Group S: Personal Learning Networks

Computer Use 774:
Bloggers S: Blog post – 16 October

A Personal Learning Network for the future:
A personal learning network as described by Wever (2016) is a map where you are at the centre. It is different places and people you connect with, to receive advice, ask questions, get ideas from, to receive guidance from and to help you when you face a problem or situation. “But now with the Internet, you also have access to more resources online. Your PLN then also becomes a resource” (Wever, 2016).

Personal:
Personal Learning Networks are about making connections and building personal contacts with educators, school administrators, universities, and professionals around the world. It is a way to create a resource on which you as the teacher can rely on and draw from.

Learning:
A PLN is about sharing ideas and resources, partnership, and education. In a PLN, learning, ideas and expertise are shared in different ways; using different media and tools.

Network:
The PLN is a global learning network, enabling people access to share diverse, global perspectives on teaching strategies, educational related issues, and technologies.

Why should you build a PLN?
Dryden's and Vos' (2005) book on learning networks said: "For the first time in history, we know now how to store virtually all humanity's most important information and make it available, almost instantly, in almost any form, to almost anyone on earth. We also know how to do that in great new ways so that people can interact with it, and learn from it."

There is a huge cultural shift among young people. Children and adults prefer social media to TV. Joe Dale said, “When we go through websites all the information comes back to us, so we need to organise our PLN”.

By integrating PLN learning strategies into our pedagogical approaches, teachers can create interactive spaces for their students. Further resources are shared, pooled and evaluated in a variety of spaces to which the development of the students and educators can only benefit.

How can a PLN assist you as the teacher?
A PLN can assist you to locate classroom resources and develop lesson ideas, find solutions for the challenges you face in the classroom and locate research and news for lessons. You can also learn from experts and colleagues, build your own digital literacy skills and learn how to integrate these skills in the classroom and establish collaborations to conduct research or set up professional development opportunities.

Some recommended sites:
www.tweetdeck.com to organise your PLN.
http://paper.li/MFLTimes a newspaper updated daily with a selection of articles, blog posts, videos and photos.
http://www.boxoftricks.net/on tried and tested Internet tools for classrooms.
You can also find tools and tutorials for digital storytelling on http://mfl-digitalstories.wikispaces.com/Tools+and+Tutorials
4 Fantastic and Free Professional Learning Networks for Teachers http://bit.ly/2yE8436

Groups L&M: Revisiting blog topics A through E

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Bloggers L&M: Combined Blog Post

Humanity is moving into a largely ICTs-driven era (Information Communication Technology), and as huge advances in this sector are made, education is necessarily reshaped under its influence. The classroom, both within the South African and the global context, have been irrevocably changed. Throughout the Digital Pedagogies course and the preceding blog articles, aspects of this change have been explored - both for the possibilities it presents, as well as the challenges it faces within the South African context. The effort of this piece will be to synthesize what has been discussed so far into a cohesive analysis of the potential for the implementation of digital pedagogies within our current education environment.

New roles/duties of teachers: Rapid advances have been made within the realm of ICTs, a fact which has influenced how we live our daily lives. The radical availability of information and communication through the rising technological interface necessitates a proficiency in digital and media literacy, which involve the skills necessary to participate, and use technologies ethically and responsibly. Within this context, the teacher now has the new duty of guiding learners through the necessary skills to use ICT effectively and safely.

Effective pedagogy & lesson planning: The recognition of the learner as a complex individual and the active engagement of the learner’s context-informed subjectivity is a large element of inclusive practice within the classroom, and therefore needs to be a foundational element that informs our pedagogies. The effective pedagogy is one that takes the learner and their learning process into consideration when teaching – actively involved learners are able to engage with and learn from the taught content. Incorporating ICTs as part of your lesson plan and your pedagogy creates an ideal platform to actively engage with increasingly technology-oriented learners inside and outside of the classroom, and it makes their learning experience more flexible, mobile and accessible. This is not a hard and fast rule, however – for some learners, the incorporation of technology can be disruptive. Counteracting this is part of the reason for the need for effective lesson planning. Lesson planning helps teachers achieve their role in the classroom, which is to help learners apply the concepts which they are taught. It also helps teachers to manage their classroom better and keep learners focused throughout the lesson.

