Bring Your Own Devices to Class

The current generation of students has grown up with technology and want to use it in every aspect of their daily lives — including school. They have an expectation that the same technology they use at home will be available at school too.Although BYOD is really about delivering education in new ways, saving money is an important objective.

With the students using their own mobile devices in the classroom, schools can save money on technology costs. My school does not need to spend a fortune trying to keep up with all the coolest technology that can be used for education these days, if students are allowed to use their own mobile devices. Thanks to the mass consumerization of technology, students are now some of the most enthusiastic and savvy users of state-of-the-art mobile computing devices.

They keep their beloved mobile devices on them at all times, and are not just using them to communicate with friends or download music. In fact, they use technology to study or work on homework assignments and they believe that mastering the latest technology skills will improve
their educational and career opportunities.

As soon as your students get the go-ahead, you will see the mobile devices come flooding into your classroom instantly. This generation of students is very tech-savvy and they absolutely adore their mobile devices. Using them is second nature to them and trust me, they have multiples.

Bring Your Own Devices To Class

The current generation of students has grown up with technology and want to use it in every aspect of their daily lives including school. They have an expectation that the same technology they use at home will be available at school too.Although BYOD is really about delivering education in new ways, saving money is an important objective.

With the students using their own mobile devices in the classroom, schools can save money on technology costs. My school does not need to spend a fortune trying to keep up with all the coolest technology that can be used for education these days, if students are allowed to use their own mobile devices. Thanks to the mass consumerization of technology, students are now some of the most enthusiastic and savvy users of state-of-the-art mobile computing devices.

They keep their beloved mobile devices on them at all times, and are not just using them to communicate with friends or download music. In fact, they use technology to study or work on homework assignments and they believe that mastering the latest technology skills will improve
their educational and career opportunities.

As soon as your students get the go-ahead, you will see the mobile devices come flooding into your classroom instantly. This generation of students is very tech-savvy and they absolutely adore their mobile devices. Using them is second nature to them and trust me, they have multiples.

The Internet, as a communication medium and an interaction platform, is rapidly changing the face of  education. As Internet-based online teaching gains popularity, it has led to the emergence of new educational approaches such as problem-based learning as well as transference and transformation of established teaching practices from traditional classrooms to online environments.

Instead of working face-to-face in groups, online collaboration takes a distributed form. Students from diverse geographical locations form virtual groups and rely on Internet communication technologies to coordinate group processes and carry out group activities.Group interactions are mediated by computer networks. While students are afforded flexibility and new ways of interacting, their group processes and interactive behaviors are also constrained by technical features and functions of the supporting system available in the Internet-based learning environment at the same time.

How can I 'break down the walls of my classroom' without actually having to incur great expenses or construction costs?

An expansion of virtual learning opportunities can provide solutions to some intractable education issues and contribute to schools improving their effectiveness in preparing students for working and living in an increasing globalised and interconnected world.
Once virtual learning is brought to scale, and there is a deeper understanding of the learning and teaching practices associated with this learning approach, it can contribute substantially to solving the following  issues:

Restricted curriculum provision – by giving all students access to the full range of curriculum and to an ever-expanding range of enrichment activities at any time and just about anywhere.

Advancing teacher capability – by enabling excellent teachers to reach more students and enabling teachers to learn from their peers.

The plateauing in learning outcomes – by enabling all students to experience instruction that is delivered by the combination of excellent teaching and excellent online instructional materials.

Learning spaces and the personal learning environments

Evaluating the use of technology in a classroom environment is not something most administrators

are trained to do. It is easy to walk into a classroom and see that every student is using a

computer, but how do you really assess if and what type of learning is taking place?
 I am not advocating that every lesson should use technology or that every lesson should try to

answer “New things in New ways”. However, it is good to know just how the technology is being

used. There is nothing wrong with only using an LCD projector, or Google Earth to visit a battle

site. I get excited when I see both of those things happening in a classroom. I just think it is

good to put it into perspective just what impact the technology is having on teaching and

learning. If a teacher is only ever ‘dabbling’ or doing ‘Old things in Old ways’ then a

conversation can start about how to move the use of technology to a deeper more meaningful level

within the classroom.
It is great to see teachers using technology in their lessons during an evaluation. It is even

more informative if you can evaluate at what level that technology is effecting learning. Is it a

replacement for the way we do things or is it something completely new and pushes both the

students and teacher to new heights, new learning, and new knowledge?

