Pinterest has become my best friend

I show a lot of photographs in my classes, and I mean a lot! I think I have used Power point once out of all of my lessons, as it's just so much easier to use a photo friendly site like Pinterest. 

 Where I am placed they don't use Pinterest as a teaching tool, because they never really had too. There isn't a lot of 'chalk and talk', because that's the nature of the course. I don't do a lot of 'chalk and talk', but I am aware that I need to introduce the students to different photographers, and I like to show video clips or articles to go along with the subject. The other lecturers have been doing this for years and don't hesitate to just bring up the videos or websites during the session, but this is because they have the confidence to do that. I am very new to this teaching malarkey. Having all my resources in one place makes my planning and my life easier. 

 In my more recent lessons, when I have been looking at photographers, I have put a lot more work on the Pinterest board than I'm actually going to look at. I leave this page open on the Interactive whiteboard and during the lesson if the students want to go up and look at some other work, they can do so. Just by clicking directly on the board. This gives them more access to resources if they want it.  I have circled the images I actually used to present the lesson.

The last great thing I'm going to say about Pinterest, is that my students have instant access to all the resources I used in class. All they have to do is go to my Pinterest page and all the lessons are there! This helps them find exactly what they are looking for when doing visual diary work. Of course like other colleges and universities they have a virtual learning environment (VLE) that they use, Moodle. But in my lessons I am mainly showing photographs and videos, Pinterest is a much easier platform to look at images and video rather than Moodle. Pinterest is for me, the most useful teaching tool out there.

We now have Interactive whiteboards!

I say that we now have Interactive Whiteboards, but they have been there since I started back at my placement, I just never blogged about it! 

The course I am at placement on, had moved to different block a year ago. The course I am on has amazing resources, but the interactive white boards weren't installed in there new rooms. But they have just had ( about a month ago) new ones installed! Previously, they were using flat screen TV's to teach, which was good, but the Interactive white board is about twice the size! Which means the students can see more and learn better. 

The students enjoy being able to walk up to the screen and take part in making notes and picking images to look at. It is a lot easier to teach with an interactive whiteboard, mainly because I have to demonstrate tools on Photoshop all the time.
 

For anyone who hasn't seen Photoshop before, this is what it looks like. All the menus and tools are tiny! Trying to teach a class of 16 how to use this is pretty complicated, especially if they are all struggling to read off a tiny screen across the room from them. The size of the interactive white board makes it so much easier for students to learn and see, and for me to teach.

Barriers to the effective use of technology in education

Technology has now worked it's way into every part of our lives, including learning. I'm not only talking about education, but we use technology to learn everyday. YouTube and Wiki How tutorials are now used world wide. As discussed in my last post How technology has changed the way we learn, as teachers we need to support life long learning. These skills need to be given to students during their education, otherwise we aren't equipping our students with the best tools.

Mind map of the barriers to the use of technology in education:


To create this mind map I looked at a book by Megan Poore called Social Media in the classroom; A Practical Guide.  There are many reason why there are so many barriers for using technology in the classroom. The internet especially is very hard to police. Institutions like colleges and university don't want to be held responsible if anything goes wrong. 

(Somekh 2007) asks the question, can you really have people sitting in a computer laboratory doing assessment on screen and ensure that they will not cheat? Using technology in the classroom should improve lessons, not make them harder. I can completely understand that getting technology in the first place depends on funding and budgets. Some colleges and universities may not have enough funding to get all the resources you want. But after all technology is just a tool to aid learning. 

Using social media in the classroom rewards both courage and enterprise. Be intrepid: get out there and try new and different things… but always within the limits of safety. (Poore 2012) 

There are many barriers identified in the mind map I created. As Poore says in the quote above it is all about safety. Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) are a perfect example of education being used safely online. VLE's allow the students access to all the educational resources within a safe environment.

There will always be barriers to new advancements in education. It is important to find a way of using new advancements in a positive way. Eliminating all the barriers will be pretty much impossible, but as long as the institution is willing to try to overcome certain barriers like cost, copyright, branding etc. it can be very worth while. Other barriers like students posting offensive material, will have to be policed by staff. The students will have to be made aware of the consequences of using the technology in an inappropriate manner. 

