Assignment 1

Here is the link to my assignment 1:

IT was a video created according to my teaching context. It explains what kind of ICT tools that I have chosen to use in my context and explain why do I use them in my context. There are 3 points in total. Some supporting theories make me feel that ICT may do so much more than what I knew before. For example, it could assist the special needs students in learning. 

Preparation for my prac ( planning)

Short term planning: By knowing that I have to plan my individual lesson plans.

Medium term planning: In a longer term, I must be prepared to do my medium term planing. Those are units of work (UoW) which could span for anywhere between one week, a term (10 weeks) or a semester (20 weeks). I have to make sure that my lessons linked together by a theme, concept, key issue, cluster of content or context is considered a unit of work.

Long term planning:In terms of school, the long term planning is about planning for the entire year. The work program contains an overview of the entire year and maps out the intended learning across the units of work. A work program is not detailed like a lesson plan or unit of work, but provides a snapshot of the content and topics covered. Work programs for senior syllabuses map out the entire two-year plan of study across Years 11 and 12.

Thanks for David's sharing about the journal from the link http://nicoledodge.edublogs.org/2013/04/23/working-with-c2c/ . It gives me a clearer idea of what to do in my planning. 

Preparation for my practicum

Stepping into week 4, David starts talking about our assignment 2, it makes me think about our practicum. There are some questions which pops into my mind and tried to find out some answers from the web. Here , I would like to share with everyone.
 

Should I plan some work before head for the children?
In short, no. Although it is very tempting when you’re a keen student teacher, it is not really worth your while to do too much lesson preparation in advance. One of the most crucial things about planning is that it suits the children you are teaching – children you haven’t met yet.

Will I be thrown in at the deep end?
Again, probably not. On your first teaching practice it is highly unlikely you will be given completely free rein with a class. Rather, you might simply be observing what goes on, or the teacher might ask you to observe some small groups at first.

Should I prepare anything at all?
It may help you feel better prepared if you have some ideas ready. These could be for quick games, fun activities or interesting exercises that you could use if you are asked to look after the class.

How early should I arrive?
Aim to arrive extra early on your first day of TP. At this point, you won’t be sure how long travelling to the school will take, and it’s better to be safe than sorry. Nothing makes a worse impression than a teacher who arrives late. In the teaching profession it is absolutely vital that you are in school and and ready to start work when your children first arrive.

What should I do when I get to school?
When you arrive, make sure that you report to the main school reception. You will probably be asked to ‘sign in’ and perhaps be given a badge to wear, identifying you as a visitor to the school. You might then be taken up to the staffroom to wait until someone can see you.

Here is a link to some journals relate to this topic
Teacher's journal

The last step to finish my artefact

This week I have been spending time in transferring my data including the context and the reasons about why should we integrate ICT in teaching and what kind of ICT is suitable to be used by children in order to enhance their learning. Along the way, I have been doing a lot of related reading about ICT, reading other people's blog in order to get ideas about how ICT is used in the pre-school context. After hearing from different people, I am eager to try out the effectiveness of using ICT in helping students to understand better. Now I am looking forward to my professional practice so that I will be able to try out what I have learned to the children in my school. Here is the link to a science lesson by using ICT.

Assignment 1- my context

 

      In assignment 1, we have to describe our context. Since it would be difficult to describe exactly how the context is in the video with only 7 minutes in length, I would be happy to put some photos to show how my context look like. The school that I have chosen for my teaching practice is a Montessori school with some modern technology equipments. One of the school's priorities is 'appreciating nature', so the school has a pretty garden with lots of plants. Integrating ICT in teaching ( video camera and camera) could help students in recording the plants growing process where it would make learning more fun. The students could also use the video camera or camera to record some interesting craft or role play process that they would like to share with others. By using the smart board, children get a chance to present their ideas clearer to other people. I feel that ICT would help the students to achieve better if their are used in a proper way or guided properly by the educators.

Exploring software

 

 

   After watching the attractive artifact from the former students, I was quite interested in how they design the artifact. I visited the website www.powtoon.com and I found that there if a variety of attractive software to be used in creating our own animation. As a teacher in the school, we have to always integrate new items in our teaching so that the children will have excitement whenever they attend our class. Besides using microsoft presentation, we could use http://goanimate.com/ , http://www.powtoon.com/ or http://prezi.com/your/ to create attractive video. Those software would make our teaching journey more attractive especially for visual or auditory learners. Thank you.

What should be my next title?

 

   After writing a few blogs, I felt a little doubt of deciding my next title for my blog. So, I decided to look around what others are doing. When I visited our private group, I found something that I missed out along the way- a warm reminder from our lecturer. She gave us tips about how to write about the blog. I think most of the people have the same feeling like I do while deciding for our next blog. Now, I understand why we should blog everyday, the main reason is to record what we have learned and it it a good chance for us to do our reflection. As we blog, we reflect;  as we comment and look through other's blog, we improvise ourselves. Today what I checked around, I found that shafeenaz's blog looks attractive to me, then I decided to make some changes to the layout so that I might be able to attract more people to read my blog. I spent about few hours to explore the 'blogger' as I do not write blog often. I found that this software is quite easy to be handled and it might be appropriate to be used by students who are able to read. I would consider using it for my practicum later. Thank you.

