Reflections on EDRL6004

I totally enjoyed this course. It was very interactive and the tools learnt are very applicable to education. I enjoyed the digital story telling activity the most. It captivated me and I was just thinking of the several things that I can do with it in the classroom. The software is easy to use and best of all it is free.

I am amazed at the concept of Cloud Computing and the implications it can have for our schools in Trinidad. I am seeing lap top carts in the school with access to broad band Internet services. I am visualizing our students using the productivity tools from Google Docs and creating concept maps. I can almost see them blogging and sharing their ideas using Wikis and most of all I am hearing their laughter and chatter when they collaborate their ideas with their peers. I want this to be the reality of our students. I want them to use the tools and apply it to situations in innovative ways.

I appreciated the way that the course was structured. Every thing was well organized and easy to access. We were allowed adequate time to practice and discuss what was learnt. The E-learning site is filled with valuable information that can be used in many situations both in our private and professional lives. The availability of reading resources was great I did not have to wait for a book from the library or be on a waiting list to get access to a journal or article. This course was very user friendly.

Thank you Aisha for sharing your knowledge and patience with us. I will share all that you have taught me.

Am I prepared as a 21st century reading specialist?

I often wonder if I can go out there and help teachers with teaching literacy skills. I often feel that I may not know enough content to keep them interested or that I may bore them. I have come to the point where I know that preparation is the key. Once I am prepared and can realistically help them I know that I will have a chance to continue teaching what I was taught.

To be a reading specialist in schools in Trinidad I realize that there will be many hurdles to face. I do have some knowledge of Instructional Design (ID) and this has changed my view on lesson planning, assessment and the writing of objectives. It is from this view that I know prepare my work.

This however is not practiced in most of our schools and I will have to share with teachers if they are willing to do so to apply concepts of ID when preparing their instructional lesson plans for their class.

I will also have to keep updated on research reports so that I will be aware of what is happening in the area of reading so that I can apply best practices. The road will be difficult, but I believe that the training that I have received so far will help me to learn more and to persevere so that I will be able to help students with their literacy skills.

Digital Story Telling

Tonight was extremely interesting in Aisha.s class; we were taught how to use the software Microsoft Photostory 3. The whole idea of digital story telling is amazing. The potential for such a tool for use in education is really exciting. Teachers can use it to teach difficult content in a fun and meaningful way. I can see students using it to tell their own stories and apply knowledge learnt across all subject areas.

The software is very user friendly and has a lot of features that can complement creativity. I will use this to teach content in Social Studies and Science. Students can use it to create their electronic biographies and also share their ideas on other social network sites.

The whole concept is very much like other web 2.0 technologies it allows you to do things that you would not normally be able to do using traditional photography. The software is free and easy to download. Schools can use this software to enhance the whole teaching learning process. I do feel a bit sad that many of our teachers will not have the opportunity to use such a valuable tool because of non-exposure.

Reading Specialist

I always wanted to learn how to teach students to read. I was formally trained to do some of this at Teachers’ training college but it was not enough and did not prepare me fully for the classroom. There was very little help from other teachers because they themselves did not have much planning knowledge, they did however develop techniques over time and applied knowledge from workshops.

Over the years I have seen students from many schools struggle with reading and always wondered if the schools were at fault. I have come to realize that schools are responsible for many students not being able to read. The main reason for this is that many schools do not have a cohesive reading plan, a plan that connects from one level to the next. Many teachers do not assess reading correctly and therefore do not meet the needs of individual students. It is my hope that I will be in a position help teachers teach reading in such a way that they will be motivated to apply skills taught to them and add their own experience to the existing knowledge.

I firmly believe that once teachers are equipped with the knowledge to teach reading and they are supported by the MOE that every effort will be made to insure that all students are given a fair chance at reading. As a reading specialist I would be given the opportunity to share what I have learnt so that teachers can be fully prepared to teach reading.

