ICT- Item 2 Blog Part B ED4134

Leonardo Da Vinci
In this Exercise i am trying to lead the students along a pathway where they will be able to see images I've put there and then go and retrieve information that will assist in their understanding of the unit they are studying with a view to the historical, the cultural,the subjective, the structural and the post-modern frame's that are covered in the stage4 and stage 5 curiculum.

Year 9 Visual Art Class
Automania
Since man invented the wheel he has been totally entranced with the idea of moving at greater and greater speed in this excersie we will look at the love affair that man has had with this idea and his relationship to the modern day automobile.

http://lizzy.smugmug.com/gallery/1597167#77504537
Your work is to now go to this web address and find other machines that involved movement and to download at least three other machines that Leonardo Da Vinci designed. Remember to name them and write a sentence about what the did and how they worked. http://www.wga.hu/index1.html
The next step is to have a look at this slide show that gives you some idea of how people axpress themselves through their cars in todays society.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/surlygrrrl/sets/72157594212114201/show/?no_back=1
Here are some images of art cars that people have created

http://www.carhenge.com/

Now in relationship to the Multiple intelligences theory that Howard Gardner has developed these are very interesting and valuable frameworks to have as a underpinning in class activities.And with the help of ICT in classroom work we can enhance and expand their learning abilities. What I am looking at here is how do I see this as a real undertaking in my lessons and curriculum approach. The example that I am working on for this exercise, to cater for different learning styles,is a Stage 5 Visual Arts Unit titled Automania. The overview is about the relationship man has with his Car in this modern world, how it has the status of Icon associated with it, how we venerate the automobile and its development in historical terms. The students eventually will create their own Art Car in a sculptural 3D medium which would be decided by the faculty and what type of equipment the school had in their art rooms. The initial lessons that would occur before the students embark on any practical art works, are usually research and development based processes that expose them to the gaining of Visual, historical, cultural and societal based knowledge. It is at this stage, that I find the use of ICT ,in the transmission and gaining of knowledge can be most effective.Another important factor is the stimulation of each individuals creative potential, using a range tasks we can incorporate all types of learners.
The Verbal-Linguistic Intelligence
To engage the verbal linguistic learner, make sure in a list of tasks that the students have to fulfill, that you would ask them to express information they gathered into a poem or a rap, or to write a prose piece if that was appropriate for the task.They would need too name artists, genres of art practice, historical information and other information that might relate to whatever topic they were studying.
The Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
This doesn't mean that a person with this intelligence as the dominant in their make-up, cannot engage in the rather abstract and fuzzzy aspects of the creative mind.As a teacher we can always challenge them to quantify, categorise, analyse, identify the flaws in something ie, would Leonardo's car have worked, read more about Leonardo's observations of nature and list what he discovered.Or you could develop a game that leads the students from Leonardo to the present using cars.This is an area where you can really engage the student, as you can get them to design a computer game where specific outcomes have to be attained relating to the requirements of the topic.
The Naturalist Intelligence
These little ones are always a delight to from where I stand, they are so observant of the world around them. Even though their strength lies in the area of the natural world their ability to find out fascinating details that many overlook is always enlightening. Including tasks for the Naturalist is fun,for example, they have to discover how paint was constructed in 1462, what was it made from, where did the colours come from. This is a fun one to create a web quest from as it takes all over the world, you can give them experiments to do, create colours from grinding rocks and then painting with the pigments, again there are many ways for this student to be engaged and to develop their knowledge base and grow.
The Bodily-Kinaesthetic
I can always pick these ones in a class, they will be drumming with their fingers or feet, taping their pen on the desk, generally they can't sit still for very long. Now this can be a challenge when we do theory in an art class, I find they focus quite well on challenging construction processes that have a staggered level of achievement, for example if you designed a web quest or computer game that has scores different levels of achievement, the competitive side of this intelligence tends to be stimulated and you can get some really great results.
The Musical-Rhythmic Intelligence
This Intelligence can work alongside the Linguistic intelligence quite well as they have the abilities to work with rhythms and melodies, so they have that understanding of the patter and metre of sound in words and also music. Here is another area that can be introduced,music of the times that you are studying, music like art reflects the culture and society that we live in and it really engages the students to listen and learn about the musicians that created the music. They also learn more about the artist because in many instances the musicians and artists all hung out together and had similar thoughts about societies that they lived in.With the unit Automania there are endless references to cars through music, to create a game called Musical Cars.
The Visual-Spatial Intelligence
These students seem to naturally enjoy the visual arts but not always, they may be very creative in the practical side of art practice but they really would rather not do the theory work involved, so to engage these students can be just as much of a challenge as a mathematical logical learner. I find with this type of intelligence they really need to be designing something on the computer, there is a web site called "Pimp My Ride" where the student designs a car, from the basic shape up, and can add, change and insert a lot of their own choices onto the basic car design they have been given.
The Interpersonal Intelligence
These students will help you the teacher in the classroom setting and also their class mates. These are the team leaders, great if you are building a computer game around the unit you're studying, and wonderful at helping the digital immigrant learn to speak to the digital natives.Great people to lead group work and presentations, also at helping with peer to peer learning activities.Though they can be quite chatty in class, they can be a good support to students who might struggle and need that little bit of extra help in class work.
The Intrapersonal Intelligence
This student might like to keep a journal and use Leonardo's time as a starting point, looking at Leonardos inventions and whether they could have been built with the technologies available at that time in history.Or they could keep a journal imagining that they were one of the artists in the Futurist Movement,or even as a car during Leonardo's time and then at the turn of the 19th century and then in the future.