How to do a proper reflection?

     Reflection is a very important process in our learning journey. It help us to correct our own mistakes and give us ideas of how to improve in the future.

      By referring to  Kathleen's post in week 2, she mentioned about reflection too. In her post, She mentioned about the five points which she felt that were important, which include :

1. Description of an experience- It should be an evaluation of the details and part where I feel it is important.   

2. Personal experience- For this point I would like judge an action based on my passed experience and knowledge  

3. Critical analysis.- Here I might need to analyse, argue, evaluate, synthesise and test with other ideas and experiences

4. Taking perspectives into account.-  I would to research and communicate with others to get a better solution.
5.  An outcome of reflection.-  a result where it should give me an idea of how to handle the similar situation in a more proper way.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
   I feel that reflection is very important in helping us to see how good we have done in handling a particular situation. However, a good planning should be able to avoid some problems caused along the process.

Personal Knowledge Management

            As defined by Harold Jarche, principal of Jarche Consulting, personal knowledge management (PKM) is “a set of processes, individually constructed, to help each of us make sense of our world and work more effectively.” 
           

            Refer to Alicia post, she has put some points about PKM.  It defines the Personal, Knowledge and Mastery individually.
-Personal – according to one’s abilities, interests & motivation.
-Knowledge – understanding information and experience in order to act upon it.

-Mastery – the journey from apprentice to disciplined sense-maker and sharer of knowledge.

        From my perspective, PKM  is a collection of processes that a person uses to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve, and share knowledge in his or her daily activities. We have to plan our time well as most of use might be working and studying at the same time. We must not stop learning when we stop schooling. Reading and communicating with others help us to make sense of the world better. 

Top 20 Teacher Blogs

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/top-20-teacher-blogs
Here is the link to the 20 teacher's blog.

    At the beginning I was a bit doubt about why we should 'communicate' with others by linking or commenting on their blogs. After reading the top teacher's blog, I found that the benefits of reading blogs are:
1)  Reading blogs can help us answer questions , but of equal importance, reading blogs gives us opportunities to answer questions as well. We can share our  insight, pay it forward, and do something nice for someone else. Sometimes it would be a great relief to someone when you can’t offer substantial advice who faces the same problem as you.

2)Since successful blogging is partially dependent on posting frequency and providing updated, fresh information, it's a perfect way to help us stay abreast of the events in a specific field or topic.

3) Blogs help us to stay connected from different parts of the world by sharing stories, photos, videos and more.

In a nut shell, I found that the top 20 teachers blogs are providing a a couple of good links and ideas in my teaching.

Why ICT?

          This week I have been spending my time in exploring the ICT coursework and tools. I was trying to use prezi to create my artifact. Along the way, I was trying to look into those question:

1)What are ICTs?
2) What does ICTs and Pedagogy mean?
3)What does it look like?
4)Why should you use ICTs in your learning and teaching?
5)What might it mean for your practice?

In the following posts, I hope that I could have a clearer picture about what is ICT and why should we integrate them into the learning.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYk8BPEjjz0 The link is link to a video named

'Computers in Early Childhood Education' The educator in the video says that one of the reasons to integrate computer into early years learning is due to ICT would fulfill the different types of learning styles. The different types of learning styles including auditory learner, visual learner, or tactile learning. The games with musics and attractive pictures would attract the learners to learn.

What is your idea about this? Kindly leave me your comment about the video! :)

My first impression about ICT

          Today was my first day introduced to ICT. The exploration part has taken me a long time since I am not an  'IT' person. The tasks to be completed challenged me to master the skills in ICT so that I could make good use of it in my future teaching journey.

          In Malaysia, the use of ICT is not as common as in other countries especially in early childhood. A lot of debates occur regarding to this issue. People have been debating about the advantages and disadvantages in ICT. For me, both stand an opinion. I feel that ICT is equally important as other subjects like maths and science. It plays a vital role in learning as it acts as a powerful research tool in era globalization.  Even though some people might feel that ICT will have some of the disadvantages like causing speech delay or poor pincer grip.

          It  is a good time for me to really look into ICT and learn up different kinds of tools in teaching. By looking at different perspectives by different people in ICT, it inspires me to really explore and experience it by myself so that I will be able to provide the best teaching to my students.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXG3Dcfi-Ks
Here is the link to  'Technology in Early Childhood Family Education Classrooms'
The teachers in the video is using smart board in their teaching. There is one part where the smart board is used in helping students to recognize their name. The students have to use their fingers to drag a name away, where behind the name it shows their photos. It gives me the idea where ICT has made the learning more fun and effective.