To use interactive white boards or not 

Interactive white boards are tools that are used in education to link the computer to a projector and a touch sensitive screen. The teacher or lecturer is able to manipulate the elements on the interactive white board by using their fingers as a mouse. One is able to control the interactive white board by just touching the screen; there is no need for a mouse.  Anything that is accessible on the computer can be accessed on the interactive white board for example PowerPoint, word, photographs, presentations and websites.

There are several advantages to having an interactive white board:

1. ·         Interaction between the students and teachers
2. ·         Clear graphics
3. ·         Images can be made larger and more visible
4. ·         Teacher does not have to stand behind the computer
5. ·         Colourful tools, students love colour ( I definitely do)
6. ·         Allow for many different learning styles to take place ( touching , circling , listening to videos, visual images)
7. ·         Motivates students through the wow factor that these boards have to offer

However there are several disadvantages of interactive white boards:

1. ·         They are expensive
2. ·         The teacher have to take extra training classes on how to use the boards
3. ·         They require specific software
4. ·         An interesting feature of these interactive white boards is that they can connect to other devices, however, if there are too many students sending information it can cause an overload and mixed signal which are problematic. The students also have a tendency to send inappropriate messages and images to the screen

I have not had many, if any, classes where the interactive white board has been used in an engaging manner, most of the lecturers in university just use it to display their presentations. At my high school the same thing happened and we only used it in an engaging manner once in a biology class and this was because it had just been introduced, it was new, and the teachers were forced to teach us how to use it. Thus I feel that unless they are actually going to be used properly and not just for the purpose of displaying a presentation then schools and universities don’t need to waste so much money on interactive white boards. Also when the one teacher showed us all the cool things that could be done on the interactive whiteboard I was so fascinated with what it could do and didn’t even pay attention . I can see the advantages of the interactive white board and that if it is used properly it can enhance learning and make lesson more fun and interactive, however, if the teachers are not willing to learn how to use the white boards properly then these interactive white boards serve no purpose 

Trust and care are the ingredients to a good teacher 

Pastoral care allows for students to flourish, may strengthen the curriculum and may promote robust cultural relationships, however, the school climate/ environment may either heighten or erode the mental well-being of students and teachers and thus nurturing the well-being of students is of great importance.

Implementing pastoral care and well-being into the classroom is easy and can be done via the teacher being available and accessible, creating a safe environment where students can voice their concerns and worries, promote empathy and understanding and pro social bonding through remembering events such as birthdays. Caring for the students and being aware of their well-being is a necessity and can be the reason as to the increase in their academics.

To teach effectively one needs to take into account several components such as behaviour, social and academics.  Teachers need to allow for an environment where students can actively participate and receive feedback. Teachers should orientate the classroom that will not only suit their style of teaching but will also facilitate learning and active engagement. The teachers cannot separate the home and the school and thus should establish positive communication between the home and schools. This can be done through making the parents aware when the students do well academically and behaviorally .Use different teaching strategies that will align with how the different students learn. One should understand the resources that are available and use them in a way that will enhance learning and not distract the learners from learning.

There will be Limitations when philosophy, teaching practices and teaching theories cannot be reconciled with the curriculum as these decisions are made at school administrative level.

In the article by wills I love how the teacher took a problem and created an exciting and interesting solution to the problem. This solution not only got the students highly curious but taught them several skills such as co-operation. We so often forget to ask how students felt about something, as it takes time, but it helped her gain insight into how they were feeling but they also felt pleased and happy that their voices had been heard, the students just had a much greater respect for the teacher. Through this task they every day came up with new ideas as to what was on the table that they couldn’t drop, these ideas ranged from buckets of acid to towers of cupcakes. Learners were excited every day to perform this task of rearranging the desk as the teacher made it creative and fun, something they could get involved with and let their minds run wild for a few minutes

She trusted her students with preforming the task of rearranging the desks and doing so quietly. The students did so when she made it create and fun but when it was a chore that they had to do they were not interested and so they dragged the desks and did a half job, which Is natural, most of us do a half job or do it with such laziness when we are not interested.

