Week 11: Assessment, Database Design

Last week of official lectures, and we are focusing on how to set and mark an assessment effectively, a valuable skill for any teacher. There were 6 main principles of assessment for learning, as set out in the syllabus. They were:

1. AP1 emphasises the interactions between learning and manageable assessment strategies that promote learning
2. AP2 clearly expresses for the student and teacher the goals of the learning activity
3. AP3 reflects a view of learning in which assessment helps students learn better, rather than just achieve a better mark
4. AP4 provides ways for students to use feedback from assessment
5. AP5 helps students take responsibility for their own learning
6. AP6 is inclusive of all learners

We also went over several types of assessment, as well as the pro’s and con’s of group work, and in my experience… well, it seems that most people have the experience set out in the pie chart below. Thankfully, it also goes over peer assessment, and individual marking for group work.

 

And then there was the option topic, Database Design. I think database design can be fairly easily taught, as the majority of the things on the internet are based off databasing – Facebook, WordPress, YouTube, iTunes, any email client all heavily use databasing to retain the information in the right places. A good way to teach students would be to use something database heavy like Facebook, and get the students to break it down into possible ways they could design a database for Facebook.

Week 10: Technology in the Workplace, Software Development and Programming

Technology in the workplace relates to – you guessed it – technology in the workplace! Technology in most workplaces involves a network of computers, maybe some video-conferencing stuff, or for us more things like electronic whiteboards and projectors. But the idea behind bringing this to schools relates more closely to the lecture from last week about robotics – more what the students can strive to create when they leave school and specialise.

If these blogs are starting to seem a bit repetitive, they probably are. Its all about new technologies and how they can apply to the classroom, and to life after school for our students. I’ve attached a video about augmented reality, different from the Google Glass project – its a TED education video, where a magician uses augmented reality to enhance his production. Check it out!

The option topic this week, “Software Development and Programming”, took a more hands-on approach to teaching. Des and Craig took the opportunity to show us “Scratch”, which is a very user friendly and easy-to-use introduction to programming, which uses animations as its output. This gives the students an introductory idea to the structure and function of programming without them needed to know any coding, and gives them an incentive to learn how to do it – an output animation.

The attached video is a demonstration of a simple, very copyright infringing game made by a student.

We also went over some direct coding in Windows, and created a batch file from a text file, which was also good. These programs were blocked from running on the uni computers, as its pretty easy to make programs that can mess up a network. I remember a friend of mine in school almost for expelled for doing stuff like this, when he took down the entire school ‘s network and email systems for a day when he wrote a self repeating code that randomly pinged an IP in the school network, then ran itself again. It managed to take the network down in about 15 seconds, so in schools, I recommend using a program like scratch, as it has some very useful restraints.

Week 9: Software and Robotics & Automated Systems

Software is fairly well known if you are a person using a computer so I will sum it up in a few words : A program designed to run an application, operating system or a utility program. We also went into the different ways you can communicate with software, with the most common one being GUI or Graphical User Interface.

We also were given even more useful examples of software for our future use as teachers. These include:

• Wix.com – A fairly basic web design program
• Google Sites – Google’s web site software
• Gliffy.com – A diagramming application
• Bubbl.us – Another diagramming application, specialising in more brainstorming type things
• Popplet.com – Pretty much more of the same

 

The option topic for this week was “Robotics and Automated Systems”, a course myself and the other computer majors completed at the start of the year. It provided an overview of the different types of robots, what they are used for, potential uses and the benefits they provide us. At the school I’m currently doing prac in, there is a computers class that uses wheeled lego robots, attached to a sensor, to teach robotics. The simple robots are programmed, placed on a mat with a think black path on it, and its up to the students to program the robot to follow the path until the end.

I can’t think of many uses robotics would serve in a school setting, other than teaching students how to program robotics, so here’s an interesting video about how teaching can influence the engineers and scientists of the future. Its pretty much robot olympics, and is encouraging the kids involved to get motivated and show them that robotics and science in general can be awesome too.

Week 8: People and Networking Systems

Today’s lecture was about “people”, and covered roles and responsibilities of people who are working in any technology fields – or, more importantly, how students relate to them and their roles. It focused on stereotyping of technology professionals, and showed us that even our pre-conceptions of what technology professionals did with their day. A lot of the technology professionals are very dependant on communication with clients/ co-workers, rather than just sitting on a computer all day. So there aren’t a lot of communication-challenged technology professionals out there like the guys in “The IT Crowd”…

The idea behind teaching the students about the people in the professions do have to be big on communication, so if there is a student interested in a computer based profession due to not wanting to talk to people, they need to know what’s really going on out there.

