Element 1 – Revisiting Your Professional Identity

Revisiting my personal identity post from element 1, I feel I have grown throughout the progress of this course on my understanding, views, attitude and commitment to teaching IT. I have undergone a range of tasks that have helped me to grow and develop my own pedagogy.

I learnt about misconceptions that were held by students, teachers and the community on IT as a subject and how to identify and address these misconceptions. I developed this diagnostic tool as a pre-assessment type tool for students to complete before undertaking IT subjects so that I could identify misconceptions and assist in providing more understanding to redirect thinking, ideas and opinions.

I joined a few different teaching collaboration groups and IT resource pages. I have been reading and learning a lot from these sites. Many of the groups really show that teaching is very much a collaborative journey, you can learn so much from each other by sharing and asking for help.

I undertook a task I had no idea how to complete TPACK, so I researched all that I could and got the task done, and I feel I did quite well in it considering I had no idea. I learnt from this that anything is achievable if we try.

I learnt a new way to develop a unit overview. Its always a great day when you learn another way to do something!

I marked and provided feedback on an assessment task, this was really interesting for me. Ive marked assessment when on prac, ive even created assessment pieces on prac. I enjoy marking and providing feedback, I feel it’s a good way to see how students have grasped what they have learned and its helpful for looking at areas I may need to change to help students in deeper learning, look at what has worked and what hasn’t.

Differentiation is a massive area and something Ive encountered a lot throughout my degree. Discussing differentiation and the strategies I can implement to assist those students in learning was my last post and this area helped me think about if we had to teach every student individually, how hard it would be. It also allowed me to look into how I could assist students in learning that required differentiation.

Overall I will take a lot away from this subject and the learnings I have encountered over the semester. All the tools and experiences along with the pages, groups and sites I have joined will assist me for a long time in developing my personal pedagogy and in maintaining relevant network connections.

Element 4 – Differentiation

Teachers today are faced with classrooms full of diversity. Each learner has their own unique learning style and ability. Teachers are challenged to identify the needs of their students, to be able to plan and deliver the curriculum using appropriate strategies for each individual learners needs while maintaining an inclusive classroom environment.

In order to identify students that require differentiation the teacher can review students naplan results along with previous report cards and any other student information maintained within their files to check for learning difficulties or any medical conditions such as ADHD, hearing problems, intellectual or physical impairments, etc. Another way teachers can identify where differentiation is required is to use a diagnostic tool such as a pre assessment to test what the students already know and to identify any students who will require further help or assistance throughout the unit.

In order to truly differentiate every lesson, we would be required to individually develop lesson plans for every student within the class and deliver each student with their own personal lesson all within the given space of the lesson. The difficulties this would encounter would be huge as how could one teacher possibly deliver a lesson in 25 different ways to 25 different students within the space of 40 minutes? And to do this in every lesson, every day, every week would just be impossible. The amount of work and preparation that would go into developing unique lessons for every single student for every single lesson would be too time consuming and virtually impossible to do. Also trying to teach 25 students, 25 different ways in 40 minutes would be impossible, spending 2.6minutes per student in this example to teach the required course content just couldn’t be done.

Examples of strategies for differentiation;

Many students with learning difficulties can benefit from the use of a graphic organiser. Graphic Organisers provide a framework for students by creating a visual representation of the significant information they have been taught (Singleton & Filce, 2015). The use of a graphic organiser can alleviate stress and anxiety for the student as they have information easy to understand and simply presented in a way they have found best suits themselves (Singleton & Filce, 2015). The graphic organiser also serves as a brain storming tool, to help the student activate prior knowledge and develop critical thinking tools represented in Blooms Taxonomy (Churches, 2008). Graphic organisers allow students to display messages in any way that best suits their learning ability, the information can be presented in diagrams and charts, it can show contrasts and similarities, or make inferences from information attained. Graphic Organisers also present teachers with a way of assessing students learning, by being able to check the organisers to ensure the students are understanding what they are learning (Singleton & Filce, 2015).

Strategies to assist teachers in delivering the curriculum to ESL students include; using diagrams and visual aids, using simple language, making instructions clear and simple, having classroom routines, breaking down tasks, allowing more time to complete tasks, working in small groups with peers, encourage movement between home language and mathematic language, use mathematical concepts with math language in various forms, practical application of tasks and the use of technology assistance (Wang, Many, & Krumenaker, 2008).

Gifted and talented students can be assisted through the implementation of extension activities and more challenging activities for example in the unit overview in element 2 where students complete a design brief or journal, a G&T student could create a website or blog, they could also use a higher tech program where they could write more detailed code to develop more challenging games.

 

References

Churches, A. (2008, April 1). Blooms Taxonomy. Retrieved 10 01, 2016, from Tech Learning: http://teachnology.pbworks.com/f/Bloom%5C’s+Taxonomy+Blooms+Digitally.pdf

Singleton, S., & Filce, H. G. (2015). Graphic Organizers for Secondary Students withLearning Disabilities. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 48(2), 110-117. Retrieved 10 01, 2016, from http://tcx.sagepub.com/content/48/2/110.full.pdf+html

Wang, Y., Many, J., & Krumenaker, L. (2008). Understanding the experiences and needs of mainstream teachers of ESL students: Reflections from a secondary social studies teacher. TESL Canada, 25(2), 66-84. Retrieved 10 01, 2016, from http://lq6tx6lb4h.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:journal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Understanding+the+experiences+and+needs+o

 

Element 3 – Marking & Feedback

Below is the sample student work which I have annotated and provided feedback on.

