ICT in Post Compulsory Education

I have begun to teach in a new sector this year, and I’m really enjoying it. It is the PGCE/PCE in Post Compulsory Education and Training (PCET) here at UWTSD Swansea. Our website boasts “The programme aims to help existing or intending full or part-time teachers, tutors, etc., in Further, Higher and Adult/Community Education to gain an understanding of the principles and methods of learning and teaching.” So for me it brings a range of new challenges, not least because my new students have such vastly different backgrounds, not only in their ICT experience and expertise, but also their life experience too. The range of activities that we engaged with this week were not so different from those on my undergraduate course, however, the ways in which they were performed and discussed were very different. According to Lindeman (1920), who is considered to be a major philosopher of adult education in the US, adult education is "a co-operative venture in non-authoritarian, informal learning - the chief purpose of which is to discover the meaning of experience." With this smidge of insight in to andragogy I began to enjoy myself. The session was so rich in dialogue and confab that I lost track of time, and, unfortunately overran the session by half an hour! So sorry guys!
Our discussion topics were based on the ICT Skill for Life Curriculum document that was developed by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) for the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) back in 2007. Although 2007 is a long time ago in terms of technology and advancement, the documents raises some excellent areas for discussion, with the use of ICT in post 16 education..
The Curriculum document outlined a clear set of skills required to meet the national Skill for Life ICT standards, together with the knowledge and understanding to underpin those skills, and aims to:

1. link to purposeful use of ICT in everyday life;
   
2. emphasise transferable skills;
3. foster critical judgement;
4. develop independent use of ICT;
5. prepare learners for the future.

The document was written for learners in various post-16 settings including further and adult education, the workplace, prisons, and programmes for the unemployed, community and family. Therefore, it seemed like a good place to begin our investigations into technology and education.
Here is a little taster; the group discussing the development of independent use of ICT provided the class with passionate discourse along the following lines;

• To encourage the individual to research and use self-motivation in preparation for the development of ICT skills.
• This can be achieved by linking their special interest or employment/professional vocational skills, and the value of ICT.
• To demonstrate to the individual the benefits (which are somewhat tangible) to the user.
• Necessary to define the purpose of using IT skills within their own backgrounds.
• To make the use of ICT dynamic, interactive; enjoyable and purposeful.
• To demonstrate the increasing popular diversity of the specific sites that can assist the user to develop their particular skills (e.g. YouTube, emailing, social media and blogging).
• To enable them to use popular 'search engines' such as Google; Yahoo and Bing.
• To set tasks/exercises that can be achievable independently. 

 For more you have to be on the course, but is gives you a flavour of the session!

Social Networking & Learning

After a busy with my fabulous new group of PCET students I began to reflect on the day’s activities. The course I am teaching is a 7 day intensive ICT module for teaching and learning. The students are very eager, interesting and interested and so a pleasure to engage with. Their ICT skills range as you would expect from any new group of people, but what they do share is their understanding that ICT is a valuable teaching and learning tool. We learned such a lot together yesterday.

The main aspect of the day was to discuss the place of social networking in education, in particular to aid reflective practice. My challenge, however, is to teach the students about applications that they can use in their teaching and learning, without keeping them too long on the computers, as the course is all day! Ideally the discussions would have taken place on the forum setup on Moodle our university VLE. So, to avoid over use of the technology, they used felt pens and sheets of A3, with pleasure I might add. The downfall was that there was no record after they fed back their group responses as there would have been on the forum. The forum would also have allowed for follow-up contributions and reflections, but it was a necessary sacrifice for my group’s well-being.

We had lots of issues setting up blogs using Blogger. The main issue, which I suppose is really intended to be an asset, was that fact Blogger constantly encourages sharing with Google+. I wanted to keep things simple and separate but these days it is getting harder to do. The bonus with all the instant linking is that you are sharing your information with your ‘circles’ as they are called in Google+ and they can easily be linked to your Facebook and Twitter friends and followers. You just need to be aware of this and to be sure that it is what you really want. My advice is that you don’t rush setting up these new accounts and that you read all the pop-ups so that you don’t accidentally share!

