Comments on Articles - Week 11

I indeed also believe that educational video games also called “edutainment”  could entertain the students by making learning fun; entertainment can be used as an educational tool so that games target a specific type of learning or topic and build a game around that topic (for example, kids might learn math by playing a flying game). The ideal scenario would be that children will have fun and forget that they’re learning, but still maintain the stimuli and the knowledge they pick up while playing.

It is not surprising that part 3 of the Pew Internet & American Life project study on Social Media and Young Adults reported a significant increase of social networking usage by students. Educators should also capitalize on that since students are developing a positive attitude towards using technology systems, editing and customizing content and thinking about online design and layout. They're also sharing creative original work like poetry and film and practicing safe and responsible use of information and technology.

In conclusion video games and social networking tools are tremendous educational potential that should be valued.

Comments on a Smart Board Notebook Lesson

The Smart Board lesson I have selected from Smart Exchange is a 3^rd grade French course (besides ED Tech, I am also working on getting my French certification – French is my 1^st language). Although this is supposed to be a French lesson, I found it interesting that the teacher had made this course interdisciplinary by incorporating Science, Social Studies and Language Arts components. This lesson contains a lot of colorful images which can be very helpful for the students to learn a new language.

Overall, this type of lesson show how the Smart Board technology can touch on all multiple intelligences along with various learning strategies. I truly believe that he interactive whiteboard supports the teaching process of foreign languages in three main ways: it supports interaction and conversation in the classroom; it helps with the presentation of new cultural and linguistic elements; and it promotes the organizational skills of the teacher.

Another think I would like to underline is how easy it is to use; foreign language teachers can prepare a lesson as usual in a Word Document, and import it into the SMART Board in order to be able to benefit from all the interactive features of the whiteboard. The main advantage is that teachers can use the whiteboard to overwrite, underline, highlight or circle the elements that need to be emphasized. Teachers can also bring the Internet into the class without involving the cost of having one online computer for every student in the classroom.

To sum up, the Smart Board interactive whiteboard is a very innovative and powerful support for language acquisition, it provides a bridge that allows using the features of computers without breaking communication.

Ubuntu Open Source Operating System

The timing of this assignment is interesting because it has been about couple of weeks that I have been looking for free open source software and operating system for my niece who just got her first new computer.

I have explored the Ubuntu version 10.10 open source operating system. This was named after the South African ideology which means “humanity towards others”. I thought what a great name for this free and open source software which provides users with flexibility and accessibility just like Windows. Not only users can install it wherever they want, they can also personalize it to their liking. I found out through my readings that Ubuntu is one of the most accessible operating systems and is also translated into 25 languages. That’s quite impressive!

Exploring the system was fairly straightforward, it actually offers all the applications needed on a computer such as a web browser (i.e. Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome), office suites to create professional documents, spreadsheets and presentations (i.e. openoffice.org), email and chat/instant messaging, and media applications…etc.

Of course, I am still a newbie in this new environment, and I didn't explore every corner yet but it sounds exciting and definitely worthwhile to get familiar with this totally FREE resource.

For further information on installation please check:

http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

Vygotsky and Personal Learning Environments

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2009/10/vygotsky-and-personal-learning-environments/

Vygotsky and Personal Learning Environments

This article is very interesting; it truly reminded me of all the discussions we used to have in the Education Psychology course about Vgotsky versus Piaget, and Skinner during last semester.

Vigotsky’s definition of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is "the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers". Simply said the ZPD is the area between what an individual can achieve on their own and what they can achieve with assistance.

I certainly agree with his theory when he advances that students should be allowed to reach the top of their ZPD, and should be judged on their ZPD: indeed many students may not perform well under the pressure of the limited time of exams in order to be accurately evaluated and receive the grades they deserve. I have seem many children (relatives, friends, neighbors) that have similar issues, they just do not perform well during standardized tests, but are across the year good students.

I truly believe that -although it sounds complicated and complex to implement it- educators should consider evaluating students on how well they have reached their optimal potential within their ZPD, instead of "teaching to the test" and being evaluated on how well they prepared for the test.

MLS vs PLE

LMS vs PLE http://mohamedaminechatti.blogspost/2010/03/mls-vs-ple.html Although I found the title of this blog a bit confusing - to me it seems to imply that one may be better than the other - I believe that the PLE and the LMS can not be mutually exclusive because we simply need both of them. If I think about most students' experiences, through the academic world, they have been exposed to LMS from a young age; the information was centralized, the expectations and goals were clearly defined, and for the most part knowledge was unidirectional with a beginning time and an end time. Basically they had to adapt to the system. On the other hand, with the proliferation of technology, PLEs - such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, My Space, YouTube, SlideShare, Google,...etc - are now very much accessible to users, and the beauty is that users do not have to comply to any system, they can select their own learning systems/topics/time and develop their own community, and network of knowledge sharing. In essence PLEs are flexible and completely "user-centric". In conclusion, I believe that ideally incorporating some level of PLE into the LMS would be very appealing and beneficial to today's end users.

Dangerously Irrelevent, Technology, Leadership, And The Future of Schools: Is individualized instruction a bad thing?

Please find the blog's url below:
http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2010/10/is-individualized-instruction-a-bad-thing.html/comment-page-1#comment-34585

Title of the blog: Dangerously Irrelevent, Technology, Leadership, And The Future of Schools: Is individualized instruction a bad thing?

My response to the blog:

I believe that educators should provide individualized instruction when needed because “one size doesn’t fit all”; in other words there are diferrent types of learners in a clasrroms (i.e. visual, auditory, kinesthetic), not counting students with learning dissabilities (special needs students) and gifted students. Whenever appropriate, I believe that using assistive technology to make content more accessible and more meaningful to students should be a priority. Technology per se is not always the solution, it is rather the way we use it to achieve a specific goal that is the solution. Regarding the discipline aspect, althought I believe that teachers should demande respect and discipline in the classroom, all of that “good stuff” should start at home, and parents are just as accountable.

Wiki in Education

Title of the Article: Wiki-Centric Learning

http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/09/15/wiki-centric-learning.aspx

I found this article interesting because it gives detailed examples of how wikis can be utilized in a classroom, it underlines that a "technology-centric" classroom where pretty much everything revolves around wikis is possible. Indeed,  it shows the multiple ways of using wiki such as quickly accessing handouts, assignments, PowerPoint presentations and other materials as well as creating online collaborative workspaces for students.
Although I have not used wikis yet, after reading this article and some others online, I truly look forward to using it with my future students mainly because it is not only simple and non-geeky, but it is also adaptable depending on what you want to accomplish. The biggest benefits of wikis are fast, efficient collaboration for projects, papers, and websites. I can see how much it can be useful for students because they make group projects easier to coordinate and teachers can interact with students throughout the course of a project or assignment, see their progress, and give them feedback along the way.
As more and more teachers learn about wikis, their simplicity, benefits, and the fact that it can bring them closer to their students, to other teachers, as well as to librarians, I believe that the use of wikis will grow.