There are endless benefits to developing ICT in whatever unit you may be teaching. developing programs on platforms like moodle, not only develop the student but they develop the teacher as well because you can always modify, readjust and add to the initial program so it is a constantly growing and developing information source that gives the students current information and can be used to challenge them and make them think and construct their own learning which is what the constructive approach to educating children is about.

John Hattie

The article that I used is the one that Tony McArthur gave us on John Hattie, mainly because it was the most easily accessible and understandable one and the further I got into it the better it became. Firstly is what applies to New Zealand applicable to Australia, are the statistics that he presents the same or similar here in Australia. He demands higher quality teaching, higher quality results from students. But doesn't agree with the current approach the the education system is using with the big stick approach that it adopts. The fist part was all to do with stats, and graphs but it all heads toward a well presented case of five major dimensions of excellent teachers. The first point, expert teachers can identify essential representations of their subject, they have complete pedagogical knowledge and create interesting classes because of this. Secondly, expert teachers can guide learning through classroom interactions, they are very conscious of the classroom climate for learning. I noted in this area expert teachers needed to know about the ability, experience, and background of the students they were to teach, and they needed to know about the facility in which they would be teaching. I learnt this the hard way that this is really important. Thirdly, expert teachers monitor learning and provide feedback, if we learn to use Piaget, Vygotsky, Bruner, Glasser to name but a few theorists, our skills will increase so that we assess using many theories to get good feedback . Fourthly, attending to affective attributes, this pertains to a teachers care and respect for all their students and how they can overcome barriers to students learning. Lastly, influencing student outcomes, by understanding surface and deep learning and how to achieve this with all students and how to increase their self esteem and enjoyment of learning.
Building Teacher Quality, John Hattie. University of Auckland , October 2003.

William Glasser

Control Therapy, William Glasser.
I am sure that you will think I'm mad but I find Glassers approach talks to me on a very profound level. The psychological contexts of what he is talking about as fundamental human needs resonate with my own fundamental belief of my spiritual life. I cannot approach teaching without a deeply rooted belief in Christs message of developing and using our talents in every way we possibly can. I often reach the point of tears when I read Glassers work because it rings so true with my own experiences. He gives a ideal of what we can aim at, in quality teaching, teachers do not need to scold or punish or coerce. Instead they befriend students, provide encouragement and stimulation and show unending willingness to help, but they are also consistent and fair."By understanding the drives for SURVIVAL, POWER, LOVE, BELONGING, FREEDOM, and FUN in people, we become more conscious of the need for our world to be a quality world of our choosing".http://raider.muc.edu/~schnelpl/Control%20Theory%20-%20Overhead.html. Students not only need to know their rights but they also need to be very aware of the rights of those around them, in other words, their responsibilities to themselves and those around them. We can use Glasser to help us understand fundamental psychology that motivates a students actions that help them to make better choices. By understanding this proccess that Glasser has devised, we can learn so much about ourselves and our choices and in turn guide and help our students.

