Final Course Reflection

As I've not had a lot of experience with technology in the classroom this course has really thrown me in the deep end. It has been requested that all teachers at our school enrol in the course which I really was not too thrilled about, particularly while trying to complete the course with reports hanging over our head, wworking in a library with 2 Kindergarten classes and 60 students, having to move a classroom and set up a whole new room and then on top of that come in after school and during the school holidays to finsih completing this course. My head feels like a sieve and I have not had a break, it's non stop all the time (and then people wonder why teachers need so many sick days - our bodies just never have a breather)! Now that i've had my little rant, to be honest I feel that the course was INFORMATION OVERLOAD and perhaps, we should have a whole year to complete the course. In that year, there should be a couple modules to complete each term. This would enable us to look clearly at the Web 2.0 tools that are quite clearly useful in our classroom.

During the course, I commented on MRS C's blogspot:
http://mynameismrsc.blogspot.com/2010/05/module-2.html#comments


Now for my final reflections on iLe@rn and Blooms Digital Taxonomy:

iLE@RN for Kindergarten can be a scarey subject to brooch. Engaging, learning environments (physical & virtual environments) where students are constantly learning. Students are lucky to live in a generation where we have access to information at our fingertips. With the use of laptops, ipods and mobile phones, students can access this information (anything) 'anytime, anywhere'. As educators, we must provide structures to enable our students to develop skills in these areas to facilitate the development of reflective and responsible learners. It is a little hard for Kindy students to network internationally, with no boundaries (they don't understand these boundaries at such a young age) in a global and local building community
(Information from the eLearning witht he iLe@rn Model video).

The skills that may be brought forward by Kindergarten students would be communication and coolaboration skills, questioning skills (they do ask a LOT of questions) and perhaps they may be starting to reflect in some form.

A pro with the iLE@RN model is that everyone comes to the table bringing their own skills and individuality. YOu can then work at your own pace and in the end, still achieve the same outcomes as everyone else.

BLOOMS TAXONOMY - BLOOMS DIGITALLY
As a teacher we are CONSTANTLY (or we should be) referring to Bloom's Taxonomy to cater for our students and really help them to start using those higher order thinking skills. Again, I've only ever taught Kindergarten and I do sometimes find it challenging to get anywhere above the applying stage. When planning for curriculum, it is important to refer to the digital taxonomy to begin the process of fostering these higher order thinking skills. Andrew Churches' diagram (Blooms digital taxonomy map) is very simple and clearlly tells you what skills are needed for each of the key terms.

Second Life - Could belong to Evaluating or Creating. Second Life allows students to work collaboratively and network, while at the same time, they are programming and animating a story (through different ages).