ICTs as a teaching & learning aid: ICTs are increasingly regarded as a valuable teaching aid which can contribute to making lessons and difficult content more interesting and accessible. Its values have been list as, among others, providing access to information, helping engage learners with the content, acting as a communicative equaliser (through anonymous and standardised posting and access), and making sharing and working together easier when face-to-face working time is no longer required. It can help with lesson planning, logistics management, and serve as stimuli to help learners visualise, organise and apply concepts. The current generation of learners is increasingly technologically-oriented, having been surrounded by technology in most spheres of life. They are a generation that wants to see, do and experience, instead of just being passive listeners. The integration of ICTs within the classroom and learning environment allows for increasingly engaging and personalised learning, thus having learners accept more responsibility for their learning and allow them to be agents of their own knowledge.

The Use of Social Media: Social media is seen as one of the most effective tools for communication amongst learners. For this reason it can be seen as a potentially valuable resource that could make the classroom more engaging, relevant and culturally diverse. The interactive and communicative nature of social media allows learners to form natural communities where questions can be asked and answered within a communal digital space. This adds a social aspect to the learning taking place, an aspect that researchers are increasingly lauding as contributing to effective learning. Through this medium, learners’ interests and lived realities are brought closer to the teaching space, and vice versa – this naturally and positively disrupts learners’ study experience. The use of social media is also a potential contributor enabling teachers establish a channel of open communication with their learners, thus creating space for comfortable interactions where learners are able to voice concerns and potential challenges to their learning.

Challenges to the implementation of ICTs:  However ideal the integration of ICTs as teaching/learning aides may be, there are certain considerations that must be made, specifically within the South African context that results in successful integration not always being possible. One of these considerations in South Africa is the large lack of access to ICTs sources – the lingering inequalities within South African society that result in a large population of working class citizens without the monetary means to access to ICT devices. Schools that service this population are also largely unable to facilitate ICTs integration as it requires a substantial capital output to obtain the required hardware. Another consideration linked to the lack of access is the level of exposure and training teachers have received toward the effect use of ICTs. Many teachers have not had this exposure and training, resulting in an ineffective use of the technology that could be a hindrance to the learners’ appreciation and understanding of ICTs as a resource.

The overarching result of the research done so far within this course is that although ICTs have the potential to be powerful and diverse teaching and learning aides, the complexity of integrating it into the school system should not be underestimated. That being said, the increasingly vital skills of digital and technological literacy, coupled with the growing prevalence of technological resources and access points, the active integration of ICTs within the classroom will no longer be a recommendation, but a necessity.

Group C: Davis (2014), DoE (2004), and Provenzano (2015)

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Bloggers C: Blog Post - 22 February 2017

As we move into a more information-technological (IT) world; the youth education platform is reshaping. More and more educators are starting to use social media platforms in order to interact with and educate their learners. As this IT revolution starts to take over the teaching world, the question still remains: is there a place for social media and technologies in the classroom?

"The challenge is to transcend the mere exchange of information and to transform e-Education into a range of learning activities that meet educational objectives." (DoE, 2004).

One challenge between the developed and developing countries is the increasing inequalities between the rich and poor, both among and within nation. Only 6.4% of South Africans have access to these technology platforms (DoE, 2004). According to the White Paper on e-Education, ICT as a revolution has had an impact on curriculum development and delivery, but also continues to present new challenges for both education and training systems all around the world (DoE, 2004).

Challenges are in three areas, “participation in the information society; impact of ICTs on access, cost effectiveness and quality of education; and integration of ICTs into the learning and teaching process” (DoE, 2004: 8).  