3_eds4406-sample-of-student-work

Element 2 – Unit Outline

My unit overview is based on a year 11 ITS class on the unit of game design. My unit overview can be found by clicking the link below.

2_eds4406_dubois_unitoverview_element2

Element 3 – Unit plan analysis

This element had me really stumped. I have never used TPACK before and was really unsure of what exactly it was we were required to do . So with very little understanding and very little direction I have given it a good attempt and can only hope for the best. I really feel that it would have been best explained with some solid examples as well as a good explanation of TPACK rather than just a link to a website. I also feel that ICT is a computing subject and should have also been an option of choice for a unit plan as neither ITS or IPT are my subject areas.

Here is my annotated unit plan EDS4406 ITS Unit Plan

Element 2 – Diagnostic tool

Here is my diagnostic tool for assessment 1, element 2.

IT Questionnaire

Week 3 – Misconceptions

This week introduced misconceptions in IT subjects. I analysed the QCAA Senior Secondary subjects and levels of achievement documents from 2006 and 2016 to analyse the differences between the years. What I found was enrolments had pretty much doubled from 2006 to 2015 however the enrolment of girls had quite significantly dropped over the years. But despite the girls enrolment dropping the level of achievement the girls attained had increased. The achievement of girls was higher than the achievement of the boys when put into perspective.

When I was on prac I had 3 IT classes, one year 12 ITS class that consisted of 8 boys, 2 girls, a year 11 ICT class which consisted of 15 boys and 2 girls and a year 10 IT class that contained 29 boys. Current trend is that the girls are not doing IT subjects and my mentor on prac had concerns for the lack of interest girls had in the IT subjects. He had expressed to me that we need to re interest girls back into IT and reinvigorate the subject to be more attractive to all genders and remove the stigma around IT of it being boring or a boys subject.

I would like to follow on from my discussions with my mentor to encourage girls to get back into IT subjects and to embrace the subject through introduction of elements that are interesting to all genders, to ensure the content is of interest to both genders and encourages creativity, initiative and excitement for everyone that undertakes these subjects.

Some of the misconceptions students have about IT subjects

• IT is for boys
• IT is a nerdy subject
• Coding is too hard
• You need to be good at maths and science to do IT
• IT is really hard
• IT is a bludge subject
• I know everything about IT, I wont learn anything new
• I already know how to use a computer
• IT is boring

Week 2

This week I have looked at and joined some sites as recommended by Richard in the EDS4406 discussion page. QSITE was the first recommended page which is about the following, taken from their website:

The Queensland Society for Information Technology in Education (QSITE) connects and supports educators, institutions and their stakeholders so they may fully explore the opportunities Information Communication Technologies bring to Queensland education and its classrooms every day.

Through state-wide learning communities and professional networks, QSITE members:

• Engage……….. students and educators in life-long learning
• Share………….. ICT challenges, achievements and experiences
• Connect………. with colleagues for collaboration and learning
• Lead……………. ICT education and ICT integration in Queensland

I joined 3 discussion lists from QSITE that were recommended by Richard.

I have also joined 2 yahoo groups ICT educators in schools and IT ideas for educators. I am yet to receive confirmation of acceptance into both groups but will explore them further once Ive been accepted.

Another online network that I am enrolled in is TES, I have found the TES pages to be a great tool for resources and teacher sharing and collaboration.

 

Element 1 – What does it mean to be a computing specialist teacher?

I think computing is different from other subjects, obviously the content is completely different but with computing it’s a rapidly changing area. It’s a subject that is continuously evolving and must continue to evolve to remain current. Computing is also fast becoming a foundation skill for other subjects and is also now a basic requirement for almost everything we do. I believe as a computing teaching it is imperative to keep up to date with current and new trends in technology because unlike other subjects that the content will remain current for years, digital technology content will change more frequently as older technologies become obsolete.

I have been on one prac for my speciality area of ICT, and what I discovered from that experience was that the equipment the school had to teach students with was outdated and newer more advance technology had since taken over leaving the teacher feeling that they needed to update the technology as what was being taught wasn’t current or an accurate representation of what the students should have been doing to properly engage in today’s society. Thinking about this experience, I wonder how do we teach the most up to date computing techniques and skills to students if we are unable to give them the tools to be able to apply this knowledge? I also noted that IT was only a senior subject, which makes me also question, with the growth in other subjects utilising computers and computing technology in their classrooms, but with the teacher have a level of expected computing knowledge would it be better that IT subjects be a foundation subject so that students can embrace these skills and apply them in a more informed and accurate manner in other subject areas?

For me, I will keep update in computing through the use of professional development opportunities , personal exploration and probably through my growing children. I will endeavour to continue to seek out and learn new computing technologies as best I can to keep as current as I can.

 

Ways of thinking….

Algorithmic Thinking – I found this Blog by Cas London to be really insightful in explaining algorithmic thinking in terms of relating to students. She describes it as a clear and precise set of rules that are developed to solve a particular problem using a mathematical calculation.

Computational thinking – computational thinking as described by CS4F is more about collecting all the relevant data and interpreting the data to understand a problem in order to discover possible solutions. Computational thinking involves various diverse skills such as algorithmic thinking, creativity and logic and recursive thinking strategies in order to break problems down to further analyse them to interpret the data.

Algorithmic thinking is a part of the computational thinking process. So as a whole computational thinking is an important part of computing as when delving into the subject students will need to be able to have the ability of computational thinking in order to critically analyse the problem, to pull them apart, dissect in to smaller pieces to better understand how each component works and how they can apply a solution, whether it be through algorithms in coding issues or logic and algorithmic skills in correcting a problem in a spreadsheet