Educational Learning Theories and their Connection to Technology

Education in the 20th century is marked by the frustrated progressivism of figures like Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky (Farnham-Diggory, 1992). These innovators saw the need to radically change our educational system, which often placed institutional needs ahead of children's learning needs. Behaviorists like Thorndike and Skinner offered a similar critique of the status quo, though with a very different emphasis on developing more efficient, effective strategies for conveying information and skills to students.

While these theorists inspired generations of practicing teachers, the realities of the classroom inhibited innovation, forcing compromise and, in too many cases, complacency as teachers' dreams ran up against a roomful of students, each with unique needs, desires, and demands. It turns out that students' individual needs, which the theorists were trying to acknowledge and address, became the very downfall of programs which proved incapable of managing such a complex task. The resources and systems required were simply not available. Thus in the end, educational visionaries have often been viewed as ultimate failures because their prototype schools and programs were not widely replicated and diffused (Farnham-Diggory, 1992).

Technology has been promoted as an important enabling mechanism to help make these visions of education a reality. There was nothing wrong with the theories, argue technology advocates, but we lacked the means of realizing these theories in the classroom. Just as technology has achieved productivity gains in business and manufacturing, we can expect technology to help with the "work" of education. So now, if a teacher can't respond individually to thirty students at the same time, maybe a computer lesson can-providing individual feedback to keep errors private. If the school can't afford a field trip to the museum, then a video or CD-ROM can bring images and presentations to the classroom. If students need access to information, they can search the Web. In spite of certain limitations-lack of intelligence or flexibility, limits in resolution, inequitable access, etc.-technology can help make theorists' progressive visions viable and affordable.

E-Books are Fun.

The construction of electronic books proves to be a very easy and exciting task. What I enjoyed the most was the access to the web sites with the choice of graphics. The possibilities of this tool for reading are enormous. While I was creating the book I put my self in the place of the student and I realized that they would enjoy the experience and at the same time give them an opportunity to be creative. I can easily visualize the students creating E-books to replace their classroom paper based projects.

The creation of E-books by teachers can directly enhance the delivery of the curriculum across all subject areas. Teachers can use these specially designed books to explain and present expository text in a graphically and appealing way. Students can also add to the design of the books by adding information that they gathered during their own research.

The use of electronic books is a great tool to encourage slow readers to read. The teacher can use sight words and other culturally relevant material to encourage reluctant readers to get acquainted with text. These books can also be made interactive since animations, sound and music can be used to illustrate difficult concepts. The use of E- books is a great tool for literacy.

LEARNING COMMUNITIES AND THE USE OF ICT

A breakthrough has come in the form of the Internet and networking technologies. The Internet, particularly the World-Wide Web, has become more than a source for retrieving archived information; it has become the medium that connects scattered people and resources together.

In many ways, the Internet's strength lies in its decentralized nature. The Internet is the ultimate distributed network, linking users and institutions of all kinds’ together, allowing interactions of all kinds to occur. Thus just as computer lessons can provide individualized instruction and feedback, the Internet can become the communications vehicle that both liberates and ties learners together, including students and teachers, into coherent learning communities.

Through its powerful communications and information-access capabilities, the Internet can be part of the glue that keeps people connected-talking with each other, noticing and appreciating differences, working out divergent views, and serving as role models and audiences for one another. The education future portended by the Internet, therefore, is not isolated, individually tailored to each child; rather, it is a community-centered future that accommodates the individual through the workings of the larger community.

Access to multiple sources of information becomes critical for the success of a learning community. Students look to teachers as role models for reasoning more than as information dispensers; thus students can come to respect the teacher's opinion without depending exclusively upon it. In many ways, the vitality of a learning community depends upon the quality of the information available to it.

ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY FOR THE INTERNET

With the current use of computer technology in the classroom, many teachers and parents fear the dangers that the uncensored Internet might hold for children mainly the inappropriate or obscene words and images; violence; and people who pose an online threat. It is with these concerns that all schools must have a plan to defuse such dangers. Schools can decide on an Acceptable Use Policy, or AUP, for the internet. Some sample goals for such a policy can be as follows:

· To protect all students from the adverse effects of the internet

· To protect the school from legal action caused by copyright infringement.

