EJD: Blog vs Wiki

An interesting blog post from a 1st year student as they explore the realm of online tools to support collaboration and communication in education. - thanks Emily

EJD: Blog vs Wiki: A blog shares a variety of different content, from editorial to multimedia. The blog entries are all in the form of posts. Users are able t...

Barriers to Effective Use of Technology in Education

Marking my students blog posts recently and I happened upon some excellent material. One of the titles that I asked them to consider, in a more academic style, was "Barriers to Effective Use of Technology in Education". This brought some engaging and interesting aspects to light as far as my learners were concerned, it also ensured that they engaged with the research that has been conducted in the field. It was amazing to read lots of interesting issues that were considered barriers fifteen and sometimes twenty years ago. In some respects we haven't moved very far, but in many ways education has made superb progress. What I found interesting and still pertinent was the following “There is also a risk that as technology becomes more and more advanced, the human element of teaching may become lost. Ager reminds us “We still need excellent teachers who, by their infectious enthusiasm make us change the way we think about a subject.” (2000, p. 3)” I am please to say that this remains true and gives reason to highlight the fact that technology is only a tool, or resource that you can, if applicable, utilise to support good teaching. I particularly like the next snippet,“Whenever new technology is introduced into society there must be a counterbalancing human response…” (Naisbitt 1984, p.35 quoted in Roblyer & Doering, 2014, p.20). My student comments that, “is especially pertinent for students taking distance-learning options. Students may start to miss the human interaction of being in a classroom, so it is important to create on-line discussion groups to bring the social aspect back into learning. (Armitage, et al., 2007)” Food for though when planning eLearning, blended learning or really any learning. Nothing replaces a good teacher, not even google! To conclude however, the message remains the same, that the general categories of barriers to the adoption of technology include: reliability; lack of time to learn the new technologies; uncertainty that using technology really matters; and lack or support or training, as my own research showed in 2009 (Peace, 2014) when investigating student teachers take up of new technologies in their teaching.

I saw this table below on a student's blog too, made be go off on a tangent to see where that came from too!

Click to read full paper

Ager, R. (2000) The Art of Information and Communication Technology for Teachers. London: David Fulton Publishers

Roblyer, M.D., and Doering A. H., (2014). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching [New International Edition] Essex: Pearson

Peace, M. (2014) Web 2.0 and Classrooms (in Teaching and Learning with ICT in the Primary School. Younie, S. Leask, M. and Burden, K.) London: Routledge

Groff, J., & Mouza, C. (2008). A framework for addressing challenges to classroom technology use. AACE Journal, 16(1), 21-46. (Image)

Blogging with Beth: 10 best photoshop alternatives

This might be useful for those of you wanting to play with images in a setting without expensive applications. Shared initially by a PCET student I thought I'd pass it on in case you missed it. Blogging with Beth: 10 best photoshop alternatives: Hi guys. (In particular my PCET classmates) I have found a great website which show a list of options for photoshop alternatives.

Learning for All Daphne Koller

As you probably know TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in under 20 minutes. You may also know that TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, global issues, the arts and more.  As I was looking for some new inspiration for my eLearning module I came across this talk by Daphne Koller. I found her talk refreshing and engaging in that she was so passionate about giving education back to the learner, regardless of their status. 

It links in nicely to the work being done by Curriki As I have written before Curriki is an online, free, open education service. It is structured as a nonprofit organisation to provide Open Educational Resources in support of education, helping to minimise the educational divide.  Curricula and instructional materials are available at the Curriki website to teachers, professional educators, students, lifelong learners, and parents. The majority of the resources on the Curriki site fall under a Creative Commons license.  Educational materials are provided by the Curriki community and are peer-reviewed for quality and adherence to standards, so you might want to have a look at their  resources. Maybe one day you can contribute.

Any way, back to Daphne Koller, she is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free. She is doing this not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. Together with Andrew Ng she cofounded Coursera, which aims to provide universal access to the world’s best education.  With Coursera, Daphne Koller and co-founder Andrew Ng are bringing courses from top colleges online, free, for anyone who wants to take them. Bio: http://www.ted.com/speakers/daphne_ko...

Two excellent examples of eLearning. My intention is to look at some of the ideas presented and to develop a blended approach in order to meet the needs of my learners.  This in turn should hopefully encourage them to consider how they can hone the best aspects into their teaching in the post 16 sector.

Presenting your stuff!

There are a range complete presentation packages, some are 'freer' than others and some are more versatile than others. With little effort they can give you everything you need to produce a professional-looking presentation. But it isn't about the software. No matter what application you use you can still end up with slide by slide visual aid that sends your audience to sleep. Remember that if you are the presenter, your presentation is merely a tool to support what you have to say.  

In this post there are a selection of the alternatives  to the old faithful PowerPoint, Prezi and Keynote.

Try this links for size:

24 Powerpoint Alternatives & Presentation Programs For 2014

You might also try testing some polling system; a great way to get your audience involved, check a few out below:

Engage your Audience

Voting with your class

Nearpod is an interactive teaching and learning tool that allows teachers to construct presentations using the Nearpod website and deliver instruction to students by pushing content out to multiple devices at once. The teacher controls the presentation from a master device, while students follow along on a mobile device



Another 'neat' polling application that I played with today was Poll Everywhere. This one also allows a certain amount of 'free'dom before if offers you a payment package. Also I'm not sure about the charge for texting responses, that will depend on your phone package I guess.

My final play was Micropoll - test it now!

QuestionPro