New resources on my VLE

I've started to put new resources on my VLE. Pinterest is my most used teaching tool, I use it practically every lesson when I am introducing a new subject, photographer or project. On the VLE I have put a section called Pinterest boards, Pinterest allows you to create small 'widgets' (just a smaller version of Pinterest with a link), where my students can find all the images and resources I used in a particular lesson. The students have found this really useful, and no longer ask me what photographers we looked at last lesson. 
 Something that I really want to do with my VLE was to create Photoshop tutorials for my students. Tutorial videos are huge and you will see thousands on Youtube. But I want to create specific tutorials, looking at what we have done that lesson, or what I think will be useful for the future.I have learnt loads off video tutorials, they are quick and easy to follow as you can pause it whenever you need to, and you can watch it as many times as needed. 

A downside to using the weebly for education site is that to upload video you need to be paying the subscription fee, and my VLE is a free web page so I don't have this feature. But you can have HTML code. So I uploaded the tutorial to my Youtube account then took the HTML and copied that onto my web page. 

It was really quick to do and the video can play straight from my website. So it doesn't send you to the Youtube channel, which I like because I wanted the video actually embedded onto the website, I didn't want it to send the students to the Youtube account.


 

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.

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

Inspired by the students!

This week was my observation week at my placement. I spent most of the week sitting in classes watching how each lecturer taught, their different styles and learning more about the course and the students. But in some lectures I got to walk around the class and look over the shoulder of what each student was working on, I even gave advice and helped a few of them with Photoshop.

I was SO inspired by them. All week I was watching their creativity and it got me dying to dive into a project of my own. I spent the best part of Thursday night working on the image above, and it was so much fun.

The week just really reminded me of why I want to teach my subject, and made me even more excited for my placement in November.

Technology in my placement; Remote Desktop and Flat Screens

This week I began my placement on the Creative Media course at Gower College Swansea. 
This course is full of technology as you would expect, Macs, cameras, lights etc. But I have seen a lot of ways tech is being used to teach as well as being the things students are learning about.
                              
Remote Desktop

This is a really awesome teaching tool if your teaching a subject like mine, showing 30 students how to use Photoshop is pretty impossible without some sort of screen. But this app lets you take control over the students Mac's, so whatever you do on your screen will be shown on theirs.


1. This makes it easier for the students to see what your doing

2. It stops the students from being distracted and watching cat videos on Youtube.

This program also allows you to keep an eye on what the students are doing on their Mac.

Flat screens vs Interactive Boards

What I found on the particular course is that they don't use interactive boards. They have a normal white board and flat Screen TVs in every classroom. The TV's are hooked up to the master Mac, so they can display whats happening on the lecturers screen, show websites, Youtube videos and power points I guess. I haven't used the flat screens yet so I don't really know the advantages / disadvantages, but I thought it was interesting.

Explain Everything - Dark Room Printing

Today I used an app that I haven't heard of before called Explain Everything.I used it to explain how to print in a digital darkroom.

It's a really useful app cause you can create a little movie that anyone can watch. I think it could be a really good tool in education, especially in photography, because you can create little tutorials that your students can access at any time. I think it's a create idea,as a student, to be able to go back online and re watch how to do something that I might have forgotten by the time I've gotten home. You could follow the tutorial as well. If the video was on a specific Photoshop action, as a student at home or after class, I could open Photoshop and follow the video step by step, then pause when I'm finding something a bit tricky. Or I can go back if I missed something, or watch it again and again until I understood the tutorial. 

What else is great about this app is that you can add web browsers, so anything from Youtube, or PDFs online. You can draw on it, add photos, record video and sound. It's a really interactive tool! 

I am really impressed with this little app, big thumbs up! :D

British Journal of Photography Blog (Tumblr)

The British Journal of photography is a print magazine that showcases photographers, new projects and any news in the wonderful world of photography. In my degree, I loved looking through the printed journals in uni and the website for inspiration and research. It was a huge part of my degree because I wouldn’t have found half the photographers I love if it wasn’t for this journal.

Surprisingly, I didn’t know they had a blog! Now I’ve discovered it, I love it too. It’s a blog, so they have to keep everything really simple and mainly post links to new up and coming photographers, exhibitions and there are some video blogs too. I think this a great blog for teaching cause it will keep you up to date with the world of photography, but not only that it will give you fresh ideas for lessons, it will give info about exhibitions you might want to take students too and it will also keep giving you inspiration for new work.

Tumblr is another great blogging site anyway. It allows you to re-post things from another Tumblr to your own. So you can build up a collection of great resources. I would definitely recommend this to other photographers, students and teachers!

http://bjphoto.tumblr.com/