http://raider.muc.edu/~schnelpl/Control%20Theory%20-%20Overhead.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Glasser
http://changingminds.org/explanations/needs/glasser_five_needs.htm

Jerome Bruner

Jerome Bruners theoretical basis is similar in a way to Vygotsky in the sense that he wants individuals to be able to develop "beyond the information that is given"http://tip.psychology.org/bruner.html. So the individual develops not only their schema but the added benefits of developing in an individually creative way (which I find is great for individual confidence and self-esteem, and of course the courage to keep trying to learn).
"Bruner (1966) states that a theory of instruction should address four major aspects: (1) predisposition towards learning, (2) the ways in which a body of knowledge can be structured so that it can be most readily grasped by the learner, (3) the most effective sequences in which to present material, and (4) the nature and pacing of rewards and punishments. Good methods for structuring knowledge should result in simplifying, generating new propositions, and increasing the manipulation of information".http://tip.psychology.org/bruner.html. Lets look at aspect No1, it runs along a parallel with the other constructivists on "how they learn". Aspect No2 I can see Gardner's Multiple Intelligences being used effectively here. Aspect No3 suggests similar mental pictures to me of Bloom's Taxonomy, ans I use this a bit loosely because i can feel the differences between the two. I will try to explain what I mean more fully with an example."
His approach was characterised by three stages which he calls enactive, iconic and symbolic and are solidly based on the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget. The first, the enactive level, is where the child manipulate materials directly. Then he proceed to the iconic level, where he deals with mental images of objects but does not manipulate them directly. At last he moves to the symbolic level, where he is strictly manipulating symbols and no longer mental images or objects. The optimum learning process should according to Bruner go through these stages.

In 1960, Bruner (then a professor of Harvard University) proposed a “spiral curriculum” concept to facilitate structuring a curriculum ´around the great issues, principles, and values that a society deems worthy of the continual concern of its members´ (Bruner, 1960). The next decades many school system educators attempted to implement this concept into their curriculum. Bruner (1975) described the principles behind the spiral curriculum in the following way:

”…I was struck by the fact that successful efforts to teach highly structured bodies of knowledge like mathematics, physical sciences, and even the field of history often took the form of metaphoric spiral in which at some simple level a set of ideas or operations were introduced in a rather intuitive way and, once mastered in that spirit, were then revisited and reconstructed in a more formal or operational way, then being connected with other knowledge, the mastery at this stage then being carried one step higher to a new level of formal or operational rigour and to a broader level of abstraction and comprehensiveness. The end stage of this process was eventual mastery of the connexity and structure of a large body of knowledge”…(p.3-4). http://starfsfolk.khi.is/solrunb/jbruner.htm_3.htm
I have included this large slab of text because it showed me clearly the way I could teach visual arts to a wide range of ages and abilities in students. Teaching a creative skills based subject allows a topic to be introduced in an intuitive way, once you have a grasp and hold on the spirit of the topic you can then introduce the formal or operational way which might relate to a skill or a observation process or a textually based process. Then the development of all this information into the scaffolding of comprehension of the artist, their society, their practice, the world, the audience, meanings of then and now, etc, etc.


http://starfsfolk.khi.is/solrunb/jbruner.htm_3.htm
http://web.lemoyne.edu/~hevern/nr-theorists/bruner_jerome_s.html

Jean Piaget

Jean Piaget emphasises the learners interaction with their physical environment, his general theoretical framework is called "Genetic Epistemology" because of his primary interest in how knowledge developed in the human organism.
http://tip.psychology.org/piaget.html from reading some of the articles that I have on Piaget's theories, I can see that having these well instilled in my mind, will help me when I am in the classroom. I will have to understand and possibly assess what each student is capable of understanding and how they are computing the information. Giving us all these different stages and periods in a child's life, and how they all pass the same sequence of stages of cognitive development at similar ages and personal meanings which they can construct from experience depending on their current stage, is a platform for me see where they are at. It gives me a basis, a structure of criteria that will help me understand each student so that I can manage the individuals in my class to the best advantage for all of them.
Then you can tie in the other theorists and use techniques from all of them to help all your students, so students then have the ability given to them to all learn a topic or whatever it is that you are showing them, but learn it in relation to their own schema of their world. So this gives every child in the class a possibility to achieve good learning outcomes whether they are very bright and quick or they have learning disabilities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget
http://www.piaget.org/biography/biog.html
http://www.piaget.org/biography/biog.html