Recently, a number of our schools (a very small number) have entered the stage of doing other old

things in new ways. Now, it begins to get a little more interesting.

"I used to have to tell my students about phenomena, or have them read; now I can explain to them

practically. When we begin adding digital demonstrations through video and Flash animation, we

are giving students new, better ways to get information.

As education moves well into the 21st century, the ways in which we learn and the things we use

to learn with, including technology, are constantly changing and evolving. One of the most far-

reaching changes is the easy and increasingly inexpensive access to information technology.

Personalized Learning Environments and Technology

There are many advantages of using PLEs in teaching but two of the most important are students

gaining the ability to use Web technologies and the using of personalized learning environments

to peak student interest.
The 21st century is challenging old notions of learning spaces.

The idea that students must be seated at desks working in rows is quickly becoming archaic.

Technology and collaborative work environments are changing the design of learning spaces.

The classroom is a vehicle for getting students from where they are when they enter the

schoolhouse door to where they need to be an academic year later. Ideally, we all would like to

see at least one year of progress for one year of seat time.

In talking about classroom management and student achievement, it may help to think of the

teacher as the driver of the car who needs to respond to the passengers' needs in order to ensure

that they reach their destination.

Wikis are an excellent platform for team collaboration, especially in today's climate of distance learning, transcontinental collaboration, and busy schedules. Although the new technology may be challenging to learn and apply for some people, wikis offer many amenities for collaborative teams, such as document repositories, directories, scheduling capabilities, and meeting documents. These amenities ensure that all team members have access to the group's documents and information in one location, but also allow the user to designate the wiki as a members-only forum to ensure privacy.

In my opinion there is a lot to learn about how Writing for the Web can help increase motivation for writing and help students learn how to adapt their texts for different audiences, tasks, and purposes. Below are some of the points that outline the effectiveness of wikis in class;

Focus on High Level Thinking

Wikis are becoming a popular tool in learning because they involve high-level thinking and information skills.

Collaborative Learning. Wikis allow learners to participate in a project larger than them. Participants are able to learn from each other and expand their thinking about a topic by working as a team. In addition, it's easy to go back and track who, did what, when.

Inquiry. Wikis involve learners in asking increasingly sophisticated questions related to their topic. After the initial excitement about the topic and exploration of essential questions, learners begin to assimilate new information and draw inferences. This leads to reflection and additional questions. This recursive process leads to increasing complex questions, more in-depth analysis, and deeper understandings. These abstract connections can be made more concrete for learners through the creation of wikis. Features such as hyperlinks allow contributors to share their mental linkages among pieces of information.

Information Organization. Wikis encourage learners to think about how information can be organized to maximize understanding. For example, wikis can use alphabetical, chronological, hierarchical, geographical, or thematic approaches. Some people use outlines or visual maps (i.e., cluster map, flowchart, and mind map) for organization. Others design around regional locations, events, characters, key words, genre, categories, or other ways of thinking about a topic.

The flexible structure of wikis in particular offers a new format for collaboration. A number of studies have investigated the impact of wiki use upon student collaboration during group work in higher education. More specifically, wiki use has been found to both improve the efficiency of group work and the quality of interactions between students in a group. 

In addition to the largely positive picture the literature paints of wiki use for improving collaboration between students (and teachers); there is a good deal of attention given to the benefits of wikis for students’ writing. First, writing in a wiki sometimes appears to change the students’ understanding of themselves as authors.

Arguably, the role of wikis in encouraging critical thinking and self-reflection sits well with constructivist theories of learning. Wikis highlight the importance of shared meanings: ‘the wiki becomes both a tool for choice and action.

