My Personal Learning Space!

This image was retrieved from: http://informationarchitects.jp/webtrends2007/

 I came across an article entitled WILD ABOUT WIKIS by David Jakes and in this article Jakes explores the social software of wikis. Jakes states that ‘wikis enable anyone and everyone to create content online using easily understandable tools’. Jakes also states that the most famous wiki is wikipedia.

Jakes answers a number of questions about wikis, these being:

1. How do wikis work?
2. What are the educational benefits of wikis?
3. Are they free?
4. What wiki tools are available?
5. How much support is reuired to maintain a wiki?
6. What are potential concerns about using wikis?

For someone like myself who has no real experience with using and even making wikis, this article is quite interesting and informative as it outlines the various issues for and against their use. As this article leans more towards their use in the Primary Classroom, Jakes has mentioned quite a few “facts” that should be noted. One being that wikis provide students with the opportunity for “colaborative construction”, however he also mentions that teachers should pay careful attention in group work to ensure that the whole group is contributing and not just one. A positive to the use of wikis would be their forums. Students can raise issues and talk with students outside of their school (and even their Country) discussing and researching various topics.

Claire and I created this comic using the MAC program Comic Life. In this comic, Claire and I express what we believe are some of our views on E-Learning in the classroom.

I have posted this comic for two reasons. The first being that I wanted to show anyone who reads this what are some of my beliefs on E-Learning, and the second is to show you a very effective but simple way of expressing information that students can use within the classroom. The program Comic Life is very easy to use, and is a creative way for students to publish their work and address specific issues. It is also a good tool for teachers to use if they want to offload a lot of information onto students. By using Comic Life, students may be more engaged and find more enjoyment from those mundane tasks.

Download Video: Posted by khokanson at TeacherTube.com.

What an inspiring video. It’s hard to see the importance of e-learning in the classroom from time to time as learning is still relevant without technology. However I found this video to outline a truth in which I haven’t really thought about. Todays students will seeing a very different world to what I saw only ten or so years ago. Their future will see many more things than what I will see. Therefore as teachers we need to prepare students for this future which changes so often and so quickly, that we do not even know what we are preparing them for. Hence, we need to equip students with all that we can so that they are prepared for each and every opportunity, each and every job, each and evey problem and each and every outcome. Sean quotes the video by stating: “As teachers we will be preparing students for a technological world which is rapidly changing. We are preparing students for jobs which do not exist, using technologies which have not yet been developed.”