Wikis

Our class was recently given an input to complete our wikispaces in groups. This input was the most surprising to me so far within the elective. This was because my usual state of frustration wasn't the case as I found the task somewhat tedious however not difficult. It was in fact the rest of the class who were becoming frustrated and it was unusual for me to see the opposite of what usually goes on in ICT. The fact this happens makes me wonder whether it was just my mood that day or whether the task was more suited to my style of learning. This makes me think about the challenges of teaching any subject in any age group in any school as pupils would need to find something they can co-operate with and the differences among children mean that they will find different things to co-operate with. The teacher's job is to assist and encourage the engagement in a certain aspect of the child's education. Helping each child find what works for them could prove difficult but rewarding in my career.

The wikispaces themselves were fine in my opinion, although there were some problems with images and the main cause of annoyance was the fact that moving the pictures around while editing did not result in the same position on the wikispace. Also, some pictures did not show up after editing and only using public domain images was limiting. Overall, I found making the wiki simple and I do think that it is a good resource for classrooms as it is a more engaging method of displaying information than handing out fact sheets or booklets.

Furthering classroom use by making class run wikis could benefit pupils' learning experience, however I feel I would need experience through trial and error with a class of my own to feel confident in this.
Richardson (2006) explains that, 'In using wikis, students are not only learning how to publish content; they are also learning how to develop and use all sorts of collaborative skills, negotiating with others to agree on correctness, meaning, relevance, and more. In essence, students begin to teach each other.' (p.65)
I feel that this statement is just as it is the process I have been through working on my wiki and working in my group/pair in general.

Introduction to ICT (2CM8)

I chose ICT as my elective as I enjoyed the previous inputs, especially the games based learning and movie making. I'm looking forward to trying out these aspects of the module.
In the first workshop of the ICT elective, our class was given an overview of the activities we will be participating in this semester.
We made wikis and began our blogs. I have experience of wikis from the modern languages input last year and will hopefully further my knowledge of them as the module goes on.
Blogging is something I've never done before so I'm interested in the new experience and predict that from this experience I will learn the benefits blogging can have within the classroom.
We teamed up with the modern languages elective class and formed our working groups in which we will be movie making. Our group has 2 modern language students and 3 students from ICT. I'm glad that the numbers turned out this way as I'm keen to edit the movies we'll be making but feel that I don't have a full enough understanding to take on the ICT aspect on my own.
During the workshop Collette spoke about the negative relationships of some of the groups from other years. This has made me wary of the fact that I don't know two of the members of my group and haven't met them yet as they were both absent. I hope our group can work together well, it seems to be working so far as we started thinking of ideas for our movie together.
Combining modern languages and ICT has complicated the task as our group has French and German students so the topic must include both. Thinking of a topic which can include all five of us and cultural aspects of France and Germany was hard. We came up with 'Paris to Berlin' and had rough ideas of what to include in the video but will need a lot more input for perfection!
I'm looking forward to the Strictly Come Movies as it's an example of active learning and also sounds fun. I think that the Smartboard and Promethean training will help me use these resources to their full ability in a classroom and the bear journey is a great activity!
I think over the module I will struggle with the animation as last year I lost patience with the endless clicking!