of assignments also address the needs of aural, visual, and kinesthetic learners'' (DeNanale & Traynor, 2008).

As a future teacher, I wanted to use this method of storytelling in my class to attract students' attention and make them engaging and enjoying their learning. I felt so happy when we were introduced to digital storytelling in technology course this semester because I wanted to learn about it and apply it in my teaching in the future. With my friends I have used movie maker application to create a story using technology. What we did was writing a story at first. Then, we narrated the story and recorded our sounds. After that, we made our younger siblings to act the story and we took photos of them. Finally, we joined all of these elements together and put in the movie maker and that is how we used digital storytelling in this course. (you will find our product of movie maker in part 2). It was an interesting experience and we benefited a lot from it because it will be an addition to the variety of the teaching methods in teaching and it will help the students to be engaged and interested in the subject they learn. They will also be happy to have a new experience which will make them creative rather than being assessed with tests and quizzes as usual.
 To sum up, using technology in general and digital storytelling in specific is very crucial in the educational field .It is very important to teachers and students as well to use it in the teaching and learning process because it makes education more interesting. 

Resources:

DeNatale, G., & Traynor, J. (2008), Digital Storytelling: Tips and Resources. Academic Technology.

Bull, G. & Kajder, S. (2004), Learning & Leading with Technology. International Society for Technology in Education, 49.


2. Technology in Education:



Technology in education is considered a  tool that is helpful in  student learning and it shows how and why people behave. Educational Technology is a part  of the word "technology" 's wide meaning. Technology in terms of education is referred  to as material objects like overhead projectors, laptop computers, and calculators. Also tools such as smart-phones and games are used because of their learning  potential. '' The newest challenge is to use technology to individualize instruction to help students meet standards. Teachers should consider using technology to adjust content to students’ individual learning styles to achieve this goal'' (AL-Bataineh & Brooks 2003).

Technology in the classroom:

There are many technological tools that can be used in the classroom and these are some of them:



*Computer in the classroom: Having a computer in the classroom is an asset to any teacher. With a computer in the classroom, teachers are able to demonstrate a new lesson, present new material, illustrate how to use new programs, and show new websites. ( Using Technology to Enhance the Classroom Environment, 2002).



*Mobile devices: Mobile devices such as clickers or smart-phone can be used to enhance the experience in the classroom by providing the possibility for professors to get feedback. (Tremblay, 2010).




*Digital Games: The field of educational games and serious games has been growing significantly over the last few years. The digital games are being provided as tools for the classroom and have a lot of positive feedback including higher motivation for students. (Biocchi, 2011).




In my opinion, technology is an addition to the methods of teaching that the teacher can use to deliver the subject in an interesting way. furthermore, they need to have the knowledge to make use of these various technological tools so that they teach their students how to use them correctly. nowadays, no one can escape from using technology in schools especially Microsoft office programs like word and PowerPoint, Photoshop application, etc. Personally, I used Photoshop application in one of the courses in the SQU which was an interesting experience that made me go further in this world to be more capable of using it as a future teacher. Another experience I had using technology in learning was in technology class this semester in which we used the Whatsapp application in smart-phones to discuss the issue of cyber safety. It was a discussion directed by our doctor who was the facilitator and we, the group members, responded to the facilitator's questions and argued about that issue. It was really interesting and added more fun in learning. In addition, we searched and read many articles and went deeper in the issue because we were curious to know the answers of the raised questions. Really, it worked well and it was a good experience. Here is our discussion using Whatsapp application:



As a future teacher, I support using technology in classroom because it saves students' time and efforts. It also adds some fun to their learning and makes them more interactive. However, I will guide them to use it in appropriate way and check if they copy their work using the internet or not. I will pay attention regarding this point and make sure they benefit from it.

Here are some examples of using technology in education:

-Microsoft Office:

*Word:

*PowerPoint:



-Photoshop:



Resources:

AL-Bataineh, A. & Brooks, L., (2003), Challenges, Advantages, And Disadvantages of Instructional Technology in The Community College Classroom. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 27: 473–484.