Initial Thoughts of Webquest

My first thought of Webquest is that it is very interesting. I really like how you can find basically anything and everything on here. Any subject that you are looking for, you can find it here! Although I think that this is a very creative and awesome tool for teachers, I have only once concern. My concern is that some of the websites may not be real, or true. That someone may have just made up some silly web quest. Other than that, I think that this is awesome for teachers and students. It gives students the chance to work on the computer, and on the internet.

A well-designed WebQuest combines research-supported theories with effective use of the Internet to promote dependable instructional practices.

When the Web was still young, Bernie Dodge, a professor at San Diego State University, came up with the idea of the WebQuest, a model for integrating the use of the Web in classroom activities. He defined a WebQuest as an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the Internet.

See the following link about how i constructed my webquest and the introduction http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=325162 WebQuests have elements of 21st Century learning and innovative approaches to learning such as;

(1) use learners' time well, 

(2) to focus on using information rather than looking for it, and 
(3) to support learners' thinking at the levels of analysis, synthesis and evaluation . Learning Objective WebQuest Info Students will use a WebQuest to conduct and/or design investigations that incorporate the skills and attitudes and/or values of scientific inquiry 

INTEGRATING SOCIAL MEDIA IN TEACHING AND LEARNING IN CLASSROOM

If you’re a teacher, you’re likely always looking for ways to get your students excited about learning. One innovative method is through social media. But while some teachers already use Tweets, status updates and text messages in their lessons, you may be unsure how to employ these tools in an engaging way. Students are using these technologies in their personal lives, so it makes sense to leverage them for teaching and learning and here are six strategies to help incorporate social media into the classroom:

Set a good example.

It’s not enough now to teach students their lessons and how to be productive members of society, it’s important to cover digital citizenship so that students understand how to use social media inside and outside of school.

Create a class Face book page.

On the Facebook® social network, teachers can build pages for their classes that they can use for “communicating class announcements, class activities and assignment deadlines, etc. Also can be an easy way for parents to see what their kids are doing in class.

Another option is employing tools like the Edmodo® site, often referred to as the Facebook for schools, which provides a secure place for teachers to interact with students, parents and administrators.

Establish online guidelines.

It is important that class pages are constantly monitored by teachers. If there are inappropriate comments or posts, they can be removed, and the offender can be restricted from posting but not viewing in the space in the future. School boards and districts are getting in on the act, too. 

Devise a Twitter “channel.”

The Twitter® micro-blogging service, with its 140-character limit, is a good choice for teachers who want to deliver short bursts of information to students or help them practice concise writing.

It is a very easy tool to use because teachers can create an account and send students updates about classroom activities and homework. If students follow other people on Twitter, though, your messages may get lost in the shuffle. Prevent this by using a specific hash tag that students can use to filter your posts. Twitter is a practical option for teachers to communicate privately with parents.

Use Skype for guest speakers.

While you still can invite guest speakers from the community to your classroom, Skype® videoconferencing software allows you to effectively bring in people from around the world. Teachers can reach out to authors and experts in their fields and see if one of those individuals is willing to video conference with the class.

Gone are the days when students were limited to the library for in-depth research. Technology allows students to have access to a wealth of resources for learning including many primary sources of information.

Get ideas from your peers.

You may already use the LinkedIn® professional network to connect with other teachers, so why not capitalize on those relationships to exchange lesson plans and other ideas?

Teachers might use LinkedIn, Twitter, Jing® [video-sharing site] or other social media tools to join professional groups related to teaching and recommending that they use the sites to meet teachers locally and from across the globe who are interested in the same subjects.