We also went through the differences between girls and boys in regards to computer interest, computer use, and computer learning techniques. In a nutshell, boys tend to be more interested in computers because of gaming, and tend to learn by teaching themselves how to do things. Girls tend to want someone to show them how to do things, instead of messing around and figuring it out.

This lecture was pretty interesting in regards to teaching anything to do with computers, and seeing as I’m aiming to be a computer teacher it was interesting and pretty useful.

Week 7 – Past, Current & Emerging Technologies, and AI, Simulation & Modelling

The week we focused on past, current, and emerging technologies, as well as artificial intelligence (AI), simulation, and modelling. Both these broad topics go hand-in-hand, the latter especially tying into emerging technologies.

I’m going to focus mostly on exploring emerging technologies, as past and current technologies are generally largely known, such as cassette tapes or touch screens. The most exciting emerging technology to me is the use of augmented reality.

Augmented reality is the process of layering digital information over real-world information, like using a phone camera to interact with implanted digital creations in the real world. It is currently being used in very small degrees – novelty in apps for android and iOS systems is becoming more common.

As an android user, one app in particular stands out to me – a game called “SpecTrek”, in which you “hunt virtual ghosts in the real world”. The game uses your phone camera and GPS capabilities to track where you are, and to plant a virtual ghost somewhere nearby, which you can only see through your phone camera. Its more or less hide-and-seek for the digital age.

Google are also developing “Google Glasses”, an augmented reality HUD (heads-up display) system implanted into a pair of glasses. Check out the video to see more.

Week 6 – Issues: Legal, Ethical, Social, Industrial

This is a big thing in schools now with an emphasis on online learning, and ensuring the students know when things are acceptable or unacceptable without going too deep into the politics of it all can be a challenge.

• Legal Issues refer to things like copyright, intellectual property, piracy, and any law that applies.
• Ethical Issues is basically just using your conscience while on a computer, respecting people’s privacy and being a responsible internet user.
• Social Issues are things like bullying and harassment online
• Industrial Issues are all about rights and responsibilities, and OHS policies to keep you physically safe on a computer.

These are basically the same rules that were around before computers and the digital age became prominent, and are just digital versions of the same rules telling us not to cheat, don’t do anything stupid, be nice to your classmates, and try not to hurt yourself.

Option Topic: Digital Media

We took the presentation this week, and decided to keep it a bit consistent with the other groups by using a Prezi to overview the syllabus. You can find the Prezi by clicking here.

The lesson was an introduction to Photoshop (found here). I made this one a bit tongue-in-cheek to keep everyone engaged and on-topic, which hopefully made the lesson a bit memorable. The exercise was a basic Photoshop job, dropping an image and text into a Photoshop document. Ideally, I would have had the students make or find their own image and type the text themselves from a set list of options, but due to the time restraints I thought it would be a better idea to just provide them with the information and focus on the uses of Photoshop.

Week 5 – Internet Usage

This week we covered internet usage, and the effect it has on learning and teaching. There are a lot of online based resources, a few new ones were introduced this week, including Khan Academy, The Le@rning Federation, BBC Learning Online, and iTunes U. These are great examples of effective online learning resources, teaching a very broad range of topics very well, with some of them being free. Combined with educational YouTube channels and those other resources I like to keep going back to, you have a lot of content available to you use as a teaching tool.

But online information can go both ways. There are a lot of hoax and joke websites out there that kids could take seriously, and there is easy access to a lot of non-educational websites that specialise in distraction and procrastination in students. Facebook is a bane to students productivity, I know that as I write this I have Facebook open in another tab, just waiting to see what happens in other people’s lives.

Moral of the story is that the Internet is a double edged sword, providing almost unlimited resources, but the same amount of distraction. The key is to find something that is relevant to what you are teaching, while also being engaging enough to keep the students on task.

Option Topic: Authoring and Multimedia

This week’s presentation was on authoring and multimedia. Another different Prezi outlined the Syllabus for us, with a simple task emphasising the use of multimedia and its benefits. The task was simple – the boys had to watch 2 provided videos, and the girls had a different set of videos to watch. One in each set was pretty boring and non-engaging, while the other was engaging and pretty cool, tailored to gender (the boys engaging video was an Audi commercial, the girls had some perfume thing). We were then to write about which was more engaging and why, then we had a class discussion about what we discovered. Again, the use of questioning and inquiry learning proved effective; us students stayed engaged and actually learnt what we were supposed to, and proved that we met the outcomes required.