Learning doesn't only take place in the classroom 

Most of us are familiar, and may have only experienced the conventional way of learning, where we drag ourselves to class at 8am, put all cell phones away (they are not allowed to be used), sit in the same place and listen to the same old stuff that we never find relevant or interesting. We just had to sit there and absorb all this information; we never had a chance to teach ourselves, it was frowned upon. Teachers thought that if they let us self-study that we never would, that we would just mess around all day, they never trusted us.

Technology was very limited in the school I attended, no phones, no tablets, no laptops in class and social media sites such as Facebook was not even accessible on school grounds. The teachers think they know everything, well mine did, and they were highly against any form of change even if it made the lesson more fun or even more understandable.

The only way students will learn is if they are interested, this can be done on their own or in the classroom, but if you are boring and they are never paying attention, then you might as well let them study and learn things on their own. Schools are not allowing for independence and individuality and forcing students into these boxes where they may not even belong.

No student ever wants to do homework, if we have maths to do but we really want to make a movie, or do something practical, maths will always lose, unless you get the students excited and motivated enough to actually want to do the maths homework. Schools need to become places where we want to hang out and where we want to be every day, not count down the hours till the end of school and then start counting down the days till its Friday. I cannot even begin to explain how many times I, as a student in high school, complained when I had to get up in the morning or that it was only Wednesday.

Information and Communication Technology (ITC) is an important aspect of teaching, the use of ITC creates many possibilities across the globe for people to have access to an education. Teaching does not only have to take place in the classroom and it also doesn’t have to be one way (teachers talk and students are silent listening only). These ITC standards can be limiting, and can be problematic where there is no internet access and can be limiting to those that do not have the basic computer literacy skills that are needed to understand the basics of technology

Distance learning is an option and should really be considered especially when getting to school every day is difficult, either far away or traffic is very bad. I learn the best when it is something I am interested in and when it is easy to understand. I love YouTube videos, they make my life easy, they make learning easy, I used it so often with maths in first year as the lecturers style of teaching was not matching with my style of learning, this made maths difficult for me and I lost the confidence and relevance of doing maths. I then came across khan academy, these YouTube videos gave me the confidence that the lecturer couldn’t

Thus I don’t believe that if you allow students to teach themselves that they won’t, we need to trust students more and let them, if they are not learning in school, to find the best way for them to learn.

Media as an ally not an enemy

When I was in school that had the very old traditional way of teaching, you sat in class while staring at PowerPoint slides full of notes. No technology was allowed, other than the PowerPoint presentation, all phones had to be off or face down on the desk on silent. They thought that if they allowed us to use our phones we would be on Instagram, facebook or twitter and not engaging, not that we were engaging in the first place. That was the major problem, the exclusion of technology under the assumption that we would not engage, however, we would of as it would have been something different other than staring at PowerPoint presentations.

As a natural science and life science teacher I think feedback is important and thus in would set up a twitter account for the class where they can post after every class what they learnt, how they felt, what they liked and didn’t like. I would also use twitter to share videos and share links to articles or exiting new developments that are happening, and they can also use twitter to share these kinds of things. The way of teaching is changing and we need to adapt to it, the students are always on social media, excluding it from a classroom just makes them more tempted to be sneaky and use it under the desk, which as a teacher would irritate more, so might as well involve social media in an interactive way that the student will enjoy and learn from.

The idea of blogs I originally hated, I thought this would take me hours and I didn’t have time for it, but by the second blog it became natural and the topics made me love doing it. As a natural science teacher or life sciences teachers I would get them to blog about what they learnt and to have group discussions. These blogs create a forum where you can comment, state your opinion, see other peoples perspectives and open your mind to new ideas which is a fun way of learning and getting important concepts across. I really like the idea of having a reminder group, that is so awesome, where the teacher can remind the students to bring things for practical’s, remind them about homework, and have a countdown till tests. As a teacher I would definitely use this because as a student I was always forgetting something somewhere along the line

