Creately : https://creately.com/ is another great tool that teachers and students can use for diagram creation or visual representation of ideas. When creating flow charts, hierarchy diagrams or other sketches it is easy to use a tool than manually creating. Creately can be used as an online tool to create different types of diagrams easily. The Creately interface is easy to use and users finds it easy to create diagrams using Creately. It also can be used as a collaborative tool for people to work from different locations as a team. The following two YouTube videos shows how Creately can be used for different projects. These videos show that Creately can be used to create visual diagrams, collaborative work environments as well as interactive learning resources. Tools for education: Glogster is a great tool that can be used in the educational setting to create interactive learning resources or classroom resources. Glogster poster can add images, audio and video. This enables to cater for different learning styles while making the resource interactive. As Glogster site states: it can inspire, Engage, Excite your learners and can be accessed from anywhere. example: Some interesting ideas that have been collected in the recent times to keep the class participants engaged and interested in the lesson are: Introducing each other: Even though this is an old trick it was mentioned that many people who sit next to each other not even know them, but do not take a moment to say hello to each other. Therefore it was found to be a good idea to make them introduce to each other to build social inclusion. Lights on/off It was also mentioned that switching on and off lights grab the attention of the learners, specially of they are all too busy either working on an activity or having a great chat. Tutorial group It was also found that tutorial small groups allow students to discuss and participate easily. Therefore it is necessary to arrange small tutorial groups. Timer Another great idea is to set up a timer. This makes people work within a set time, and with a timer beeping it gives a sense of achievement. Brainstorm activity Rules of engagement Setting rules of engagement is important. Be specific . Don't let the students assume in that way it is possible to set goals, objectives and work towards them from the start. It also allow students to know what is expected. Delegation Spy . Report about the other groups Students leading a discussion Debates in a lecture Student QA panels Guest talks The model consists of eight interactional concepts that is also called learning events that incorporates learning and teaching. These eights interactional concepts are: 1.receives, 2.debates, 3.experiments, 4.creates, 5.explores, 6.practices, 7.imitates, 8. meta-learns. These events can then be explored further in terms of the teacher and learner, using associated verbs. The model is supported by flash cards. More details can be found on CELT(NI) site. Professor Karen Nelson, shared Six key principles that have been identified to guide the design of First Year Curriculum. The six principles are:
1. Transition 2. Diversity 3. Design 4. Engagement 5. Assessment 6. Evaluation and monitoring In the first year the students transition from either high school or workplace to a new learning environment. Considering this as one of the main factors the curriculum has to be designed to encourage life long learning. It also be attuned to student diversity and must be accessible by and inclusive of all students. with several intakes, different cultures and courses, various groups of students come together to study. These various aspects have to be taken into consideration when designing the curriculum Further, the integration of skills, knowledge and attitudes play a major part in curriculum design. Interesting and exciting learning content, examples, activities engage the learners better. Embedding the assessments into a real life situation, or problem solving case study/activity engages students with the content, other learners and facilitators. All these factors with continuous evaluation and monitoring help to design and develop first year curriculum to be engaging. Smart e-learning has been discussed by Kevin Mulvihill in the Sudden in sight blog. It is discussing how e-learning is categorised into three fundamental categories as:
1. Learner motivation 2. Learner Centric content 3. A meaningful and memorable experience These are three main areas that we need to consider when developing learning resources as well as designing a course for delivery. These factors are independent of whether the learning happens in a classroom or in an online environment. If we are unable to gain learners attention towards the content that itself will be enough to create problems. With learner centric content we will be focusing on delivering and designing content that is relevant and required by the learners. It is also important to keep the learners motivated within the process of learning while they navigate through their content gathering knowledge and gaining skills in the area. As much as content is important, providing a memorable experience to the learner is also important. These three components that Kevin discusses are very inter connected and interdependent when developing and designing e-learning resources. Digital Educators Network arranged an online session with Fransice Kneebone. Where the group was introduced to some interesting tools. The idea of this was to do better with face to face classes and use online tools to gain the benefits of the tools too. Getting the benefits from both worlds it was expected to engage learners more and get the best of both worlds. 1. SMS Pols - A tool to do polling with SMS facilities that could help students to reply to a question or can be used as a back channel.It only costs of a txt message. This eliminates all the other sophisticated devices, hiring etc. 2. Todaysmeet.com This is another tool that can be used as a chat room. The participants can join the room and chat about a particular problem or brainstorm ideas.It also can be used as a backchannel for a class or a conference 3. Google presentation (https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1s5BxhnmUDMgo5U0PAU5z6a-ADIrdjyRMRol5lwiCdoI/edit#slide=id.g1be17e3c_1_85) Google documents, presentations are great ways to work collaboratively with a group of people. 4.Branch http://branch.com/ Some of the e-learning Resource Development and Delivery (RDD) models that I have come across in my research are as follows: 1. Khan's P3 model 2. Baldrige Education Excellence Model 3. RIPPLES model 4. Cascading Model The Summary in of the models
Dominic Thurborn who is the chief creative officer and co-founder of international behavior change organisation ChangeLabs in the video describes how change is affecting every businesses. Dominic, in his speech at a conference mentioned that he is a strong believer that leadership and internal environment plays a major role in embracing change. Failure to identify what changes would come your way is another problem that many business and individuals face. It is also vital that we revisit our current assumptions often, as they could be quite diverse to the actual situation. With a set of assumptions that has no direct correlation we could be investing our time and money towards in accurate directions. Change is inevitable, but if change is managed well, you could lead to reach higher and better results in this changing world.
|
KulariDr. Kulari Lokuge has been in the education sector for more than twenty years. She has been educating student using latest educational technologies while facilitating professional development to her staff to use technology for education to provide engaging and interesting learning experiences. She has initiated and successfully managed several e-learning projects. Archives
March 2018
Categories
All
|