· To facilitate the acquisition of appropriate attitude, knowledge and skills in the field of technology.

Schools must also implement Student Guidelines for the use of copyright work. Students must be told what is copyright and to understand that it is a crime for which they can be punished. Guidelines can be as simple as some of the following points illustrate:

• When writing reports for your projects and you want to use information from your subject text books, read the material first, understand what you have read and then write it in your own words. Do not write the exact words from the text.
• Do not use work created by your friends such as drawings, paintings, poetry, and stories as your own work, this is cheating and not respecting their copyright for their work. Please get their permission to use their work.
• You are not allowed to burn CDs or DVDs with pictures, music and movies and sell them to anyone in or out of school. Please buy original music CDs and movie DVDs.

Using the internet for reading

While I have been studying for the Masters in Education (Reading) I felt that I was at a disadvantage because I had no concrete background in reading, only my training at teachers college which I attended over 22 years ago. The internet really helped me to understand the basic concepts in reading. I was able to prepare myself for classes by reading dozens of articles all for free on the internet.

I spent several hours searching the net for lesson plans on the five areas of reading to really understand what they were and how they could be applied.

The internet not only introduced me to factual knowledge but to a variety of ways to use tools available to teach the areas successfully. One of the major highlights for me on this course was being introduced to Cloud Computing.

I am glad that this can be used and it has changed my perception on how schools can prepare their physical infrastructure to accommodate the use of computers within the school environment. I have looked at how lap top computers are used and distributed during our own classes and I see this method once introduced can work very well within the school system.

The effective use of net books can be used within our school system once internet access is available. I can see the use of free software being used to enhance the teaching of all subject areas across the curriculum. This wireless technology has the potential to thrust our schools ahead in our quest to close the digital divide.

Technology use within the schools of Trinidad

There seems to be a lot of web 2.0 technologies that we are learning to use and hopefully we can pass on this knowledge to other teachers. I do have some concerns that I am sharing with you and hope that I can receive some viable answers. Many of our schools especially the secondary schools do have computer labs. Students have access to 25-30 computers in the lab with or without internet access. However the average population in secondary schools are anywhere between 600-800 students the ratio of computers to students is about 1:26 which is very difficult to work with. An acceptable ratio is about 1:3 or best practice 1:1. Many schools therefore use computers for the subjects that require them such as Computer Science or Information Technology. The use of technology enhanced lessons across the curriculum therefore can be very difficult or non-existent. The smarter way to use computers with internet access is to have them within the classroom setting so that they can be used for what they are: tools to help with teaching and learning.

Within the primary school system the ratio of computers to students are about 1:5. The problem is that many teachers view technology integration as literacy skills which we refer to as lower order thinking skills (LOTS) this is a start but what we must have is meaningful integration which requires use of the constructivist approach to teaching. Teachers need to use ICT tools to help students to think critically this can start simply by the use of web quests then use of blogs, wikis, concept map software and other viable resources that can be found e.g. educational software (off the shelf). I am deeply concerned about our schools and the MOE and their ability to equip our students with skills for the new millennium.

ICT use and the constructivist approach

The use of ICT’s does make cognitive demands when used across the curriculum on students. I looked at the Cognitive Development as described by Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner. Cognitive development can best be described as intellectual processes by which individuals make sense of the unknown. It involves storing and processing information in order to solve problems. With this in mind, I thought it necessary to read information on how students can develop cognitively using educational technologies. In order to develop higher order thinking skills I recognized that as a teacher I must allow my students to discuss, hypothesize, experiment and develop problem –solving skills on their own. This allows them to take charge of their learning. Therefore, as teachers if we desire to achieve this, the approach we need to take is a constructivist approach to learning which Piagetian psychologists and educators describe as, “the process of creating knowledge to solve problems and eliminate disequilibrium.”

The tools that we are currently learning in our course all lend themselves to the constructivist approach and does allow the student to be interactive within the process. By examining the works of Jean Piaget (1896-1980) and Jerome Bruner (1964) it can help us to have a clearer understanding of cognitive development and the role it plays in constructive learning.