e-learning experiences

Dave Fontaine’s article “Welcome to the Age of the Wikitext!” published in the may/june 2008 issue of Multimedia & Internet@Schools magazine explores the idea of how text books have become outdated in technologically savvy classrooms. He believes that wikispaces and other collaborative software programs may be used effectively as a tool for teachers and students to record, sort, compile and store information on a variety of topics. He argues that with guidance from teachers, students may take a more constructionist, student based approach to their own learning by using wikitexts to create spaces which combine a variety of multimedia from podcasts to text, to animations and vodcasats. Ashley has also written an interesting post on text books in relation to saving the environment, here.

I agree with his view since these types of learning environments, when implemented appropriately, can cater to a wider range of ability levels as well as multiple intelligences. With appropriate guidance and input from teachers, wikitexts may be used very effectively in classrooms since they provide opportunities for students to contribute their collective intelligence and ideas to a document that may be constantly changed, edited and added to.

Image: flickrcc

This is an interesting article I found outlining a case study undertaken in order to observe video game-making with children in an educational context. Of particular interest to me was the section outlining the constructionist viewpoint, in which 10 year old students were asked to make video games to teach fractions to younger students. One of the interesting outcomes of the study was the clear gender differences in designing the maths games, such as a violent feedback for wrong answers from the male authors. However, it was noted that these typical gender differences disappeared when students instead authored science games.

Gender differences aside, according to Kafai both boys and girls participating in the study enjoyed making the games. She argues that making video games offers students rich opportunities to develop programming skills and develop rich game worlds and characters. I believe that this experience would be valuable in the classroom when integrated with other KLAs such as maths and science as they were in the study. However, I also believe undertaking such a task would involve many other factors, such as ensuring students were already sufficiently technologically fluent, as well as the teacher facilitating the lessons was well organised and had an in depth knowledge of the programs used to author the games.

Jared wrote an interesting post on a topic that has aroused much controversy in terms of e-learning–the value of video games in an educational context. The arguments for video games having a place in education are of a constructionist nature, and, as Jared states, has the potential to enhance childrens’ planning and critical thinking skills. I think that video games may have a place in the classroom provided they are integrated in a meaningful way. Tokenistic use of education is never good, and I’m sure that if a teacher wanted to have students author their own games they would need to have a sound justification for this.

Source: screenshot from video

This video from Kemnal Technology College (scroll to bottom of page) outlines how LAMS has been introduced into lessons and to what effect. Its quite short but the overall impression it gave was that both students and teachers found the software enjoyable and easy to use in the classroom. Soon I will be creating a LAMS task with my partner Maria, so it was good to see this brief example and some positive feedback from staff and students. One particular aspect of LAMS that were highlighted in the video as being beneficial in the classroom was the idea that the whole class was contributing to the task and the teacher was more easily able to evaluate their contributions (for example, on a discussion board) since they were recorded. I think that this aspect of LAMS is excellent since it means that a) students can put more thought into their comments than if they were put on the spot verbally, and b) the teacher can revisit the response to assess it more accurately.

Another point that one of the teachers emphasised several times was that so much could be achieved with LAMS in just a one hour lesson. I think the implications of this for the classroom are huge, since it means that lesson times can be used more constructively than using more traditional methods. Another benefit of LAMS was said to be that it helped to improve students discussion skills, thereby improving learning. If students make use of the LAMS discussion tools such as the discussion board, forum and chat they can work collaboratively in the classroom from their own individual computer, which is also a great help in terms of classroom management.