Biocchi, Michael. "Games in the Classroom". Gaming in the Classroom. Retrieved 24 March 2011.

Tremblay, Eric. "Educating the Mobile Generation – using personal cell phones as audience response systems in post-secondary science teaching. Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching, 2010, 29(2), 217-227. Chesapeake, VA: AACE.". Retrieved 2010-11-05.


Using Technology to Enhance the Classroom Environment. THE Journal, 01 January 2002.



3. Interactive Whiteboards ''IWBs'' in the Classroom  Pedagogy:




''IWB technology typically combines a projector with software and computer technology to produce enlarged and interactive images, animations and text for the purposes of teaching and learning. IWB technology has been   described as a computer connected to a data projector which projects images onto a touch or pen-sensitive screen.'' (BECTA, 2004; Bell, 2002; Kennewell & Higgins, 2007; Roberts, 2007).

Gibson (cited in, Burden, 2002, p. 5) suggests that schools go through a series of stages of technology development: infusion, integration and transformation. Burden suggests that Gibson’s stages may be “a means of looking at how we might expect the use of electronic whiteboards to develop over the coming years” 
(p. 7).



Pedagogical Approaches:

*''Whole class interaction was the main pedagogical approach used.
*Over forty different uses of IWBs noted.
*Dialogue was often authoritative and followed a traditional Initiate-Respond-Evaluate interaction mode (Mehan,1979).
*Both students and teachers suggested a preference for this whole-class approach rather than collaborative small-group or pair group approaches.
*Pre-planned lessons were strongly supported by the technology and teachers used the boards to collect resources, plan whole lessons and past lessons for future review.
*Explicit teaching was prevalent.'' (Kearny & Schuck, 2007).

In my experience, Interactive Whiteboards have the ability to help create learning environments which appeal to all learners much more easily than you might be able to without them. They allow using auditory and visual. They have the ability to let  teachers producing advanced lessons, a well-organized  plan. They bring life to learning for most students. They will encourage us, as future teachers, to create prepared resources, they will also allow us the opportunity to choose the best methods of creating lessons that will maintain all the needs of our learners. They are fabulous and fabulous.
In this course, I had the opportunity to try them for the first time and ,as a student, I enjoyed the class using them. It added more fun and interactivity in the classroom as if it had brought life to the students. We tried the IWB using the ActiveInspire application in creating variety of lessons and here are the examples of our work:

ActiveInspire: Vegetables:


Resources:


Ishtaiwa, F.F. & Shana, Z. (2011). The use of interactive whiteboard (IWB) by pre-service teachers to enhance Arabic language teaching and learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education: Gulf Perspectives, 8(2).

Schuck, S. & Kearney, M. (2007). Exploring Pedagogy With Interactive Whiteboard.




4.Wikis and Collaborative Learning: 



''Wikis are websites that can be interactively edited by any number of people using simple online tools. An incremental version of the website is stored each time an edit is saved, making it possible to ‘rollback’ the site to any previous version if subsequent edits need to be undone.'' (Cropper, Judd & Kennedy, 2010). It is an outstanding way of teaching that can be added to the teacher's methods used in the classroom. The picture bellow shows the steps of creating a wiki:



There are many sites that can be used easily to create a wiki. Learners will be motivated to be creative and interested in looking for information to post it in their wikis which is a good thing to make them curious about what they learn. It is also used in collaborative learning in which groups of students work together and collect information about the subject they study and post it in their wikis in a creative way. However, using wikis in collaborative learning  should be introduced by the teacher in appropriate way to be effective way in learning . Mackey (2007) argued that by using wiki alone, students did not necessary learn more effectively. Instead, the use of wiki should be balanced with face-to-face activities in order for communities of practice to function well.


In my point of view, wiki is a useful method in teaching. Instead of using the usual ways in teaching, teachers can use wikis in group work, so that students will divide the work and do it together to benefit from it. It is an easy way to make what they learn sticks in their minds because they will have to put an effort in it and write it in their wikis to present it in an attractive way. However, I think that teachers should not depend a lot on it because it does not work all the time. Sometimes, students have to discuss things with the teachers and not only writing in the  wikis because speaking is the best way used in convincing and presenting ideas. Wikis should be used to add more fun and changing styles of teaching and not for students to be assessed on because  they will lose their value which is adding fun to learning.

