Week 8 - YouTube and more!

What is cyberdrama?

Cyberdrama is ... "a reinvention of storytelling itself for the new digital medium"
Murray, J (1997) Hamlet on the Holodeck

"Cyberspace holds potential to provide new pathways for imagining, creating, and sharing human experiences"
LeNoir, N (1999) in Theatre in Cyberspace

Cyberdrama is a new form of drama that is being created on-line. The Cyberdrama website will be used as a portal for a number of projects with participants involved in creating drama which may be presented in both live and digital spaces. In most cases participants will be involved for a specific time period in creating a drama through a facilitated process.

Working in teams, students create video clips of performance and other online materials (photos, etc) with episodes being uploaded everyday to You Tube on a specially created website. Most of these projects will be conducted with groups within educational contexts.
Cyberdrama allows students to be involved in drama, film making, music & sound and/or digital and multimedia technology. It is a whole new genre in theatre making! These digital experiences provide the spaces for students to explore, experiment and create.


I used this video as a pedagogical tool as it is a great example of the opportunities students can be engaged in. It shows that students have the opportunity to create their own ideas and feel like they are accomplishing work on their own. I also choose this video because students can relate to it as it is based on the very funny and popular TV series, Scrubs; I hope students will find humour in it and with a bit of luck, lead to interest! This video is one of the 5 takes that was created over a 5 day period from a class in Noosa.

There’s more to Google Earth than just finding your house!

I have used Google earth in the past. I personally used the site to bring some relief when I was missing my good friends overseas in the US. It was really lovely to show my family and friends the street I used to drive down and the farm I used to work on and live in.not the barn of course! I was really disappointed when the uni library internet does not allow this site to be downloaded. My intentions were to get a show of the house I lived in whilst in the United States.

As my title suggests, Using Google Earth is more than just finding your house! Using Google earth within the class room has many benefits. Google earth is just like going on a journey or trip without the ticker prices involved! This site would be a fantastic pedagogical tool used in the classroom. It could be used in mathematics measuring distances, angles, depths and evaluation. Or, students could change to Google sky mode and measure the distances between the stars or better yet, change to Google moon or mars mode and calculate and compare the planets sizes – which would also be beneficial for science class! Other subject areas for example, would be History. Students could create their own tours of a military campground?

Or, Google earth can just be used for general interest, such as finding your house, going on a tour to famous cities, climb a mountain, visit colleges they might have applied for, or go deeper and change to sea seek and take a dive in the ocean!

I think students would take much interest in using Google Earth as because it can be about them and their lives (where they live or favourite places to go, or places they have been). Students have the chance to actually see real iconic places that could never be experienced in a picture book.

WIKIPedia!

I conducted a search on Drama and Music using Wikipedia. As you can imagine I received an overload of information’s. Below is just a list of the contents that appeared in both my searches. By clicking on these links, extended information’s will appear. Of course Wikipedia can be used for much narrower searches. The possibilities are limitless really
Search: Drama

Resources -

• 1 History of Western drama
• 1.1 Classical Athenian drama
  
• 1.2 Roman drama


• 1.3 Medieval


• 1.4 Elizabethan and Jacobean



• 1.5 Modern and postmodern



• 2 Asian drama


• 2.1 Indian


• 2.2 Chinese


• 2.3 Japanese


• 3 Forms of drama
  
• 3.1 Opera
  
• 3.2 Pantomime


• 3.3 Creative Drama


• 4 Legal status
  
• 4.1 UK
  
• 5 See also
  
• 6 Notes


• 7 Sources
  
• 8 External links

Search: Music

Resources:

• 1 History
  
• 1.1 Prehistoric eras
  
• 1.2 References in the Bible


• 1.3 Antiquity


• 1.4 Western cultures


• 1.5 Non-Western Classical traditions


• 1.6 20th and 21st century music


• 2 Performance
  
• 2.1 Aural tradition


• 2.2 Ornamentation


• 3 Production
  
• 3.1 Composition


• 3.2 Notation


• 3.3 Improvisation


• 3.4 Theory


• 4 Cognition


• 5 Sociology


• 6 Media and technology


• 6.1 Internet


• 7 Business


• 8 Education


• 8.1 Non-professional


• 8.2 Academia


• 8.3 Ethnomusicology


• 9 Music therapy


• 10 See also


• 11 References


• 12 Further reading


• 13 External links

Wikipedia’s use often serves as a great starting point for students. It allows them to gather certain information’s for further investigation elsewhere. Even though there is much debate about Wikipedia’s accurateness, it is still a great tool for learning and researching information.