Lev Vygotsky

Now, here is a chap with the most amazing mind!, allot of what he has written at first has seemed just so confusing, but when I slowly get the hang of the language he uses and what he means, I can see he really had a great perception of how the learners minds work. I found a web site that helped me see some implementation of the tools that Vygotsky proposed for educators to use, Information on Tools of the Mind is now at http://web.archive.org/web/20Information on Tools of the Mind Following the links from this web address I was able to see some real ways of using his theories, which gives me something concrete to grasp hold of in a mental picture for myself to start understanding.
The way Vygotsky talks about us learning from the outside, from the social context that we are in as children, the environment around us. His theory of The Zone of Proximal Development,gives the individual the tools to step up to the next level of learning and understanding, using external help. The way our cognition grows and matures is not independent of our social environment but because of it. Now this has rather profound implications for how we as educators teach in this country and all over the world, we funnel these little ones into a class room and try to teach them. The use of scaffolding or mediation ( when an educator or peer ) assists with the solving of problems by tips, hints or demonstrations. These learning tools must be relevant to the individual, they have to be able to make sense of them, using their cognition of the social context they are in. I think their peer group is a very strong way for them to grasp this learning. Setting tasks and giving the students time to work in groups can be one of the ways to aid this learning process.
http://chd.gmu.edu/immersion/knowledgebase/theorists/constructivism/vygotsky.htm
http://www.funderstanding.com/vygotsky.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky
http://www.kolar.org/vygotsky/
http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html

Facilitating Deep Learning in the Adult online Learner, Fabio J. Chacon, Ph.D
I'm sure Kathryn has included this paper just for my benefit so when I reflect upon the hows, whats, whens and whys, I will have a platform to help me express this. This article most closely reflects what Kathryn has constructed in ED4134 for all of us to learn, and then be able to develope and use in the classroom when plan programmes and lessons. Learning to do all our work on this blog site has helped me understand "the concept of accomodation" a little better. I am learning something new and I consciously feel that my knowledge structures are adjusting.
Now I hope that I am right in how I am seeing this. Because of all this new awareness that I am experiencing; I can see some really exciting ways that I can engage students through the use of technology to be creative and have fun while they are learning (don't tell them that they are learning, you can do that later). I also see how technology will give all the students, with all different learning styles, a chance to really engage in deep learning that will develope their metacognition.
The development of the process of unstructured/ structured will be a most useful process for me to develope in my teaching skills, because I teach creative areas Visual Arts and Textiles and design, you need the structured elements. But the unstructured processes are utterly vital to developing creativity, and ones own expression. Through my own experience of this unit so far, I have felt the powerfully creative force that is released through the use of technology. The ability of the mind the do so much latteral thinking and quantum leaping, just using the world wide web is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.
I had a little chuckle to myself when reading "Discussion Patterns of Online Students" as I had attempted to do my Dip Ed through U.N.E. last year and I saw this happen frequently, I have also experienced it in class discussions with my Visaul Arts students, at all levels. I find as a teacher if you are listening carefully you find the words that you can use to pull them back on to the topic, and this chit-chat can actually develope their individual schema. I do get a bit overloaded with all this infinitesimally analysed process of how everything goes in and how it is processed and what happens when it is processed. So I hope we have more discussion about this in one of our classes.

Cultural Change Needed

Cultural change needed to exploit ICT in schools, Dr Alison Elliott.
An interesting article with some interesting oberservations about what I feel are very fundamental issues that relate to the development of ICT in the classroom. It certainly raises many issues and questions for me. I think many teachers that I have met, work with technology very effectively in the classroom, issues around this can relate to time and availability of computer labs and the system holding up and not breaking down. The curriculm has big holes in the implimentation of ICT, just how much extra load are we willing to pile up on our already heavily loaded teachers.
The use of ICT in schools is directly related to funding, not necessarily teachers ability to teach with it. The cost issue is fundamental to creating a divide between the haves and the have nots. Education is constantly being kicked from pillar to post by state goverment and federal goverment. And there is little support to teachers that wish to develope further in these areas, finding the money for casual teachers to replace staff out on new technology courses is almost impossible. The model of the "sage on the stage" as opposed to the "guide on the side" it really is about being a bit of both, and the wonderful development of ICT at this stage is making it a far more possible to teach using both manners. Reading through this article it seems to me that teachers are the ones who constantly need education in how they can best educate using all the tools in the eduation bag, not just one or the other. Again how much money is in the kitty, who says where it goes, how it is spent etc, it is a hugely complicated web to me at this stage.