If we are serious about education, then we must embrace the best tools that are available to us. If that means accessing tools that are hosted by social media services that are not supported by our organisation then we must find ways of making that access happen safely that responsibly.

(Poore 2012)

As the quote above states, sometimes there is new website that you think will be excellent for your students. If you really believe that it will be beneficial you have to come up of ways to make it safe for your students. I know when I was at college we weren't allowed access to YouTube. My course was a creative media course and our lecturers believed that we should be allowed to access YouTube as it was an excellent source of research. It was granted, but the lecturers had the responsibility to police the media site, to make sure we were using it in an appropriate manner. 

Poore, Megan Using Social Media in the Classroom: A Practical Guide (SAGE 2012)

Somekh, Bridget Pedagogy and Learning with ICT: Researching the Art of Innovation (Routledge 2007)

How technology has changed the way we learn

There is nowhere to hide from technology; it is everywhere. It's in our homes, in our work and in our classrooms. The advancements in technology are designed to improve our lives, and we should embrace this. Especially as teachers. 

Some of the strongest pressure comes from students asking ‘this tutor puts stuff online for us – why don’t you?’(Hill, 2008)

 Hill discusses how students expect technology to be used in their education, and they have the right too. I am still a student myself and I expect to use computers through my learning. I expect to be able to go onto my universities virtual learning enviroment (VLE) and have access to all the resources. The use of technology through education should improve the way we learn. 

(Petty 2009) Poses the question, nevermind the dazzle of the technology, the glittering images, and the clever graphics and funny animations – what about the learning? If you don't know how to use the technology to improve learning, then it can just look like a gimic to get students involed, but it's not. The use of virtual learning enviroments allow students to have access to their academic resources whenever they need it. Students no longer need to be in a classroom enviroment to learn. Technology should improve the learning, but it should be a tool that aids the learning, and it's a powerful one. It becomes the question of selecting the appropiate tool for a praticular aspect of the learning. Sometimes this is an e-learning tool, sometimes it's not. (Hill 2008)

If we don’t teach our students how to find trustworthy computer resources, and how to learn from these, then we are not preparing them for real life, or for ‘lifelong learning’, or for progression on to their next course. 

(Petty 2009) 

Petty is telling us that learning doesn't stop in the classroom, or after education. People learn everyday, and as teachers we are supposed to encourage 'lifelong learning'. How can our students become lifelong learners if they are not equipment with the right tools for the job. People learn everyday; using Youtube tutorials to learn how to cook a meal, or reading resources for a new software package that has been installed at work. Students need to know how to progress with the developing technology, and they need to know how to use it for their own benefit. 

 

Hill, Chris  Teaching with e-learning in the Lifelong Learning Sector, 2008 Accessed at: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book238394?siteId  Accessed on: 24/11/2014

  Geoff, Petty ‘Students learning with computers: e-learning, ICT and ILT’ in Teaching Today: A Practical Guide (Nelson Thornes 4^th Ed, 2009)

The value of mobile technology in teaching and learning

 

Using mobile phones in the classroom isn't something I really thought too much about before joining my PCET course. Without realising it, I have been learning through mobile technology throughout most of college and university. It just seemed like a natural progression so it wasn't anything I ever thought about. With the ever growing advancements in mobile technology and the cost of portable devices constantly becoming more affordable, it seems that everyone has a mobile these days. I would also go as far to say that the vast majority of people would own more than one portable device. Mobiles, IPads / Tablets and laptops are a common site in modern colleges and university class rooms. With the many uses of mobile technology the progression of integration between mobile devices and the classroom seem to be irreversible. (Keengwe 2013) But I don't think it should be reversible. If you walked into a lecture theater laptops and mobile tablets would be a common sight. Mobile technology allows the students to have access to all the learning resources but only needing one object.