These little in-class presentations are showing me there are many diverse ways to use ICT in the classroom to keep learning fresh and engaging. Lets hope I can do as well next week when I present the option topic “digital media”!

Week 4 – ICT, Internet Usage, and Data Handling

This week we were all about technology, and how we can use it to enhance learning in a classroom environment. That doesn’t mean just having powerpoints and prezis every lesson – its more about using a diverse range of computer based resources to engage students and promote learning. Some examples included educational YouTube videos, using a Smart Board, iPads, and inquiry based learning on computers or laptops. So I’ve grabbed a video from one of my favourite education based channels, TED-Education, where Kevin Allocca talks about why videos go viral. It’s not only entertaining, but educational.

Kevin Allocca: Why do videos go viral?

We also went over data storage, data security, and copyright issues, which are an important part in school education, especially when working with students online. An example of a lesson I got my hands on was a design project for the students where they weren’t allowed to use anything image at all from the internet, motivating creativity and giving copyright issues a good look at.

This week we also had our first option topic presentation – Internet and Website development. The focus was on the origins of the internet, and covered it well, using a presentation made on Prezi to guide us while the girls walked us through the syllabus information. After the 20 min instructional, they talked to us for a few minutes to give us an introduction to the option topic, then had us researching the origins of the internet on our own using scaffolding inquiry based learning. We were to research a given influential figure as a group (we had Alan Turing), follow a worksheet to get a few specified facts based on them, then present our findings to the rest of the class a an expert team. The inquiry based learning worked really well – I’m finding that the information on Alan Turing we found was retained a lot better than if we were just lectured about him (I don’t even remember the names of many of the other people the other groups researched).

Week 3 – Projects: Design, Produce, Evaluate

This week were chatted about the design process, and what to include in it. I think it applies pretty well to lesson planning, as well as project management for the students. Its a great introduction to time management for the students, as it teaches them how to break a project down into manageable chunks, a useful skill for later on in life. I’ve seen in my prac visits that boys need structure to learn effectively, and this is a very defined structure to work from.

We went through every part of a design folio, from design brief to conclusions, factors influencing the design, and tools you can use to get things done. It matches up to the syllabus outcomes really well, as it covers everything from ethics to program knowledge to problem solving. At school, I thought folio’s were just for showing we had done all our own work, now I realise that its a way to cover a lot of the outcomes, and have proof that the students have learnt what they need to. Pretty sneaky, teachers! Definitely going to use this one, and keep it really structured so the students don’t miss anything, and so it’s hopefully easy to mark.

Another tool to make things easy to follow and easy to mark is the rubric, which we also talked about. Its pretty much a grid, showing what you have to do to achieve what mark. It’s usually given to students with an assignment so they know what they have to do and what they are getting marked on, so they know where to focus their efforts in a project. They also make marking pretty quick and simple, and enables other teachers to help with marking if need be (e.g. if you have a prac student doing some marking it makes it easy for them to mark accurately).

Week 2 – Introduction to the 7-10 Syllabus

This week in our lecture, we were checking out the IST Syllabus. We mainly looked at the differences between stages 4 and 5, the rationale, how the objectives relate to outcomes, and how the syllabus was structured. We basically looked at the skeleton of the syllabus, and saw how the guts fit into it.

You can break it down like this. Each option has a small paragraph to head it off, describing the overview of the option topic. At the end of that paragraph is where it gets a bit more complicated. Its where the tables start. It starts with outcomes, which covers the entire width of the table, signifying that the outcomes cover the whole option topic. Underneath outcomes, the table breaks into 2 halves – on one side, it outlines what students learn about. The other side contains what students learn to do.

Its a little more complicated than a simple to-do list, but that’s basically what it is. You need to teach the students this. Then, after they have learnt it, they should be able to do this. Simple.

We also checked out some basic assessment strategies. They included:

• Practical projects
• Written reports
• Research activities
• Written and practical tests
• Presentations
• Peer assessment
• Self-assessment

We also checked out some programs this week – Prezi and Symbaloo, but I already mentioned them last week after hearing about them in different classes.