I had an interesting experience in creating a wiki for the first time in this course. My friends and I created a task for students which is made up of many parts. We used the wiki and posted the task there with the  materials that students should read for them to do the task. It was an enjoyable experience. I enjoyed it.
Here is our wiki for this semester which was a debate about keeping exotic animals:



Resources:

Cropper, S., Judd, T. & Kennedy, G. (2010). Using wikis for collaborative learning: Assessing collaboration through contribution. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 26(3), 341-354.

Leung, K., (2009). Using Wikis for Collaborative Learning: a Case Study of an Undergraduate Students’ Group Project in Hong Kong.

Mackey, T. (2007). The social informatics of blog and wiki communities: Authoring communities of practice (CoPs). Proceedings of Canadian Association for Information 
Science. Montreal, Canada: 1-14.




5. Concept Mapping:





''Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts.'' (Canas & Novak, 2006). In other words, concept mapping is representing different concepts in the easiest way can be. Canas and Novak (2006) state that ''there are two features of concept maps that are important in the facilitation of creative thinking: the hierarchical structure that is represented in a good map and the ability to search for and characterize new cross-links.''
The picture bellow show you the steps of concept mapping: 



Concept mapping is beneficial in classroom. For example, in science classroom, ''concept maps allow students to think deeply about science  by helping them to better understand and organize what they learn. Students also and to store and retrieve information more efficiently, articulate and challenge their thoughts about science when they discuss their maps with each other.'' (Ruiz-Primo, Tomita, Vanides, & Yin, 2005). As a learning tool, concept map can be used as a tool of note taking, study, collaborative mapping, summarizing readings, etc.

In my point of view, concept mapping is a very effective tool that has to be applied by teachers and students. Teachers can do it to make lessons easier for students and to make them differentiate between what is important to them and what is not. Students can use it as well when they study to make the study easier for them. Putting important notes in maps can help students in memorizing especially when they draw the map in different colors. From my experience, I found that this way works a lot until now.

In this course, I have learned how to use technology in making a concept map using prezi.com which is a very useful website in creating well-organized maps. As a future teacher, I will definitely apply the concept mapping using prezi.com. here are samples of using concept mapping in prezi.com:

*Structural Syllabus:

*Nyctophopia:

for further information about concept mapping, click here:


Resources:

Canas, A., J. & Novak, J., D., (2006). The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them.


Ruiz-Primo, M. A., Tomita, M., Vanide, J & Yin, Y. (2005). Using Concept Maps in the Science Classroom. National Science Teachers Association, Vol. 28, No. 8.


Part B:

My Collections in Technology Course:

During this semester, I have benefited a lot by applying what I have learned about technology. We have been introduced to many concepts in technology which have enriched the educational field that we work in. I have got the opportunity to use new applications and programs of technology in my practical teaching. Here are examples of the programs we worked on this semester and also my products of these programs:

1. Prezi: (We have learned about concept mapping and prezi is an online application that I used in creating concept maps). Bellow are two maps that I created using prezi to identify two concepts, one is about structural syllabus and the second one is about nyctophopia:
*Structural Syllabus:

*Nyctophopia:

2. Movie Maker: ( I used this application when we have learned about digital storytelling. This application helps in learning stories in an interesting way and our group has used it to make a story about ''The Careless Girl''):


3. ActiveInspire: ( We learned about this application when we were introduced to the interactive whiteboard ''IWB''. This application is used to make the lesson interesting and to engage students in the classroom. Our group have worked together to make a lesson about vegetables using ActiveInspire):
4. Wiki: ( We created a wiki in a website called weebly to engage students to write their opinions about the debate that was held in class. It was about keeping exotic animals as pets):

I hope you find these programs useful as I do and that you apply them in your own fields because they really work for everything.