So the idea is that each week (fingers crossed) I will be posting a few thoughts, ideas, links, web 2.0 tools and the like, as we meander through our Teaching and Learning with New Technologies course at UWA.
Now for the weekly focus questions:
Social constructivist pedagogical approaches...there is a lot to be said about social constructivist teaching methods ranging from the ability to scaffold students learning so they can construct their own knowledge from their own experiences to creating a learner centered (rather than teacher centered) learning experience. After all, who wants to be listening and looking at their teacher all day, every day? However, a drawback of social constructivism is that the teacher needs to be highly skilled and experienced to facilitate effective social constructivist learning experiences. I think that as Graduate Teachers, we give social constructivism a good go, but the closest resemblance to mastery of this teaching and learning perspective comes with experience.
As Web 2.0 is all about collaboration, interaction and sharing it interlocks nicely with the social constructivist pedagogical approach which is hinged on the notion of collaborative, authentic experiences to drive knowledge construction. Vygotsky would be tinkled pink to see developments in technology such as Web 2.0 meshing so perfectly with his theory of T&L!
Some of the advantages of Web 2.0 in education range from the ability for students to collaborate online for homework and assignment tasks, interact with the teacher and other students and 'experts' in certain fields. Web 2.0 also enables a public audience i.e. the world with facilitates an authentic purpose for student's work. The vast array of web 2.0 tools provides a seemingly never ending source of tools to engage and streamline the learning process in new and innovative ways.
Seeing as this is my first blog, from a personal perspective I can really only peruse what the benefits of blogging are in education. I would imagine that blogs would be beneficial in providing a forum for recount writing/diary style writing, for providing a different forum for writing reflections and summarising school work on a periodical basis and so the list goes on. As I gain more experience with blogs I'm sure I will be able to add more to this list, but for now I will have to trust my research on what they deem are the benefits of blogging in education. Watch the youtube video to see a short clip of the benefits of blogging in education.
Oh and also check out this link for a little discussion on ICT in the classroom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Fb84VD5Gs