In the context of South Africa inequalities affect the integration of ICT’s into education (DoE, 2004). There are still over 19 000 schools that do not have access. There is also a visible gap in the ability teachers to effectively use these technologies (DoE, 2004).

Social media should be considered a valuable learning resource. It can be used to make one's classroom more engaging, relevant and culturally diverse (Davis, 2014). Social media can also encourage learning outside of the classroom (Provenzano, 2015). This tool can lead students to interesting articles, discussions or videos that relate to the work done in the classroom.

This is not only seen in schools but also in our own experiences in university. Students learn through researching and communicating via social media. As demonstrated in our current module, the use of social media has provided us with many alternative ways of communicating. Groups need not take extra time to travel, group work is completed online. Exposure to technologies such as interactive whiteboards, will advance us as future teachers. If we are placed in a school where these technologies are used, we will be fully equipped to operate these systems.

Although the implementation of technology may be difficult in certain areas, but once integrated it can be a helpful tool. Children can explore a whole new world of possibilities through digital data. Davis (2004) and Provenzano (2015)  demonstrates that it can be a very useful tool if used in the correct way. It creates creative learning opportunities and provides multiple platforms where teachers can communicate with their learners. Social media is not going anywhere, so we may just as well use it to our advantages.

Group A: Unwin (2005), Tufekci (2014), and Fullan (2014)

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Bloggers A: Blog Post - 8 February 2017

Unwin[1] advocates the value of ICTs (information and communication technologies) in confronting obstacles in the education system in African schools and states that it is vital to implement ICTs by using “print media, audio, video, computers and the Internet” in their curriculum. In a South African context where resources and efficient teachers are often lacking, especially in rural settings, this is a difficult goal to achieve. Unwin does offer some solutions to the various challenges of using ICT in an African context but does not address the issue of raising the extensive resources needed for ICT implementation.

Unwin evidently shows that ICT is an advancement for the education system in Africa. For the implementation of ICT to be successful, teacher training is of vital importance. Unwin discusses possible solutions to better equip teachers to educate in all regions and implement a system such as ICT, which allows for a more blended learning system. Increasing internet access and computer laboratories in Africa allows for unlimited access to information that will further help their education processes.

“Social media has helped move us to a world in which people are no longer passive” says Tufekci in her piece responding to the apparent ignorance perpetrated globally by leading newsrooms regarding “misunderstandings” over the ways in which social media works engage. She continues, “because that's how the medium works”, albeit in reference to journalistic practices. Using social media as a platform through which educators could encourage active participation and critical engagement in the classroom promotes equity and inclusivity on a platform that has already been wholly embraced by an educator’s target audience.

With technology in this modern day, social media platforms has made it easier to share with the world. Tufekci gives her opinion on social media, and states that it indeed helps us to progress to a world where people aren’t “passive, silent subjects of journalists”. In teaching any given subject, communication is an important platform. Learners and/or students must be able to communicate freely with their teacher/lecturer, whether it be by means of social media or direct contact.

Technology has the ability to provide students with information anytime, anywhere. In his video, Michael Fullen[2] discusses the role that technology can play in deepening the quality of learning. Fullen concludes that technology plays a part in making learning “irresistibly engaging” and allows students access to problem solving at all hours. One approach that Fullen suggests for integrating technology in the classroom is the “flipped classroom” where students can access a recorded version of the lesson at home and can reflect or do the “homework” in class. Teachers are activators of and students partners in learning.

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[1] Unwin, T. (2005). Towards a framework for the use of ICT in teacher training in Africa. Open Learning, 20(2), 113–129. doi:10.1080/02680510500094124
[2] How Technology is Changing the Conversation (2014, January 20). Michael Fullan: Technology, the new pedagogy and flipped teaching Retrieved from https://youtu.be/GCvwtiOH0co