21st Century Learners do we learn differently?

Most of us will have a mobile phone with the capability to access more information than is held in a university library, the idea of classroom as the place you go to acquire knowledge is out dated. However, education establishments such as schools and universities, still have a very important role to play as the start point and guidance of inquiry, so the role of the educator is not yet defunct!

As a student you are an expert in your own learning; you know how you learn best, and what you are most interested in. An interest in learning is the key characteristic that teachers share with their students and education establishments, at all levels, stand to benefit from working with students rather than performing for them. With the help of technology and radical re-imagining of time and space, lessons no longer have to adhere to the ‘one size fits all’ approach characteristic of the traditional system. Students stand to gain a lot from more personalised lessons and greater autonomy over their own learning.

But do we actually learn differently?  Most certainly the access to information is different; we are the ‘instant access generation’.  In my house certainly, if someone asks a question that we can’t answer we simply ‘Google it’, if we need to see how it is done we ‘Youtube it’, and if we want advice we ‘Tweet it’.  It can easily be used to challenge too, so that a simple discussion can quite easily turn into informed debate!  This is happening in classroom too.  My second year undergraduate students were debating the value of gaming in education.  The first speaker had made their opening comments, based on literature gathered both online and from other sources, the challenge became much more substantial when the opposing team where researching the comments in real-time.  A very interesting debate ensued!  So it’s not the way we process the information that is different, but our needs have changed.  We have easy access to vast amounts of information, far more than ever before.  As educators our job is to teach our students to be more discerning with the information they find as the need to amass it is less vital, more necessary is the ability to locate, evaluate and disseminate.

It is from this that I begin to assess the range of Google Apps for Education as it seems to be a hot topic in education at the moment. Apparently hundreds of thousands of schools are adopting this free resource which is changing the way teachers and students collaborate on work and share information.  - See more at: http://tinyurl.com/8254ytd.  There is a good write up at http://edgalaxy.com/google-for-education complete with suggestions for use and Twitter feeds for feedback, what more can you ask for?

Stop Motion Animation - Beginners Tutorial

Audacity

We discussed audio today with my Ed Studies students, and the impact sound can have on an animation. We came to the conclusion that people will watch a poor screening but few will watch it with bad sound.  So what is special about audio? First of all, music gives a movie an emotional stance. It can change the audience's feelings; you can give them a more positive view on your film simply by varying your music.  It is possible to make the audience, happy, sad, angry, scared, excited, emotional, etc. Moreover the "background" music helps heighten a suspenseful moment in the film, anticipation and wonder keeps the audience on the edge of their seats.

Sound effects can add illusion to a movie and the effects in movies are rarely a recording of the real thing. The way sound effects are used in the movie’s final mix entirely depends on the sound design. Some effects could be: chairs scooting, glasses clanking, footsteps, traffic outside, water running, and buttons being pushed. Listen to a take with your eyes closed. What sounds do you hear? What sounds should be there to make the scene more complete?

I played the two clips below, asking my students to make notes;

·  http://www.youtube.com/user/hermes/featured?v=HpuIEH8sh48 play just sound 1^st – tell me what is happening.

·  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTqRwBKTaQ0&list=UUmFOnqrNg-YHLXfdB3GexBg Play without sound 1^st – tell me what it sounds like.

It is amazing the difference that that audio makes and not always positive, as some students said that they enjoyed some productions more without the sound. However, the idea today was to develop the understanding of the range and scope of audio and to then develop these aspects and create a news broadcast.  The activity used a selection of audio clips and news material found in my delicious link.  We used Audacity to create the broadcast, exporting as an MP3 file. The finished MP3 is then hosted on archive.org, and then embedded on their blogs.

My effort below is rather substandard, but you get the idea!