Wikipedia is a collaborative, ongoing project; studnets may also ask questions of an article's authors. Because of Wikipedia’s extensive hyperlinks and external links usage, it can be an excellent tool for students to obtain other related material, both on and off Wikipedia.

Slideshare

Powerpoint Inprovisation

My intentions using slideshare was to download an MP3 from archive.org and sequence it to my Blog. After much frustration and time wasted, I decided to share on my blog what I would intend to do if having more time to use slideshare. Ideally I would have liked to have the sound effects I had originally spent hours putting in my PowerPoint on my blog and I would have liked the opportunity to have more time using slideshare and getting its maximum potential.

I can see some benefits using this site as a pedagogical tool. Students have the option to create their own projects and share their work with others. Using slideshare would not only be a good way to create information’s but to store it also. Students could have easy access to a presentation that you (the teacher) have up loaded.

It is however, quite a tricky site which requires a lot of fiddling. I personally found it very frustrating to use and very time consuming. I don’t know if my blunt response to using slideshare has anything to do with my frustrations trying to figure out how to use it!

Royalty love!

Being a music teacher I would find this site very beneficial, in fact, I’m considering using it within my next lesson. I would use this site for my year 10 class as we are studying the different styles of Jazz at the current time. This site had some great examples that the students can listen to and compare. Instead of just sitting and listening, students could be actively involved finding music and listening to the different styles. This bonus for the students also, is that it is free!

I was having some problems trying upload my music file to my blog, so I uploaded the music file to my Mahara page. Please see link to hear "Hot Swing"

http://cqu-mahara.netspot.com.au/user/view.php?id=423

Assesment item 2 - Learning e.Journal

For the past 5 weeks or so I have been engaged in, introduced to and have learnt an astonishing amount of technologies and learning approaches. These technologies and approaches have seemed very beneficial to exercise within the classroom environment. They prove to be more time efficient, accurate on certain information’s and engage students thus increasing their learning.

Technology is forever changing and today’s youth seem to be more interested in it, having a great deal of access to so many gadget’s and gizmo’s than ever before. I think it would only be logical using technology to help motivate students and make learning more relevant to them.

During the study of ICT’s I have come to understand that funds and facilities prevent the implementation of ICT’s in a lot of schools (Department of Education, Literate Futures Project, 2002 n.p.). In saying that, as teachers I still think we could do our best to:

· employ ICT’s in learning with the facilities we have access to;

· find out what the students are interested in and;

· use certain technologies to our advantage.

During the first week of engaging in ICT’s, I found a useful YouTube video that described practical ways of implementing technologies within the classroom. See the YouTube link, “Top 10 tips for using technology in the classroom”: (http://jhgdltlearningreflection.blogspot.com/2010/03/icts-for-learning-design-week-1.html). These tools are very similar to what is being engaged currently within the GDLT program. Box of Tricks (2008) sets out to show how to make the most out of all the resources contained in websites and only embedding technology when it helps to achieve lesson objectives.

My arrogance of age appropriateness when using technologies to increase student learning was swiftly reversed when I found a YouTube video on children using a program called “Crazytalk.” See YouTube link, Crazy Talk: (http://jhgdltlearningreflection.blogspot.com/2010/03/learning-activity-1-my-own-experiences.html). Viewing this video encouraged me to use technology that youth are fascinated about. It also provides a way of altering student learning for their academic ability. Crazytalk is proof that children are becoming ever more reliant on technology. They use it, so we should use it and make the most of it too! This approach parallels with Marzano and Pickering’s (1997) Dimension of Learning 1 as it is about taking interests in what students take interest in, thus students feel a sense of comfort and acceptance and by using popular technologies students will perceive tasks as valuable and interesting. Altering certain exercises to students learning ability will also allow students to believe they have the ability and resources to complete tasks (pp. 15-35).

From the technologies introduced so far, I think the most successful technologies to implement in schools would be Blogs, Mahara and Voki’s.

