so here is my final weekly reflection.

This week i reflected back upon my first week of ICT. as part of this reflection, i re-did my personal competency test. here is the link: Week 13 Competency Test

before doing the test again, i looked back at my first test, completed in week 1. this was very interesting, as i saw my scores in each category, from my first week of the course, and realised just how much ICT has taught me about technology.

it was good to see that my knowledge has definitely improved in certain aspects of ICT:

Strengths

in particular, my strengths were revealed to be in the areas of technology presentation, desktop publishing and multimedia projects.

in my first competency test, i didnt even know what a webquest was. But by the end of the course i now have seen several examples of webquests, and critiqued and reviewed them as well, in terms of their effectiveness to be used in the classroom.

i also learnt the importance of constructivist learning, and how ICT is beneficial in helping to establish a constructivist classroom.

i can now also successfully and competently hyperlink items in my work, such as in microsoft word.

i learnt how to create professional publications, using Microsoft publisher – again, a program i had never used or heard of before.

prior to ICT, i had never used a graphic organiser, or even knew what they were. after portfolio item #6, however, i became proficient in the program, Inspiration, and successfully created my own mind map on an emerging technology.

my strengths also lie in multimedia projects – in week one, i had never created any multimedia projects. now, i have made one using Photo Story, just last week. this project was compiled using sound, photographs and video, and helped me to learn more about incorporating these 3 elements to create engaging presentations – something i will most definitely be using in my future profession as a teacher.

Weaknesses

re-doing the competency test also revealed that there are still a few areas i can improve upon in the future, to better help me utilise technology efficiently and effectively in the classroom.

I still have never created a digital video, so therefore have no proficiencies in this area.

i can also improve in the area of problem-based learning: i would like to be able to one day create my own WebQuest, and use it in my future as a teacher.

how my learning in this unit will assist me in my future career as a teacher.

ICT opened my eyes to the impact and importance of technology in primary schools today. in my own primary school days, we only ever used computers in years 5 and 6; and even then, they were only in the library, and used predominantly by the teacher, with the students passively watching on.

in great contrast, today, students are actively involved in their learning, and they engage in technology with a hands-on approach. the reliance upon a constructivist learning environment was revealed to me through this unit, and has emphasised its effectiveness in enhancing the learning experience, for both students and teachers alike.

ICT has helped me to understand the types of technology used in schools today, and has developed my skills and proficiencies in these areas, to assist me as a teacher of the future.

i feel that i, as a prospective teacher, will need to continuously keep up with the ever-turbulent pace of technology in today’s society. students will always be a step ahead of me, as they are the younger generation, exposed to new advances in technology.

ICT has helped me to achieve this in some way, and the skills i have developed will without a doubt stay with me for many years to come, and when i finally can put them into practice for my very own lessons in the not-so-distant future – i cant wait to do this: to enhance my students’ learning, through the use of ICT in the constructivist classroom i aspire to create.

overall, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed ICT. the portfolio items didnt feel like assessment tasks: they were fun, interesting, and inciteful learning experiences, simultaneously developing my skills in many areas of ICT.

i hope to continue to improve my already proficient skills in the next few years of my course.

so for the last time, i sign off my blog.

Bye!

this program, i learnt, is used to enhance images with audio and editing features, in order to create a visual story compiled of images.

i really enjoyed this task: i use programs at home to edit my own personal photos, such as Adobe Photoshop. i like to fiddle around with different settings like exposure, brightness and contrast, hue and saturation etc to enhance my photos. because of this, using Photo Story was fun and interesting.

i got to be creative in this week’s portfolio item: we had to create some form of a story through pictures, the titles and music. adding music i found was a great way to better convey the story, as it sets the mood and tone for the images being displayed simultaneously as the music plays.

the study guide took me through a step-by-step process of creating a story using Photo Story, going over its features on editing photos, how to upload them, how to incorporate audio files to the project, and how to add titles and descriptions to photos, in order to better convey the story being told through the project.

this final task was a nice way to end and wrap up the unit: one i thoroughly enjoyed and benefitted from greatly

 we looked at Microsoft PowerPoint in particular – a program i began using back in my early years of high school, and one i am confident in using.

portfolio item #7 was to create a powerpoint presentation about an emerging technology – the same used in Inspiration for the previous portfolio item. my presentation was on Interactive Whiteboards. i enjoyed creating my slideshow – i’m very competent with the program, and felt at ease when completing it.

however, our portfolio item required us to use a feature of powerpoint i had never experienced before – speaker notes.

i learnt about them, and realised these would be particularly helpful when presenting the slideshow orally – speaker’s notes give queues to the speaker to guide them through the presentation.

they will be especially helpful for me in the future as a teacher: when presenting slideshows to students, the speaker notes will be a handy assistance in presenting the information to students.

i learnt how to show and distinguish grades from A to F, based on each students’ total mark/percentage out of 100. this is a useful funtion that saves a lot of time and mental calculations – all the work is being done for me!

we also began to look at Inspiration and Kidspiration – programs used for creating detailed mind maps. the fun with this program is that the mind maps can be created using graphics to make it fun and a better visual representation, rather than just a bunch of words. 

Kidspiration especially will be highly valuable for me when teaching primary students, as it is a fun, interactive and hands-on learning experience.

we also looked at the importance and usefullness of excel in keeping ‘grade books’ for students..with portfolio item #5’s task being to create a grade book with data presented using graphs and tables on excel. this will be something i will definitely be utilising as a teacher – keeping track of students’ academic achievement is important in keeping track of their progress, as well as using in reports and to discuss with parents at parent-teacher interviews.

portfolio item #4 was to create an autobiography using Publisher. this has been my favourite task in ICT so far…i really enjoyed completing my autobiography, and spent alot of my spare time working on it to perfection…it was relaxing and a good break from essay writing and studying! and it was still technically doing ‘work’ – although it didnt feel like it at all!

i really enjoy displaying photos creatively- especially scrapbooking – and using Publisher i found is sort of like that…choosing colour schemes, designs and borders etc for my text and photos was a fun way of expressing myself and the end result was a true reflection of who i am, my passions, my aspirations and what means the most to me.

im certain ill be using Publisher in the future – if not for teaching purposes, for my own leisure and enjoyment!

by far the BEST aspect of ICT so far

webquests are a great utilisation of the world wide web – they enable students to use and become familiar with today’s technology of the internet, and are a fun and engaging way of learning. they each contain a ‘quest’ for the students to complete, which makes learning fun and intriguing for students. i hope to use these great resources when i begin teaching, and even make a webquest of my own – something i look forward to doing in the later years of my course.

however this week i learnt some very useful new things about word:

• how to hyperlink an item into my word document
• some handy short cut keys to make editing my word document so much simpler and easier

This week i also learnt some useful advanced searching techniques. The week 4 study guide provided a hyperlink to the Pandia tutorial, which was extremely helpful to me, explaining the Boolean operator and its assistance in narrowing a search. This was a great discovery – one which I will exploit in my future research.