Part A, Blog 1: The use of ICT’s and their functionality and potential in a classroom.

When people think and engage with technology, they sometimes only see the negative effects it has such as, social media, cyber bullying and excessive screen time. Most parents have not been exposed to the positive effects of technology and how they can develop critical skills students need. Critical thinking is an invaluable skill that students need to be successful in their professional and personal lives (Mansbach, 2015).

Digital Technology address deep knowledge skills such as problem solving, collaboration, student-led learning, and cultural knowledge. Our students today are exposed to the use of technology in classrooms and how it can advance their learning and development; however, that exposure could be vastly improved with the integration of online sites.

Throughout this unit I have learnt that online sites give students the opportunity to become critical thinkers, investigative learners and become more involved with their peers learning and development. These online sites can be blogs, wiki’s or any website that is ethical and legally useable in a classroom. The online sites can be tools to teach critical thinking skills such as creating reflection activities, peer review activities, discussion forums, small group activities or digital story telling activities (Mansbach, 2015).

The use of Blogs or Wikis

The use of blogs will give students the opportunity to explore their creative abilities and give them a different approach to writing instead of pen and paper or a word document. The use of wiki’s can be a positive collaboration between peers where students can reflect and comment on other students work in the hope that they develop further knowledge and have a positive impact on their peer’s work. However, not all ICT’s and online sites are available to students as some schools have different policies and website blocks. It will be up to the digression of the school principal to determine what platforms you can utilise in your classroom. In Home Economics the use of blogs or Adobe Spark is a positive technological advancement that could have students answering their assessment questions in the form of a blog post using images, references and ‘how to’ YouTube clips. I am going to explore an Adobe Spark page to create a technological tool for my students to use in Home Economics.

Exploring Adobe Spark: 

Adobe Spark is a pain free website which is easily accessible to any person, with or without prior ICT knowledge. The creative process can be a daunting process where you can be unsure how to display your thoughts. Adobe spark has easy to access templates that can spark your ideas. If a student is given auditory introductory instructions they can easily access the information themselves. They are given the freedom to develop and edit their chosen form or adobe spark which could be a video, flyer, Face book or Instagram post, a website or a collage for free once you make an account. This site is single author, and you can create things privately but also have the option to post them publicly. Therefore, this site would be safe to use in a school as the teacher and student can control the accessibility, this increases cyber safety to their sites.  This site is easy to use and navigate and you need minimal technological knowledge to navigate it as it gives you pop up bubbles with instructions on how to use the website. You can share links to any website onto your flyer or webpage etc. such as YouTube clips or URL’s to further support your information. The below images show the development of a webpage and the easy navigation to create one.

 

This page was created for a university subject involving the use of creativity in the classroom. To further see the development of this page, see the link below:

https://spark.adobe.com/page/XVsau65XauYrI/

The legal, safe and ethical protocols of every website should be considering before integrating it into the classroom. There are many aspects to consider before using a website in a classroom. These include, inappropriate advertisements, unsafe links either on the website or embedded in it, inappropriate content and unsafe material. Students should be taught how to identify unsafe or inappropriate websites before being allowed to freely use technology. Students may already have knowledge of copyright and plagiarism but it is a safe bet to re-explain this topic to them. Remind students to acknowledge ownership of sources and that they can apply security protocols to their own work (Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2021). 

In my discipline teaching areas, online spaces are beneficial to student’s further development of content knowledge. These could be used to do reflection activities from content learnt the lesson before, where students upload their answers to one note, or initiating small online group activities where students are to work together to complete set tasks. This facilitates deep knowledge through higher order thinking and demonstrates how we as educators need to show deep understanding of the content we teach and how positively our learners engage with the content to be high order thinkers themselves.

Below is a table made to reflect the SAMR model and how it is relevant to my teaching discipline and the integration of ICT’s in that subject.            

Substitution	Augmentation	Modification	Redefinition
Student use word or OneNote to take their notes so that their work is now published and easily accessible to them to add to their resources. This could also mean uploading the work to OneNote instead of writing onto the board. Students are to use references or source information to further develop their knowledge.	Students use blogs to develop their creative thinking skills and begin to create their own online learning site where they answer weekly tasks using YouTube clips and images. Students are to practice the practical components by watching YouTube clips.	Students embed adobe spark pages in their blogs to show their range of ICT’s skills and open comments to allow peers to give feedback to further develop their learning. Students use resources given to them in OneNote to create their own resources.	Collaboration with other schools in the region so students can broaden their knowledge by sharing their finding and developments with other students online. A range of technologies are used to communication and share information.

References:

Mansbach, J. (2015). Using Technology to develop students critical thinking skills. North-western University. Retrieved from: https://dl.sps.northwestern.edu/blog/2015/09/using-technology-to-develop-students-critical-thinking-skills/

Ronald, M. (2021). Design and Technologies. Adobe Spark. Retrieved from https://spark.adobe.com/page/XVsau65XauYrI/

Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (2021). Understanding Academic Integrity. Queensland Government. Retrieved from https://www.qcaa.qld.edu.au/senior/certificates-and-qualifications/qce-qcia-handbook/8-school-assessment-policies/8.1-understanding-academic-integrity