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.


 

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)