Knowledge Building

Facilitating Collaborative Knowledge Building

This article describes a detailed analysis of knowledge building in a problem-based learning group. Knowledge building involves increasing the collective knowledge of a group through social discourse. For knowledge building to occur in the classroom, the teacher needs to create opportunities for constructive discourse in order to support student learning and collective knowledge building. In problem-based learning, students learn through collaborative problem solving and reflecting on their experiences. The setting for this study is a group of senior three students working with an expert facilitator. The analysis was designed to understand how the facilitator provided opportunities for knowledge-building discourse and how the learners accomplished collective knowledge building. We examined episodes of knowledge-building discourse, the questions and statements that the students and facilitator generated throughout the tutorial, the change in their understanding of the problem that they were solving, and the collective knowledge that was constructed. The results indicate that the group worked to progressively improve their ideas through engaging in knowledge-building discourse. The facilitator helped support knowledge building through asking open-ended metacognitive questions and catalyzing group progress. Students took responsibility for advancing the group's understanding as they asked many high-level questions and built on each other’s thinking to construct collaborative explanations. The results of this study provide suggestions for orchestrating knowledge-building discourse.

Principles of Knowledge Building

A school culture that fosters KB supports research, innovation, and high expectations for student achievement and participation. The twelve KB principles are continuously emphasized for and by teachers, students, and the school environment as a whole.

• Real Ideas and Authentic Problems – students identify real problems to study
• Improvable Ideas – ideas are improvable rather than accepted or rejected
• Epistemic Agency – students plan and engage in the process
• Collective Responsibility for Community Knowledge – all participants contribute to community goals
• Democratizing Knowledge – all participants are empowered; no knowledge have/have-not lines
• Idea Diversity – knowledge advancement depends on diversity of ideas, just as an ecosystem depends on biodiversity
• KB Discourse – problems progressively identified and addressed and new conceptualizations built
• Rise Above – by transcending trivialities and oversimplifications, students work towards more inclusive principles and higher level formulations of problems
• Constructive Use of Authoritative Sources – critically evaluate authoritative sources, don't just find “the answer”
• Pervasive KB – KB is a continuous process and can happen anywhere; it is not unique to the classroom
• Symmetric Knowledge Advance – “to give knowledge is to get knowledge”; there is no one expert
• Embedded and Transformative Assessment – integral to KB and helps to advance knowledge through identifying advances, problems, and gaps as work proceeds

This tool-set guides you through the process of taking Future Classroom Scenarios and using them as the inspiration for creating innovative Learning Activities with the intention of bringing advanced approaches in learning and teaching, supported by technology, to the classroom.

 Future classroom scenarios are intended to act as a vision of what may be possible and desirable for the future of learning and teaching in your school. To make these visions a reality a group of teachers should work together to create a set of Learning Activities, which include the innovative ideas in a realistic and practical context. A Learning Activity could be something that happens in a single lesson or may take place over several lessons. An example of a Learning Activity could be creating a video, or working outside of school to collect data or images.

The starting point for designing a Learning Activity is to select, or create a suitable Future Classroom Scenario. You then need to arrange some time with a group of teachers to collaboratively design the Learning Activity.

PRINCIPLES FOR INNOVATIVE LEARNING.

1.      Learners have to be at the center of what happens in the classroom with activities focused on their cognition and growth. They have to actively engage in learning in order to become self-regulated learners who are able to control their emotions and motivations during the study process, set goals, and monitor their own learning process.

2.      Learning is a social practice and can’t happen alone. “By our nature we are social beings and we learn by interacting,” Groff said. “We learn by pushing and pulling on concepts with one another.” Structured, collaborative group work can be good for all learners; it pushes people in different ways.

3.      Emotions are an integral part of learning. Students understand ideas better when there’s interplay between emotions, motivation and cognition, so positive beliefs about oneself are a core part of reaching a more profound understanding. The power of emotions and motivation in the classroom are well documented, but often overlooked because they are “soft.” Still most teachers know that if a student is upset about something that happened at home or in school, he won’t learn well. Similarly, keeping students motivated should be the starting point of learning. If students understand why it matters, learning becomes more important to them.

4.      Learners are different and innovative learning environments reflect the various experiences and prior knowledge that each student brings to class. “You really want practices and processes that help teachers engage each student where they are,” said Groff. This principle is understood by every frustrated educator teaching to a “middle” that doesn’t exist.

