Sarah Weighman s2753868: Week 2

During the tutorial for Week 2 as a group we went through a few of the google applications, such as blogger, docs and sites.

A brief discussion was held about the prescribed readings for the week which were on the following topics:

The second half of the tutorial was designated to group presentations. A summary of each of the groups topics are as follows:

Early Years-

technology is interactive, engaging, educational and is all about play.
children are exposed at an early age (digital native) to technologies such as ipad, wii, kids laptop, meccano and robots.

One to one-

this group focused on the One Laptop Per Child initiative.
described as learning for learning.
they are durable and light weight.
these laptops support learning through doing.
there are more than 4,000 students in Australia that are benefitting from this initiative.

Games in Learning-

this group started off with an interesting quote- "If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow", John Dewey.
games need to be implemented in the classroom to engage the students in learning through the use of wii, xbox kinect, etc.
benefits --> repetition helps learning, encourages individual and collaborative learning and it is motivating for the students.
disadvantages --> differing skill levels of the students, system failure/power outage, language barriers.
why implement? to keep up with the needs of society. So that teachers do not get left behind by their students.
games are how kids learn, it is not just busy work!
games can be incorporated through the use of interactive web pages, web quests and consoles.

Google tools-

Google is no longer just an online searching tool, it now provides images, news, blog sites, scholarly articles, etc.
there are numerous free online tools supplied by Google such as docs, movies, powerpoint.

Mobile Learning-

is technology that is portable, e.g. using mobile phones, laptops, GPS devices, etc.
it encourages both independent and collaborative learning and also increases confidence and attention within the classroom.
gives students the opportunity to bridge the gap between mobile literacy and ICT literacy.
is an effective way to access information any time, any where.

Programming & Computational Thinking-

is an approach to problem solving that incorporates digital technologies with human ideas.
allows us to formulate problems in ways that allow us to use computers and other tools to solve them.
programming is the language used to create programs that tell computers step by step how to solve the problem, e.g. beebots.

Sarah Weighman s2753868