Engagement Activities for Week 1

Learning Activity 1: Learning Styles

Everyone has a preference in learning, which is called a learning style. This is not an actual measure in what you are as an individual but an understanding of how you learn best. After undertaking the test which determines the type of learn you are it stipulated that I am primarily an active learner and a sequential learner. As stated by Felder and Soloman, as an active learner I prefer to learn by "retain and understand information best by doing something active with it". As for the sequential learner which has been described by Felder and Soloman as "sequential learners tend to gain understanding in linear steps, with each step following logically from the previous one". This is an insight learnt by myself in the way I learn more effectively.

In a classroom, you may get students to take an abridged version of this test to determine what different learning styles may consist within your classroom. This being said, once you do find the learning styles of students in the classroom you can support them by creating activities and explanations that cater to their needs. For example; if a student is a visual learner (which is common to have a lot of in a classroom) then provides students with visual demonstrations or experiments to explain something as opposed to simply explaining because using visual aids is the best way they learn. Kinaesthetic learners (hands-on) allow them to actually participate (along with other students) with the experiment, because they learn best by doing the activity. As long as you have arrange of different activities and explanations to cater for the different learning styles within the classroom throughout the year, then and only then have you supported the range of learning styles which will optimise the learning produced by the students.

This can be done in a form of a Prezi, a Wiki or by Blogging. Each of these has a certain element to it which will support your learners. Using a Prezi will allow you to be in 'control' of the students learning. A Prezi is similar to a PowerPoint but is more interactive. You can design the Prezi so students basically follow the step-by-step lessons or unit of work, working through it at their own pace by following the instructions and clicking on the links provided. This can be done with Wiki's and by Blogging as well but there are factors which may require the teacher to be more technologically savvy then what is needed by the Prezi by setting up the controls so it only includes the classroom instead of other people outside of the classroom. Another factor is only allowing students to see others' work when they are required to, by doing this will deter students looking up other students on the Blogger or Wiki site and simply copying their ideas. These are 3 examples of ICT's which can help scaffold and support learners better assuming they have been setup correctly.

The profiling questions to achieve the result of catering for everyone's preferences that, as a teacher, I would use are:

·    When you learn and having fun what are you doing within the class? (Provide examples like demonstrations, experiments etc.)

·    What parts of work do you not like? (Elaborate on this question, ask if it is because they do not understand the work or not an interest)

·    Do you learn better in groups (collaborative learning) or individually? (if they choose groups, ask a follow up question - which people do you feel that you work sensibly but the most effective with)

·    What do you feel your good at and what needs to be strengthen (this is to determine whether the student needs help in certain areas if it comes to it)

The students entering school now most likely have had a great deal of experience with technology. This being said they have been amused with it and have had that affiliation with it. It is because of this by using ICT, as teachers, will be able to gain that level of engagement from students assuming it’s not the consistently the same ICT being used over again with different information. Onto the main answer though, it is seen to have multiple learning styles within a classroom and ICT's can accommodate for this because there are multiple websites which will cater for every students need assuming the teacher is willing to look and search for them. For example; if you are doing chemical science, you can show students the reaction between chemicals on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRmPa2OSBa0), one example could be of mentos and coke which makes the coke erupt once the mentos is placed into the bottle. There is also TeacherTube (http://www.teachertube.com/) as well which will provide more educational based demonstrations or videos etc. This caters for the visual learners, but can cater for others as well due to it being stimulating and something out of the ordinary. As for kinaesthetic learners there are learning games which provide fun whilst learning for example the website http://www.mathsisfun.com/games/index.html allows students to learn through games.

Engagement Activity 3: Reflection on Prensky's ideas

The Role that technology plays in education for students.

The 'old way' of teaching students has lost its meaning and is becoming less effective for the students of the 21st century. The report implies that students of this present generation are not engaged to learn to their full potential with the current ways of teaching, in order to reach the students you are to first use technology in ways that will captivate them because it is something they have had thorough experience with and engages them - for example they are not bored on their iPods or mobile phones or Xbox’s. This exposure to technology is every day for students and will forever increase; this means the way we teach should be changed as well to suit the needs of our learners.

In regards to the 'enrage or engage' argument, there is a profound truth to it. Prensky (2005) raises an important outlook which has been drawn upon with his own experience and it seems very plausible. The argument has a coherent perspective in which has makes sense because students are captivated by technology and are always amazed at the amount of ICT they still have not seen. If we teach students while using technology through ICTs, which they are use to, they will understand it quicker, engage them more then the 'normal way of teaching' and prepare them for the future since majority of jobs require the worker to be computer literate.

Engagement Activity 4: Reflection on Connectivism

Siemen's (2012) point of view was that instead of 'arming' students with knowledge in the situation where they will recall this information and apply it to a situation which is done in schools now. The problem with this though is that not every situation can be covered, this is because once students leave school there are so many different things they will need to know and some of the knowledge that was learnt by the student by 'cramming' for a test would be invalid. Instead he poses the idea of teaching students where to source the information from as opposed to learning parts of the information. This will provide students a broader range of capabilities and a wider spectrum of interpreting knowledge along with having access to more information than what was being learnt. The one fall back of this though is when students source the information they must be aware to source it from current documents instead of documents from 10 years ago.

In reality, it is applicable to implement this learning theory. It allows students to be more ready for when leaving school because information is everywhere around us and now thanks to modern technology it is a lot more accessible through phones, tablets and other items.

Personally, I would consider this within any classroom for the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. This seems to be the perfect way to keep up the trend of how society and technology is ever changing.

An example of this is evident in mathematics; students were taught and understand the concept of area of a square and circle. Students are educated in the theory by Siemens (2012) to find information for them because they know where to find the information for the next question; which is to find the area of an oval.

Another example is in a Japanese class, every student will have an idea of what origami is so the teacher may ask her students to create anything from origami in which students will know instinctively that a way to find out this is either to go to the library or to search on the internet.