Summarising key ideas

After completing the readings from week 2 and 3, I have gained a better understanding of the pedagogies needed to teach the technologies strands to students. These reading were also very insightful in explaining why it is important to teach these subjects well. The following information is some points from the three readings that I found very interesting:

-         - There are both strengths and weaknesses to the current set up of the technologies curriculum. I found it extremely interesting that according professionals the technologies greatest weakness is teacher learning and lack of professional development for teachers. I could sympathise with this idea as at times I feel like I’ll never know enough about the subject to be able to keep up with the very tech savvy children of today.  

-      -    Another area that I found interesting was when the technologies and creativity were discussed as a partnership. When I first thought of technologies as a subject I have to admit that ‘creativity’ was probably not the first word that came to mind. Though now having worked through a design challenge I can see very much where creativity plays a part in these subjects. It allows children a very similar channel of problem solving and designing that can also be seen in the arts subjects. There is freedom that allows children to create ideas and solutions out of this current world that can project them into the future.

Having been exposed to these kinds of ideas, as a teacher I will strive to keep my own professional learning up to date and current with new developments in technology to help pass on and teach my students. I will also be mindful of creating design challenges and experiences that foster creativity. 

Using Design Challenges in the Classroom 

So far completing the design challenge has been both interesting and at times confusing. I have rather enjoyed using the wiki page as it looks so professional having all the information and steps of the design challenge collated together. It is time consuming uploading everything to the site, however once it’s on I feel a great sense of satisfaction at seeing each step completed. I could see how this sense of accomplishment would be beneficial for students.

 I also like the wiki as it provides students with a permanent collection of work that they can keep and refer back to throughout their education. The main confusing element so far of the design challenge has been to understand which elements of the design challenge I prepare as the teacher and which elements I complete as the student, however Heather has been very good at helping to work this out. This would not be an issue though when teaching students how to complete a design challenge as it would be clearly defined what they had to complete.

I have really enjoyed ‘thinking out the box’ with this task; I have to consider elements of the design cycle that I wouldn't normally come across in my everyday life and work. I have found myself looking at various elements of life in a different way because of what I learnt from this subject. I can see how using design challenges would be beneficial to students as they get to experience that content of digital technologies and design first hand, instead of just learning them via the text and talk method.

The peer feedback aspect of this design challenge has been rather helpful. It is great to know what others think of my design challenge; and it’s also interesting to find out how they personally interpret the challenge. From the feedback I received I was able to tweak my challenge here and there to add more information into the wiki. Using the wiki made this feedback process easy, as you can just access everyone’s challenges very easily to give feedback.   I think I would consider teaching using this wiki method to complete a design challenge in a class room setting as so far I have found no real downsides to it. 

The Re-created Design Cycle 
It is important to remember that the cycle is not linear, it is expected that during the cycle students will jump back and
forth between the four areas.

I must admit this world of technology is quiet daunting for me. I still buy books from the book shop and I’m a self-proclaimed old fashioned pen and paper, note-taking kind of girl. So I went into designing my word clouds with an already impeding sense of dread. To begin with I tried using Wordle or Tagxedo as these were the suggested ones; I was unable to get either to work as according to the endless pop-ups I received my Jarva subscription was not up to date. At first I panicked however after some google work I found the program Word-it-out. I attempted this program and it actually worked. It took the very long rational and aims of the Australian Curriculum for the technologies subjects and turned it into a beautiful visual learning tool. This program was very easy to use and the only real skill needed was a pre-existing understanding of the copy and paste functions. It produced a very appealing visual learning tool that would help to get across key words and ideas of text. This could be used with very young children to learn sight words and with higher grades to introduce them to new subject topics. In the end i was very proud that I was able to eventually successfully produce my word cloud. I would definitely use a program like this when teaching as in the 21^st century visual learning tools are needed to entice and engage students who live in a visually saturated world (Younie, Leask & Burden, 2015).

Reference

Younie, S., Leask, M. & Burden, K. (Ed.). (2015). Teaching and Learning with ICT in the primary school. New York, NY : Routledge Taylor and Francis Group. 

The following is a word cloud designed on Word-it-out, a word cloud program designed to turn large sections of text into visual learning tools. This one is created out of the rationale and aims for the digital technologies and design and technology subjects from the Australian Curriculum. Programs like Word-it-out pick out the most used words and create a visual learning tool that helps to get across the main key words or ideas of the text. 

The following table is taken from my own understanding of what the Australian Curriculum states as achievements and learning that students will get out of  Digital Technologies and Design and Technologies. The following table consists of verbs taken from the overviews of both subjects. Associated pedagogies have then been formed to help students achieve and do these elements.