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Reflection on Sir John Daniel’s paper

Blended learning has become one of the most common terminologies in the educational sector in the twenty first century. According to a research study by Sir John Daniel (2016), it refers to different combinations of face-to-face classrooms and online study with the help of technologies. “Whether this trend of learning treasures an older tradition or helps find a better future?” is the important question which has captured a great attention from researchers in the field of education all over the world including himself.

In my opinion, I think that traditional or face-to-face classrooms has its unique advantages in learning and teaching. For example, teachers can communicate with their students easily. A recent research study stated that this kind of environment allowed both teachers and students to provide and receive feedbacks as well as peer feedbacks effectively (Luo and International, 2016). This activity is considered as one of the key elements to the success of students learning. In similar with traditional classrooms, online study has its own position in current times. The easy access to the Internet has facilitated popularity of distance or online classrooms, especially in higher education. A research work found that students taking part in online classrooms were able to achieve similar test scores or grades compared to that in traditional classroom settings (Slover and Mandernach, 2018). For this reason, blended learning or hybrid learning seems to be a great idea to combine both in-person sessions and learning online to create an optimum environment where both teachers and students can effectively teach and learn.

However, in order to complete this task, there a lot of things to be considered as mentioned in the Sir Danie’s paper including how technologies are used, methods (or contents) of teaching and learning, students point of view about blended learning, learning outcomes (skills and knowledge that students can obtain from it), cost of programs, and so on. Therefore, I think that both teachers and students are responsible for the success of “blended learning” program. In other words, teachers need to be more creative in making a flexible pedagogy where they not only transfer knowledge to their students but also listen to understand what students want to learn. Also, teachers are willing to use technologies to improve their teaching and students’ engagements in classrooms as well as learn to adapt to changes and developments of technologies day by day. Apart from that, students, as one of the center elements in the educational system, are required to invest more time in both individual and group study because “the more independent study and work students do, the better they learn” (Daniel, 2016). Additionally, being interactive is a key thing to do in a classroom. According to Knapp (2018), interactive learning plays a key role in encouraging the exploration as well as application of knowledge. For this reason, the encouragements and supports from teachers will be very helpful for students to transform to active learners instead of being passive knowledge consumers in classrooms.

All in all, from a point of view of a teacher, I believe that blended learning is a smart way to treasure the old tradition of education as well as add new and great features to it. In the digital life like one in the present time, I believe that the continuous development of the Internet and modern technologies will be efficiently employed as a beneficial tool for both teachers and students to improve their teaching and learning methods and outcomes in the future.  

References:

DANIEL, J. 2016. Making sense of blended learning: Treasuring an older tradition or finding a better future. Online Learning News, 2.

KNAPP, N. F. 2018. Increasing interaction in a flipped online classroom through video conferencing. TechTrends, 62, 618-624.

LUO, T. 2016. Enabling microblogging-based peer feedback in face-to-face classrooms. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 53, 156-166.

SLOVER, E. & MANDERNACH, J. 2018. Beyond Online versus Face-to-Face Comparisons: The Interaction of Student Age and Mode of Instruction on Academic Achievement. Journal of Educators Online, 15, 1-8.

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Reflection on other activities in E-learning class

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the e-learning class has been changed to remote learning environment where both teacher and students need to use the “Zoom” application to carry out teaching and learning. However, online classes still make this unit interesting.  For example, writing blogs is one of the great things to do weekly when undertaking the online e-learning class. This routine activity not only helps students to reflect on what being taught in the class but also improves their writing skills and creativity in learning.

Apart from that, this e-learning class includes a lot of other interesting activities that encouraged students to take part in classes and captured their attentions. For instance, in the week 1, students in the class were encouraged to introduce themselves to the others and to share their photos, favorite software or hardware as well as expectations about this class. In addition, a few group discussions in breakout rooms via Zoom seemed to be very helpful in terms of letting students to know more about each other and enabling them to freely share or obtain new thoughts or point of views in various e-learning related topics. As a result, students can enhance their collaboration skills from being a member in a group. Making podcast/video is a typical example to prove this point. Also, students could effectively gain important knowledge relating to e-learning environment from watching several interesting videos such as “From didactic pedagogy to new learning” by Dr. Bill Cope, “The child-driven education” by Sugata Mitra, SAMR Model: Explained, 7 e-affordances, “How games make kids smarter” by Gabe Zichermann, and so on.

In addition, the use of games in classroom has been a great idea to enable students to enjoy being in a classroom. For instance, the “Kahoot” game was successfully employed as a part of learning activity in the Weeks 5 and 6. Besides the facts that students felt more relaxed when playing games in the classes, students were able to learn more about the cultures from different countries. Importantly, they could discuss with others and were more flexible in creating “Kahoot” questions. In similar, making podcast or videos allowed students to learn from their peers efficiently through discussing, showing others how to solve problems and giving warm/cool feedbacks.  

