Technology-Enhanced Learning

  Today I had the privilege to attend a so-called workshop on Teacher Anger Management. The presenter holds a PhD in educational psychology and has been conducting workshops and training sessions for many years. What made the workshop unusually tedious and droning was how the presenter used PowerPoint as a tool to replace him. I mean, here is a PhD holder in educational psychology and an experienced teacher trainer, yet he does not have any clue on effective presentation, regardless of the presence of a visual aid such as the PowerPoint. He clearly didn’t have a clue on the basics of multimedia theories and practices. If he had ever read anything in terms of working memory and long term memory and the effect of the verbal and visual channels on the attendees’ minds, he would’ve definitely revamped his presentation and restructured his workshop. At the end of the workshop, teachers said that they learned one important thing from the workshop: Not to use this type of  PowerPoi...

The internet abound with videos for educators, some contextual and benefit educators in particular situations  at a particular time (e.g. tools tutorials) while others are timeless by focusing on what really matters in education. Below are 10 videos that every educator should watch and reflect on his teaching context. Changing Education Paradigms: Sir Ken Robinson (an adapted animation) In this talk from RSA Animate, Sir Ken Robinson lays out the link between 3 troubling trends: rising drop-out rates, schools' dwindling stake in the arts, and ADHD. An important, timely talk for parents and teachers. Changing Paradigms: Sir Ken Robinson   2.  Five Ways to Listen Better: Julian Treasure In our louder and louder world, says sound expert Julian Treasure, "We are losing our listening." In this short, fascinating talk, Treasure shares five ways to re-tune your ears for conscious listening -- to other people and the world around you. Five Ways to Listen Better ...

It's no question that the notion of literacy has transcended beyond the written word to include the combination of visuals and words. Writing skills has also evolved into the art of combining the written word with visuals such as images and videos. Our students themselves are disengaged from the writing and are more tuned in to the “Visual Word”. For the past two years, I have turned the common CV assignments, part of the writing sessions with my grade 11 students, into Visual CV assignments. The results were remarkable, and I am writing this post to share it with you. I was first fascinated by the visual CVs when I came across some. Professionals using PowerPoint + images + words to produce stunning visual CVs and resumes that stand out. I first did my own visual resume and decided that my students should also do it, besides their traditional paper CVs. Students first wrote their traditional paper CVs which would serve as the basis for their Visual CVs. As high school students,...

Innovative educators are trying to engage students in their literature classes in books and literature works by using multimedia to address the students needs in the 21 century. One innovative technique is using the power of Google Earth and multimedia to take students in a 3D animated tour of one or more characters in the book that they are currently reading. Students would navigate the guided tour, already designed by the teacher and interact with the spatial environment of the characters.  This post will give a glimpse of what Google Lit Trips is, why is it useful, and some useful links if you want to delve deeper Please refer to the list of links at the end of the post for everything you need to learn about Google Earth and doing Guided tours. Scenario Students are reading “Johnny Appleseed”. They are engaged in some kind of literature circles to discuss chapters, characters, and analysis of salient elements in the book. Teacher realizes that the plot includes many places w...

I’ve lately come across SNAPP (Social Networks Adapting Pedagogical Practice). SNAPP   is a software tool that allows users to visualize the network of interactions resulting from discussion forum posts and replies. The network visualisations of forum interactions provide an opportunity for teachers to rapidly identify patterns of user behaviour – at any stage of course progression. SNAPP has been developed to extract all user interactions from various commercial and open source learning management systems (LMS) such as BlackBoard (including the former WebCT), and Moodle. SNAPP is compatible for both Mac and PC users and operates in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. Developed by the University of Wollongong , this sociogram can visualize the discussion forum in an LMS (Blackboard, WEBCT, MOODLE, SAKAI..) and displays the student-student, teacher-student interaction in mind map. Names of students/teacher can be displayed. Also, each node size and link thickness refer to t...

If you look at the image on the left, you will notice the four key components of technology integration, what Collis & moonen (2002) refer to as key components of “flexible learning in a digital world”. The components ( institution, implementation, pedagogy, and technology ) are nested in each other, which means that each depends on and feeds from the other. The approach for the flexible learning can be seen in a top-down, that institution-wide to technological aspect, or in  a bottom-up, that is from the technological aspect all the way up to the institution.   The 4 E Model as a Guide: Collis & Moonen suggest a 4 E model that will guide anyone who wants to integrate flexible learning in each and all key components E ase of use E nvironment Personal E ngagement E ducational E ffectiveness Now, I will not go into details of the activity-flexibility abstract framework and its U pedagogical approach. All I want to focus on here is how the 4 E model would guide th...