Article by Rowe

Personal Computing: A Source of powerful Cognitive Tools. Helga A.H.Rowe.
This article led me to feel that computers should be the new blackboards of the future, and that learners will be more comfortable with them than holding a pencil in their hot little hands. This sets off some very deep alarm bells for me as an educator, and begs many questions on the level of metacognition and other cognitive capacities. The reference to learners having limited memory capacity, now for junior learners, I would have thought that building the foundation stones step by step was an essential process. When has the human mind or brain done this huge change that now requires us to jump from peak to peak without the filling in of the valleys. I've raised 3 children of my own and I have always been acutely aware of their learnling styles and capacity, and I've done reading at school. Now from my experience I have found that children fare better in a well developed step by step learning approach than trying to jump the gun and get them to develope new cognitive strategies and then put them inthe position of having to generate hypothesis and decision making skills etc this is for far more advanced learners. While I will of course acknowledge that yes,you will have some children in every class that will be able to fulfil this new vision of learning, I feel that has to be introduced very comprehensivly into all primary schools at the same time and not based on some quota system so the schools with only 170 kids will get 1 computer per classroom and schools with 570 kids will get 5.
I guess I am concerned that this article made me feel that there is a move towards a huge reliance on the computer to do a lot of the mental work for us that we used to do in our heads, some people are better than others at doing this. What happens when the systems break down, and thats just what they do. So what happens then when the baseline as I will call it, the step by step instruction, the foundation stones of what we need to learn hasn't been put into place.
I don't accept that the human mind has limited capacity, I'm sure that the great mathmeticans and philosophers would understand what I am trying to say. Computers are an adjunct to learning and they will only be a useful tool in cognitive learning if all the basic steps are in place.

Rethinking ICT in education'
Carole Steketee
this power point was very thought provoking. I know that my experiences with ICT have been very frustrating (especially what I have just been through in the last 4 weeks with telstra and bigpond) I find that most of the time I just have to bungle my way through. I guess i'm slightly jaundice in my view of whether technology is as important in the clasroom as its being made out to be. I suppose that this is due to my own experience of how difficult its implementation is in the school setting. And then you may face the IT regulations of the school and have access denied when you are least expecting it.
Putting all my shallow concerns out of the way, I feel that if one has sufficent time and understanding of the curriculm, the support to learning that ICT (in all its vast array) brings, is extremely exciting. I can see ways already that I would use it in my own areas of teaching that could help facilitate that deep learning, that metacognition that would provide the students not only with content but a sense of their own place with in the scheme of their own world today. This would take a lot (I mean a heck of a lot) of personal time on the part of the teacher but as I am learning right now (after struggling for hours to get this blog site working for me) the more you spend time the more you learn and have the confidence to do. I feel that the figures that she quotes on effective use of ICT in the classroom are possibly correct, but from what I see many teachers are loaded very heavily out side the classroom with curriculm work, lesson plans, research and a hundred other demands on their very busy lives. I think maybe they don't have time to learn or keep up with all the new advances and programmes, schools could do more to support teachers with staff development days devoted to, teaching teachers how to learn with technology or the syllabus planners providing units already developed in this area.
Upon reflection it is worth the effort, all these areas of higher-order learning, dialogue, discussion and metacognitive thinking and learning will be developed if we incorporate ICT in the everyday classroom. If every school was made to adhere to the "10 ways to encourage wider usage" I feel the fear of, and lack of enthusiasm for ICT would vanish fairly rapidly and students would successfully be engaged. I particularly liked the 4 R's, they are going into my backpack of useful tools. Carole Steketees' article was very understandable and it didn't make me feel like a complete nincompoop, at least she gave me hope to go on and keep trying!