Assessment 2

For a hundred years from 1750 to 1850, we saw the Industrial Revolution gradually and totally changed human economic behaviour and impacted on every strand of our social, political and economical life. Once again, we are at the beginning of another revolution: the Information and Technology Revolution, or as commonly known the Digital Revolution. This revolution has already started to impact on our lives and will continue to transform our lives, making it even better. We have already started to experience such changes in our day to day life; our households contain more and more digital equipment; our ways of receiving and exchanging information have become more efficient; the time and space barriers can be easily conquered just by a tiny little mobile phone; and many of us are now living a second life in a virtual world which we call the World Wide Web. The energy of this revolution is so great that even our own ‘ever overly protected’ industry - education - has started to feel the heat and vibration of it. Education has increasingly become a main focus in this time of rapidly changing technologies, especially in regards to how we educators should bring the products of this revolution into our classrooms, to make learning and teaching more economically productive. All the answers to these questions have been woven into this ICT Learning Design course. For 21st century educators and learners, ICT has become an inseparable component supporting both teaching and learning journeys, inside and outside classrooms. It is of most significance for educators to know how to identify and appreciate the particular functions of various ICT tools and how they can be integrated with pedagogy content knowledge and become powerful platforms supporting effective, engaging, strategic and systematic learning and teaching journeys. When being used properly, ICT tools will not only keep our learners stimulated and engaged throughout the learning journey, but will also address an individual’s constructive learning, enhancing learning outcomes, and also guide our learners into a studying mode higher than meta-cognitive and meta-constructive - the connectivism learning.

Connectivism learning to me is more than connected to the world wide information and people around the world, it also means a personal learning journey from one step to another. It is ‘connected’ not disjointed, is relevant not aimless, is scaffolded not in a mess. This is the sort of learning journey I have been through with Mobile Phone de Bono’s Hats Wiki.   

The powerful interactive function supported by Wikispace is also shared by many other ICT media, like blogs, eg Google Blogger, and websites, eg Weebly. This group of ICT tools can all be used to record and share thoughts and ideas, supporting individual cognitive learning as well as community collaborating. It is not only useful for learners, but we educators can benefit enormously from these tools as well. Apart from the common advantages they share, they differ from each other as well.  As a LOTE teacher, I found that Blogger supports individual language learning better than others, particularly as it facilitates reflective learning, serves a learner’s personal learning feedback and supports educators to evaluate teaching outcomes. 


Unlike Wikispaces, blogs and websites that can be used to support a more systematic and general learning and teaching experience, tools like MobaPhoto, Podcast, Moviemaker, Photostory, voicethread, YouTube etc are more specific tools, which are good at interpreting certain concepts and ideas. Photos can be edited by tools like MobaPhoto to fit into a particular teaching plan or background; a short movie can be made by using Photostory or Moviemaker to convey certain knowledge points. Learners’ visual and aural senses can be actively stimulated when these tools are used properly in educators’ teaching plans to guarantee a more engaging learning journey as well as a more productive learning outcome. One of my favorites is Podcast, which when used well can greatly support learning and teaching. Despite the positives and negatives about Podcasts, it can support second language teaching, as an input media - to teach learners how to speak, as well as an output put media - for learners to get the learning outcome back to teachers to assess.

Other ICT tools that can be used to either input knowledge as a presentation or output knowledge to assess learning outcome are: PowerPoint, Prezi, Glogster, etc. These tools are highly creative and artistic, fun to make and fun to view. Not only learners, but educators will enjoy using these tools. While content in PowerPoint is presented through page after page in a more organised way, Glogster offers a more general view of the whole content, where viewers can find their own way around. Prezi shares both advantages PowerPoint and Glogster have, it offers ‘bird's eye view’ of the whole presentation, and can zoom into each unit following a pre-designed path. From a teacher's point of view, if I would like the class to go through the presentation together, PowerPoint would be my choice; if I would like students to explore individually I would be more inclined to choose Glogster. From a learner's point of view, PowerPoint would demonstrate more of a sequential learner’s learning journey while Glogster might be more suitable for a global learner to show how much he/she has learned.

Whether the learners are more active or reflective, sensing or intuitive, visual or verbal, sequential or global, they will all find some of these tools supportive of their learning styles: Learning Objects Online, Adobe Flash, Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Doc, online concept mapping, online timelines, Zooburst. All of them are very impressive and can be used well to support learning and teaching. Take Google Earth for example, the powerful virtual world function of it can impress any user. By implementing Google Earth in our teaching plan we will be able to bring the whole world, even our universe into the classroom for our students. We can take them on a tour through the Prado museum in Spain, or to visit the Sydney Opera House, without walking out of their learning site. Students will be able to explore places they have never been before; the potential and future of virtual learning is enormous, and I will be thrilled to take my students to explore the Moon and different planets one day.  

I believe this is how teaching will be like in the near future and that is why I am here today to learn to support the transformation of our education during the Digital Revolution we're currently in. As a student teacher, it is my responsibility now to find out as much as I can about as many ICT tools I can find through this course. Then unpack them, explore them, play with them and find out the best way they can be used in learning and teaching, and finally add them to my toolbox to be used anytime when suitable. The manual? Technological Pedagogical and Content Knowledge.