 Technology when it is used in education can lead to some unintended consequences, and challenges. (Keengwe 2013) These challenges can be that students could end up relying on technology to solve the problem for them. With search engines like Google and pages like Wikipedia, the internet can't always be a reliable source of research and information.  Another challenge of using mobile technology in the classrooms opens up the possibility of students using them as a distraction from actual work. Providing them an opportunity to procrastinate. Mobile technology needs to be used in an appropriate manner. Technology should be integrated to improve the learning; if there is no need to using mobile technology in one of your lessons it shouldn't be forced.

The system must be developed from a learner-centred approach, providing mechanisms for automatic or manual adaptation in order for the system to meet the needs of different learners as much as possible. (Male 2011) 

As the quote above states, the use of mobile technology in learning should be centered around the students. Mobile technology is only as useful as you make it. E-learning should allow the students access to more resources than the teacher can provided. The use of this technology should give the students more opportunities to improve their learning through new resources. Mobile technology has support for multimedia information and access to different applications, including access to the Internet and high speed data allowing video and communication technology available to your students anywhere (Male 2011). This allows the students access to educational resources whenever they need it. This is a huge development for classroom learning. Students can contact their tutors or teachers via email for help on assignments. They can have access to resources that the teacher used in class, they can revisit work after a lecture if they weren't clear about it. Mobile technology is giving people more out of their education. It is hugely improving the way students learn. 

The use of mobile technology in learning has it's challenges. But designing the technology around the students and as long as it is used in a positive educational context, it is an important tool for teaching and learning today. 

Keengwe, Jared (2013)  Mobile learning and integration of mobile technologies in education, Avalible at: https://www-swetswise-com.v-ezproxy.smu.ac.uk Last accessed: 22/11/2014

Male, Galamoyo (2011) Enhancing the quality of e-learning through mobile technology Avaliable at: http://swanseamet.summon.serialssolutions.com Last accessed: 22/11/2014

Grow Curiosity - Ted Talks

Ramsey Musallam : 3 rules to spark learning 

 

I have seen quite a few Ted talks about all different ways that teachers inspire students or students inspiring teachers. But not many people give you actually advice for doing this. Then I saw Ramsey Musallam's 3 rules to spark learning. His subject is chemistry, very far away from photography, but he used it in a very clever way. He talks about growing students curiosity and how the quality of their questions is an important part of learning. Instead of giving your students a load of information to digest, show them something or do something to grow their curiosity. Do something that will spark the questions, then they will want to know the information. 

I think this is an amazing way to teach. I tried to reverse a very common way of teaching Photoshop on Thursday. Usually in a Photoshop class the teacher will demonstrate the tools and give instructions on what they want the students to do, step by step. I hated being taught like this, it can be really boring and I would always switch off half way through. So I reversed it. I knew the students had basic Photoshop skills so I gave them a photograph with 4 main faults and asked them to correct it. It was great, the activity was received very well by the students. When they couldn't figure out how to do something, this made them ask the questions I wanted them to ask, so I could show them how to do it. The students said that I had trusted them and gave them independence, so they could really see what they knew and what they wanted to know. 

I was definitely inspired by this video!

My first two weeks at placement

It's coming to the end of my second week at placement and I am really enjoying it. At the moment I have two sets of first year BTECs teaching them the photography unit. They are two great classes. They are all really creative, but I have direct opposites in the class. I have students who are too nervous or shy to share their ideas, and I also have students who are equally as creative but they let themselves get too carried away and lose sight of what they were asked to do. In a way I'm kind of like that this has happened because it challenges me; 

1) To encourage the nervous to be believe in what they can do
2) Rein in some students and help them use their creativity in a more constructive way

My first real lesson with both groups was at the beginning of this week. I get to see the groups twice a week which is really good. My lesson was on the Digital SLR, ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture. Which I think is a really hard topic to teach. I never liked the way it was taught to me and I still see how confusing it can be when I explain it to people. But I found this really helpful chart on Pinterest that the students seemed to like too: 

 

For the class I decided it would be better to learn these hands on. So I split the classes into two groups, gave them a camera and let them experiment with the settings and see what they could create. I was so pleased with the result, especially as before my lesson the students wouldn't even pick up a digital SLR.

Don't worry I asked their permission before posting them here. But I was really proud of how creative they were and I wanted to share! 

Hope everyone is having fun!