Blogs are an efficient way to display student’s works and achievements, providing a focus for their efforts and adding a different approach to the teaching. Blogs are a tool for reflecting on and discussing individual and group ideas which allows students to gain certain information and enhance learning. Blogs correspond to the engagement theory relate, create, donate as it emphasises team effort that involves communication, makes learning a creative activity (students have many options as to how they design their page) and provides the opportunity to make a useful contribution to others whilst learning (Kearsley & Shneiderman, n.d., p. 1).

e.Portfolios such as Mahara in my personal view, is an academic version of the popular social network Facebook. I think students would engage with Mahara because of its similarities with other popular social networks. Students could relate to this electronic network thus increasing their motivation to learn (Kearsley & Shneiderman, n.d., p. 1). Mahara would serve as an educational tool that allows students to create closed groups to communicate with. This would make teaching more efficient as teachers can monitor students work more efficiently providing positive feedback where necessary. Not only does Mahara provide efficiency for teachers but, as Aldred (2010) suggests, gives users the ability to reflect on their own learning experiences throughout their life. After a discussion with a fellow Central Queensland University student as seen on Moodle: (http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77536#p130016), the conclusion of Mahara’s efficiency was that although it is a fantastic engaging tool, we didn’t see its use for younger primary students. Interest in Mahara would depend on how technologically savvy the student was.

Mahara’s framework reflects on Kearsley & Schneiderman’s (1997) engagement theory relate, create, donate as it provides collaborative learning, creation of own projects and provides authentic group contexts (pp. 1-2). Furthermore, engaging students with Mahara would develop Marzano and Pickering’s (1997) Dimension of Learning 5 as interacting with different social networks would assist in creating ones critical, creative and self regulated thinking.

As seen in paragraph 5 of my blog (http://jhgdltlearningreflection.blogspot.com/2010/03/first-glimps-of-mahara.html), there is a fantastic quote which I feel is a summary of what Mahara can offer.

Voki’s are an advantage of the wealth, tools and gizmos offered freely on the internet. Voki’s are a great tool to motivate students as they allow independent creation and provide a fresh approach to what students are listening to and viewing. Voki’s refrain from over using “teacher talk” therefore allowing teaching to become more efficient. If students have the choice to view and listen to what they have created, I personally feel they are more likely to retain the information given; Voki’s are providing a different approach to acquire and integrate knowledge (Marzano and Pickering, 1997, pp. 51-104). In a lecturer (EDED20456 Pedagogical content Knowledge) presented at Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, on March 22, 2010, R. Fisher gave a handout on the different types of learning styles. In my outlook Voki’s have the ability to accommodate these different learning styles in students, especially those who are visual and auditory learners. Voki’s also provide students with fun and humour, which is always good for anybody, especially for children. They are great fun for children and adults to create, as seen in a discussion with a fellow GDLT student on my blog (http://jhgdltlearningreflection.blogspot.com/2010/03/hello-everyone-i-am-very-first-avatar.html). I did have some difficulty getting my Voki to speak all the words I wanted it to. Unfortunately additional payment is required for this feature. In my view, this would be the only downside to this program as it may deter schools/teachers from using it. Hopefully with the support from the school, teachers may have access to Voki’s with additional speaking to achieve lesson objectives.

In summary, I believe that as aspiring teachers we are to make the most out of pupils technologies (mobile phones, iPods/iTunes) and the technologies available and only use them if it helps achieve lesson objectives and create meaningfully engaged learning activities

References

Aldred, S. (2010, March 22). EDED20491 Re. Mahara. Retrieved from http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=77536#p130016

Box of Tricks. (2008, Aug 7). ICT in Education: Top 10 tips for using technology in the classroom. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiisteObuhk&feature=player_embedded

Marzano, R.J., & Pickering, D.J. (1997). Dimensions of Learning (2nd ed.). Alexandria, VA: McREL

Kearsley, G., and Schneiderman, B. (n.d.) Engagement theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Retrieved from CQUniversity e-courses EDED20491 ICTs for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=44470

State of Queensland (Department of Education, Literate Futures Project). (2002). New Times, New Literacies. Brisbane: Author. Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/curriculum/learning/literate-futures/pdfs/reading-part2.pdf

Veeramalla, P. (n.d.) Wiki - A collaboration tool for hyper knowledge management. Retrieved from http://www.capgemini.com/technologyblog/2010/01/wiki_a_collaboration_tool_for.php

Flikr Flikr!

To me personally, using Flikr was similar to several of other photo creating programs I have come into contact with. However, I found Flikr to be slightly more difficult than the other programs used. Flikr seems to require you to spend quite some time on getting familiar with its functions. I found Flikr was harder to understand, confusing to follow and operate to get to the end result. Time was needed and since I don’t have much of it, the experience of using it wasn't as enjoyable as what it could have been. What I did find however, is that Flikr provides many options for the user. I also found it could act as a social network and as an individual work piece; or work in progress! It would really suit someone who is into art, photography and scrapbooking.