To sum up, I have learnt many things in the last few weeks from how to be creative in writing blogs to be more confident in group discussion and making video or podcast. Besides gaining some important skills for my current study, such activities will be applied one day in classrooms where I play a role of a teacher in the future.  

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Week 5 - Can video games make kids smarter ? - A reflection

Playing games has become one of the most indispensable activities in daily life of many people, especially kids and young children in the twenty first century. This leads to the trend that parents seem to tell their children that they can play games after completing their homework or study or even chores.  Nowadays, the availability of mobile devices or smart phones, tablets, laptops or computers and the popularization of the internet allow users to access both online and offline games easily. Some play games for relaxing or entertaining while others effectively use games as an interesting tool to serve in their study.

Over the past years, a lot of research studies have been carried out to achieve better and deeper understanding about the attraction of games to kids as well as their importance in the children’s world. Also, an educational revolution in relation to playing games activity has captured great attention of numerous teachers and educators all around the world in recent times.  A question has been raised that “can games make kids smarter?”. This seems to be an interesting topic for researchers to investigate the significant role of games in learning and teaching at schools.

In my opinion, I think that games can make kids smarter. According to a research study (Chuang et al., 2012), it was found that playing different types of mobile games helped fifth grade students improved their multiple intelligence (such as spatial, logical mathematical, interpersonal, bodily-kinesthetic). Cognitive consequences research revealed that games were able to enhance perceptual attention skills (Mayer and Sciences, 2016). Apart from that computerized games were employed in teaching face recognition skills to children with autism (Tanaka et al., 2010). This important strategy successfully helped such children to improve their face recognition skills. In similar, a study claimed that the use of Kinect-based learning games in educating children with special needs showed the improvement in their academic performance as well as their cognitive and motor skills (Kourakli et al., 2017).

Irrespective of the advantages that games have brought, their side effects to the health of kids or young students should be considered by teachers and parents. It was stated that video games seem to be very addicted to young people thereby they spend high amounts of time with them (Camacho Vásquez et al., 2019). Any activity like this might result in their behavioral and mental changes (slowing down the brain growth). In addition, playing games for long time can lead to negative affects to eyesight for children. More seriously, there is possibility that children gain weight or even obesity from such routine.  Sometimes, children seem to be acting violently and this is probably a consequence from what they learn when playing violent games.  

From my point of view, playing games can be seen as a useful tool for kids to entertain but more importantly to learn and develop their own skills and intelligences. Therefore, proper use of time with games, study and other activities seem to be a good solution to maintain a healthy habit for every kid, which requires a great care and attention from both parents at home and teachers at school.    

REFERENCES:

CAMACHO VÁSQUEZ, G., OVALLE, J. C. J. G. E. & JOURNAL, L. R. 2019. The influence of video games on vocabulary acquisition in a group of Students from the BA in English teaching. GIST Education and Learning Research Journal, 19, 172-192.

CHUANG, T. Y. & SU, S. H. 2012. Using mobile console games for multiple intelligences and education. International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation, 6, 204-217.

KOURAKLI, M., ALTANIS, I., RETALIS, S., BOLOUDAKIS, M., ZBAINOS, D. & ANTONOPOULOU, K. 2017. Towards the improvement of the cognitive, motoric and academic skills of students with special educational needs using Kinect learning games. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, 11, 28-39.

MAYER, R. E. 2016. What should be the role of computer games in education? Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(1), 20-26.

TANAKA, J. W., WOLF, J. M., KLAIMAN, C., KOENIG, K., COCKBURN, J., HERLIHY, L., BROWN, C., STAHL, S., KAISER, M. D. & SCHULTZ, R. T. 2010. Using computerized games to teach face recognition skills to children with autism spectrum disorder: the Let’s Face It! program. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 51 (8), 944-952.

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Week 4 - Making a video with Hasina and Samuel ( the topic of “Recursive Feedback”)

Making a video with Hasina and Samuel was one of the interesting activities in this week. Irrespective of the differences in the disciplines of each member in the group, it was a great opportunity to discuss about the topic “recursive feedback” in terms of sharing our opinion or thoughts as well as experiences of giving feedbacks in classrooms. Apart from that, learning how to solve problems or finding alternatives (when resources are unavailable) to complete making our video is a good thing to experience.

Link for the video:

https://share.vidyard.com/watch/4uuas2FkceJqKZ6RvJ6hRL 

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A reflection on the Affordance 4 -“Recursive Feedback” of E-learning Ecologies

As succeeding and failing is an important part of “teaching and learning” process, recursive feedbacks really matter. Feedbacks come from multiple sources and perspectives such as peers, self, instructor, experts and so on. Feedback enables teachers document the way in which a student has changed, grown and progressed.