5.      Students need to be stretched, but not too much. “It’s really critical to find that student’s sweet spot,” Groff Said. Educators should try to prevent both coasting and overloading. Students need to experience both academic success and the challenge of discovery. In a diverse classroom group work can help achieve this as students at different levels help one another.

6.      Assessment should be for learning, not of learning. Assessments are important, but only to gauge how to structure the next lesson for maximum effectiveness. It should be meaningful, substantial, and shape the learning environment itself. “Good teachers do this informally most of the time,” Groff said. “But when it’s done well and more formally it’s a whole structure and methodology where you collect feedback on the learning pathway and it drives the next step that you take.”

7.      Learning needs to be connected across disciplines and reach out into the real world. Learning can’t be meaningful if students don’t understand why the knowledge will be useful to them, how it can be applied in life. Understanding the connections between subjects and ideas is essential for the ability to transfer skills and adapt. “We can’t just have things remain in silos that never interact,” Groff said.

IMPLEMENTING THE PRINCIPLES

Many of the seven principles outlined are second nature to good teachers, but they can feel hard to achieve within education systems that are slow-moving, bureaucratic and resistant to change. There are ways for teachers who want to create an innovative learning environment to begin down the path, even without the full support of their colleagues and administration. Shifting to the Common Core could offer openings for building in these practices. It’s designed in a way that condones a lot of the principles that we’ve been talking about.

Everyone knows the common barriers educators face: the school culture, the students and themselves. Some reflection and problem solving, teachers can often begin to work around these barriers. An educator might think she’s open to innovation without realizing that there are preconceived notions about how one should teach that are deeply ingrained.

Educators can also test ideas with students before implementing them. Students have been indoctrinated into the same educational mindset about what makes a “useful” education as everyone else, and some might be resistant to new teaching methodologies. Without their enthusiasm it can be hard to persevere through other obstacles.

5.1.4 REFLECTION

The kind of learners you teach

There are a variety of types of learners in my single classroom. Therefore, it is important to incorporate multiple teaching methods. It is also important to know what your own predominant learning style is, because when you teach, you may unintentionally favor your learning style and shortchange other types of learners in the classroom.

 An active learning process involves listening, demonstrating, interacting, and understanding in order to engage all learners. Adult learners tend to have a need to interact and share with others. Well-designed training and educational programs use both active and passive methods. There needs to be some information transfer, but information that is only shared in a passive learning format is likely to become boring or seem irrelevant to learners. The key to teaching adults is to provide new information that is relevant and usable within a relatively short period of time. A good framework to keep in mind is the active training credo:

As a teacher, my goal is not only to present information those learners need but also to facilitate experiences that will help them gain and master the knowledge and skills that they need to know and practice. By using a variety of teaching techniques and by actively involving learners in the experience, we increase the chances that they will retain and use the information.

How effectively you and your school prepare learners/students for the digital society;

All educators want to help their students succeed in life. What was considered a good education 50 years ago, however, is no longer enough for success in college, career, and citizenship in the 21st century.

1)      If the digital society is used correctly, will help prepare students for their future careers, which will inevitably include the use of different use of technology.

2)      Integrating technology into the classroom is definitely a great way to reach diversity in learning styles but this one can be implemented by both the teachers and even schools.

3)      Teachers give students the chance to interact with their classmates more by encouraging collaboration.

4)      Technology helps the teachers prepare students for the real world environment. As our nation becomes increasingly more technology-dependent, it becomes even more necessary that to be successful citizens, students must learn to be tech-savvy.

If you are going to invest in the work to improve your innovation culture, you are investing in change. Prepare your people for your culture change, and keep in mind some of the best practices in managing change

1.      Establishing a Sense of Urgency

2.      Creating a Guiding Coalition

3.      Developing a Change Vision

4.      Empowering Broad-based Action

5.      Never Letting Up

6.      Incorporating Changes into the Culture