I found Flikr to fit within the pedagogical framework as it:

• allows students to choose how they create their own work; organise and document resources;
• is a social network which students to relate to because it is very similar to other social networks;
• allows students to facilitate discussions;
• can be used as a form of art; for instance this program could be part of an Art; class unit? Art can also be used and formed through technology;
• is fun and interesting;
• fits in within the principles of Problem Based Learning. Students are in a situation where they are actively solving problems themselves confronting them with a real-world situation (PROBLARC, 2000). It allows hands on learning which in turn allows students to feel they have accomplished something on their own and;
• can be authentic and valuable to students as it has the potential to impact the way they see the world (through other peoples work)

This is before the editing process.
Quin and Jess - Photo taken on a very cloudy day onto of a high mountain in Townsville.



This photo is after editing - notice how the photo has a better picture quality; more colour!?

This Photo is before the editing process. It was taken a few days before Christmas. I know you can tell where it is! I had to resize this picture as it was too big!


This is the same photo as above but with some cool edititing done - almost looks like a drawing or painting!? I cropped this photo to take away most of the sky, so the photo's focus is the objects (me and the Operea house!

References:

PROBLARC (2000). Retrieved from http://pbl.cqu.edu.au

Cyber Drama!

Hi GDLT learners!

For those whose subject area is Drama, you may want to look at this! The year 11 students at my practicum are doing cyberdrama as one of their assessments. You may want to consider this when we are to introduce the concept of learning through embedding and using ICT's for learning.

Click on the following link:

http://cyberdrama.org/

Jessica Havens

Powerpoint Inprovisation

For this week’s topic, our task was to create a PowerPoint presentation for one of our classes. I didn’t think this week would be that difficult, but to my surprise, making a PowerPoint was harder than I thought. Once I had a cup of coffee and got the hang of the program, it was easy to use and I finished my slide quite promptly. I thought it was a short learning curve, as it didn’t take long to pick (surprisingly!). I think PowerPoint is a convenient tool to use as it is used almost everywhere and is on almost every Microsoft Office computer. It has so many options and greats ways of presenting information; classroom instruction, slide shows etc.

There was a link on the ICT online course for this week, that I personally felt wasn’t very helpful , as it was showing you how to create a PowerPoint in the old version of Microsoft Word. I tried to follow it as much as I could, it did come in handy at same stages, but I decided just to go it alone and play around with all PowerPoint’s applications. It was very frustrating trying to embed a YouTube link into the PowerPoint. I found a very useful YouTube video provided by a fellow student that showed a clear step by step process of how to embed a video. It took me quite some time to find an appropriate YouTube link as quality of picture is important as it keeps the presentation professional (unless the slide calls for an amateur YouTube video). After finding the appropriate link, it took me a few go’s to try and embed the video. I soon realised, with the help of the IT Librarian, that I was copying and pasting the wrong URL. In the end I did prevail!

I am doing my Embedded Professional Learning (Teaching practicum) with years 10, 11 & 12 Drama, Music and English (English isn’t one of my teaching areas, but it’s on Shakespeare so I am giving it a go!). Next week I am taking a 40min class on Improvisational Theatre, so I thought what better topic to base my PowerPoint on; I may even use it in class next week. I wanted to create a PowerPoint that catered for varies learning types, reduce “teacher talk” and used ICT’s to engage learners. The PowerPoint presentation requires student to work in pairs, and complete the series of activities, then present their work to the other students in the class. This could be expanded to the whole class working together and presenting their work (or show) to the whole school. Due to the activities requiring students to make up their own scenarios and allowing them to respond in the ways they choose, the students would be creating a presentation with authentic purposes. They will also get a good laugh out of the activity and build their personality and people skills.

As stated above, when making this presentation I tried to cater for all learners; visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. I included sounds and shapes for auditory and visual learners that the students could relate to and use to help recall information. I included various activities within the PowerPoint slide which students are to complete together. Kinaesthetic learners retain information when they get the chance to practise using the important variations of the skill or process (Marzano and Pickering (1997), Cited in the DOL Teachers Manual). This way they aren’t just sitting at a computer, they get up every so often, move and do, have different approaches to what they are learning, plus they got to engage in collaborative activities.

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Powerpoint Inprovisation

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References

Marzano, R. J., & Pickering, D. J. (with Arrendondo, D. E., Paynter, D. E., Blackburn, G. J., Brandt, R. S., … Whistler, J. S.). (1997). Dimensions of learning teacher’s manual (2nd ed.). Alexandra, VA: ASCD

PowerPoint development tools, Bill Chapman http://www.brandon-hall.com/publications/ppt/ppt.pdf

ew more presentations from S0027852.