From the point of view of a science teacher, feedbacks help teachers not only track students’ progress but also improve their teaching approaches or methods. In other words, I think that teaching is not only about engaging students to subjects or interesting topics or preparing some particular kinds of goal but also focus on transforming learners in a positive way. Remarkably, with the advantages that modern technologies have brought in recent times, digital ecologies allow teachers to document, to tract or provide feedback in multiple ways. They allow teachers to be able to set up systems which provide feedbacks as required leading to improving outcomes for both teaching and learning.

In similar with feedback from teachers, peer to peer feedbacks can be considered as an effective way that help students improve the level of performances and understanding inside or outside classrooms. This kind of powerful tool can be expanded significantly with the help of modern technologies in the digital environment nowadays. Self-assessment is another kind of feedback that needs to be considered in education. This activity means that students are able to assess themselves to see what they understand and what they don’t know or to evaluate their own performances that they obtained from teachers’ feedbacks.  

To sum up, digital ecologies can create infinite amounts of capacity for interactions between teachers and students or their peers as well as immediate or recursive feedbacks in the educational system. This potential aspect should be more considered by many educators for the purpose of reaching a teacher’s or learner’s goals.

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Week 3- A reflection on how SAMR model affects to my teaching area

For many years, modern technologies have greatly contributed to the development in the educational sector all over the world. In my opinion, SAMR including Substitution, Augmentation, Modification and Redefinition is a great model representing the integration of technologies into teaching and learning. I think that this model can be properly applied to improve my teaching area (Chemistry). Instead of using paper notes for teaching, I can use “Powerpoint” to prepare teaching materials, mark students’ reports, assignments and texts online. 

In addition, students and myself are able to easily access a lot of chemistry related online resources (journal articles, chemistry videos). Also, there are a wide range of chemistry apps on mobile (Molecule, Elemental, Chemspider, and so on), software (like Chemsketch for drawing chemical structures, reactions, etc.) that assist students in developing knowledges in this field of science.

In similar, the continuous development of virtual or augmented technologies has enabled both educators and students to visualize or view the chemistry world with different angles and aspects. Form this step, students are more engaged, understand more and memorize chemistry stuffs longer when being at chemistry classrooms. For this reason, from the point of view of an educator, I think that modern technologies are a powerful tool to positively transform the educational sector in terms of enhancing the quality of teaching and learning nowadays.  

Apart from that, making a “horror theme” story using “Powerpoint” and its effect is a great experience of e-learning. I can learn to develop the skills that can be applied for my future teaching such create and editing contents, develop ideas to make or design slides, add sound effect, etc.  Anyway, it’s an interesting activity as homework to do this week.

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Week 2 - A refection on making podcast experience

Podcast has been known for a long time as a “recording of audio discussion on a specific topic” file and it can be informative, relaxing, emotional, etc. Although some people think that accessibility problems and limited audiences could be considered as the disadvantages of podcast but this type of file can be made available on the Internet for downloading to devices such as computers or laptops, mobile devices and still has its own unique role in daily life of human beings nowadays.

Irrespective of the fact that making podcast is time consuming, but podcast seems to be a perfect way to tell a story or discuss a topic. Also, I think that it is a great way to learn new things or develop new ideas and practice some skills (like recording, editing, writing script skills, etc.), and to know more about different software or applications used to make podcast. I and Marko used the software namely “Audacity” to record our podcast. It is a simple but great software that I would recommend for audio recording.  

As modern technologies are developing day by day, people seem to have a lot of things to do with them. In a struggling time like the pandemic time at the presence when it is hard to communicate face to face, technologies and the Internet play the important role in connecting people all around the world. From this point of view, I personally think that podcast is one of the great recourses to choose for entertaining, learning, teaching and so on.  

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Why using Tumblr?

Tumblr  has been recognized as one of the most common social networks in the 21st century. It has been growing rapidly, and is nowadays used as part of  social media marketing tools for some retailers.

Tumblr is a short-form, social blogging platform that allows users to post different kinds of content such as text, chat messages, videos, links, photographs, and so on. 

Also, it has an excellent email or text based publishing system, especially absorbs posts via email, text, or even a phone call, which is a great feature for users to communicate easily.  

Tumblr is flexible in terms of design and use; and integrates well with other social media sites. For example, this platform makes it very easy to publish your Tumblr posts to Facebook, Twitter, etc. In addition, it can automatically republish what you’ve posted on Twitter, Facebook, or a blog.

Interestingly, Tumblr users may purchase, acquire, or even build their own themes top to bottom.