I would also get students to make podcasts and YouTube videos on the different sections of work so every week a group can create a video on what they learnt that week and then it can be shared with the class and accessible for the class and the world if they really wanted to. I find listening to peers and discussing with peers an easy and interactive way of learning, students understand students and thus may be able to explain concepts in a more simplified manner

Forums like twitter and blogs create the opportunity to ask questions and have group discussions which to me is a fun way of learning and it really sticks more than just reading off power point. Social media has a way of connecting everyone and getting everyone involved. It should be used in classrooms to help the students, if they are more engaged and curious about the topic they wont be on facebook doing something else instead of their work

If the world changed,and you are not doing anything to prepare the kids, you are doing a disservice to them 

quote by Tom Driscoll

Participation is key 

Not many understand the difference between digital pedagogy and teaching online, I was one of many that thought they were the same thing, just one happened to use a more fancy word. However, I was mistaken and once reading the article by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel it finally starts to make sense.

Digital pedagogy is important as it is willing to experiment, to be creative, take the risks and improvise. Digital Pedagogy is a “way of engaging the world, not the world to itself”. Digital pedagogy is not so easy to define as one may think, there are various different definitions of what digital pedagogy is, the one that I enjoy the most is the combination of the use of “electronic elements” and with playfulness, tinkering and building that will essentially alter the experience of education

But here is where the difference comes in, a digital pedagogue encourages her students to participate, to get involved with other people about the topic and to not allow the limitations of the learning Management System hold them back from engaging. “The digital pedagogue teaches her tools, doesn’t let them teach her”. We need to think critically about the tools that we use

The biggest problem with the Learning Management System is that it allowed for online teaching to become super easy; all you had to do was upload all the work through whether it be the creation of a video, slideshow ect and boom online learning! This is not fun and definitely cannot be thought of as pedagogy.

However, many talented young teachers have fallen trap to the excuse of the learning Management Systems fails and has all these limitations and thus have become less innovative and lost all their best pedagogies, yes we know that, but don’t give up, don’t become boring and stop trying because a system is not operating the way it is meant to.

The key message in the articles by Sean Michael Morris and Jesse Stommel is that “ we must develop a participative pedagogy” that will be assisted by digital media and networked publics. The main message is that through a more participative pedagogy there will be more facilitating and more inspiring of the students. This is how we should teach whether it be online or in a physical classroom, engagement is the key to learning.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”

≈ Nelson Mandela 

Naked is the way to go

Technology, I feel, needs to be a part of education as it is a part of our daily lives and we use it all the time. Technology provides a visual stimulus for students and thus assists in their learning. However, there are many teachers that are just using the technological tools such as power point lectures with a whole bunch of bullet points that want to put all students to sleep and thus I feel we need to learn to teach naked.

Provide the students with information through notes, videos, podcast, online forums, skype sessions ect  that they can view before the lecture and then remove the computers and projectors and just have the room, the teacher and the students, let them interact, engage, ask questions, hold discussions and most importantly think critically. Flipped classrooms I feel are an excellent way of getting students involved, coming from a science background we never really had a flip classes and so this is all new to me, but I enjoy it, I find it a better way of learning. Through flip classrooms you hear different opinions, see situations from different perspectives and it opens your mind to topics and thoughts that you never even knew you had.

This teaches students to perform in class, and other environments, and not just be a vessel that passively absorbs information. “ you cannot even imagine the work you can do before you’ve invented or experienced the tools or social dynamic they enable”, this quote is what needs to be taught in schools, students need to fiddle and get their hands dirty, they need to get involved to learn.

We need to use technology in an engaging way and not as a tool that makes our lives easier as teachers, yes, power point is easy and reading off of them during a lecture is easy, but for the students it is not fun nor is it of any help to our understanding of the topic that is being taught. If we want student to learn engage with them and if we are going to use these fancy technologies, use them in a way that helps students learn and be a part of the issue. The gaol of the teacher is to be creative, unique and to bring the outside world into the classroom.

An important note: technology will always fail at some point, as a teacher always have a plan B and an even better teacher has a plan C.

“A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination and instill a love of learning”

-Brad Henry