Sunday, December 28, 2008

Week 11: ICT AS TUTOR


ICT as a tutor means involving computers in teaching. Teachers can design or use existing materials in the internet or as software to enhance their teaching. Therefore, these ICT tools as tutor can be in form of drill and practice form, tutorial, simulation, and games. However, teachers need to be careful in choosing materials for their students from the internet because not all of them in the same level of difficulty or have the same cultural value. Also, the language skills differ from resource to another. So, teacher needs to select the appropriate resources that its content is relevant to the course objectives.

In fact, using ICT programs as a tutor helps teachers in their lessons because these lessons become much enjoyable for students since that students are the one who look for the information in an interesting approach.




http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#iphoto

With tutorial software, no one should fear. In the above websites there are many tutorials for computer software such as Microsoft office, apple applications and designing software like adobe PhotoShop. It is obvious that tutorials software play an important role in self learning. I have chosen these two links because they are focusing in my curriculum area and the software tutorials are for programs that are one of my favorites. The tutorials are clear and easy to follow and apply.

2- Drill and Practice Software

http://manassas.k12.va.us/round/Technology/intermed1.htm
http://www.quia.com/jq/19623.html

These are a drill and practice software. I have chosen these two websites as a drill and practice examples because students can repeat the answer till they got the correct answer. Moreover, it's with in my curriculum area. The design of both websites is simple. The language in both is clear and out of spelling mistakes.

3- Games

http://www.quia.com/mc/276035.html
http://www.quia.com/cc/276035.html

These two games are nice example for learning formatting tools for grade four and five. Both websites have a simple design and clear content. Both their language is clear. They are focusing in Microsoft words formatting tools, so they are with in my curriculum area. The content is well presented.




This simulation software is for flying a plane. Since simulation and the virtual reality is one of the topics that I teach for grade 9, the lesson gives simulation for flying a plane as an example that declares the meaning of simulation in the world of Technology. Also, this video in Youtube gives another addressing to the topic of simulation since all of these simulations have been done thru computer programs. I have chosen this website for the simulation of flying a plane because it has a nice flash introduction that makes you feel like you are flying now and you need to take the control of your plane. Also, see this youtube video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-0z4K5I67c&feature=related

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Week 9: Collaboration and Discussion using ICT


In this week, we discussed the topic of ICT as Social constructive mind tools. Many social studies and theories say that people learn from their society culture. Therefore, learning is a social constructivist approach. So, People learn through making their own meaning through active participation. The same goes for new generation who build their knowledge and learning by doing. So, when students participate in their learning through critical thinking skills they have to analyze what they got in classes and build their own understanding of any concept. This kind of learning can be in a social network through working, living and playing. However, teachers face some problems in classroom in terms of student participation. Therefore, ICT tools can solve this problem.

ICT can build a social network for learning conversations through using different tools like formal discussion tool – online discussion- such as blackboard which I used to use in Zayed University, or collaborative learning – sharing knowledge- such as wiki, and informal discussion tool – social networking- such as FaceBook. These tools can help teacher to help his/her students build their knowledge through sharing and participate in such a network. Also, using such tools help increasing the independent learning among students and making learning as lifelong purpose.

These tools even if they are one to many or many to many conversations network, they can help students learn especially those who feel shy to participate in classroom and build their learning. However, there are risks of using these tools like privacy -revealing identity-, online prey - concealing real identity- , and commercial exploitation -identity theft-. Therefore, teacher should teach students the ethical issues of using such software tools in their social constructive learning of ICT tools.

I believe that the new generations of students will learn better if they have the opportunity to use these tools in their educational systems as a source of learning and knowledge that they can use usually in schools. Moreover, I can say that I gain a lot of benefits and still gain from using social networks - ICT tools - in building my own knowledge, and I think the same will go for my students since these tools give the chance of information exchange between different minds and thoughts from the most expertise to the simple one.

Hint: We remember that mind tools are ICT tools that apply and facilitate critical thinking and higher order learning. These tools include concept mapping that we discussed last time, and live conversation and conferences.