Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Week 3 - Twitter

Week 3
The use of ‘twitter’ in classrooms
I believe this idea would have a negative effect on students in classrooms if it were to be introduced for educational purposes.
1.      Students who are believe to benefit from logging their ideas for classmates to see as an alternative to speaking up in class due to being shy are not being encouraged to get out of their comfort zone. This is not properly preparing them for the real world – eventually these children will need to develop their own confidence to be able to sit at job interviews or be confident to enter high school classrooms with new students and make new friendships.
2.      I believe that the decision to introduce these social networks to students is still a decision that should be made by their parents. Some parents do not want their children subjected to social networking at young ages as they are exposed to an online world of opinions, facts etc. that cannot be controlled.
3.      A more suitable idea be to perhaps continue having class discussions to speak opinions and address topics however, have an open ‘class chatroom’ through a school enterprise – e.g. emailing service shared between the class and teacher to have the option of taking a topic into further discussion beyond school hours.
4.      Despite technology being ever-present in today’s society and holding excessive opportunity for creativity, research, collaboration and other potentials, I think where possible it is important to maintain essential ‘people skills’ and social confidence by having students voice their opinions during a lesson where they are not absorbed by book work, reading and media.

Problems encountered with our design challenge


Our design challenge: ‘Original Plan’

Students will create their own app game compatible with an iPade/iPhone. The time allocated will be a term. Students will be allowed to work on this design at home and in the classroom however a pre-planning page (hard copy) will need to be presented and discussed with the teacher before accessing a device.


The problem faced:


How many schools/classrooms will have access to numerous iPads? How many children will have an iPad at home? How can a whole term (1 or 2 lessons a week) be sacrificed for this purpose? How will students cover the cost of downloading the technology necessary to be able to create their own app for iTunes?


The solution:


As an alternative, we have decided to have the students create their own online web game through a free site that we found on the internet. Computer labs can be used at the school and most students would have access to a computer at home. For those who don’t have access to one, the classroom will be opened with a supervising teacher to use the classroom computer in the morning before school and some lunchtimes. With a less complex task a whole term will not be needed to complete this design challenge. The preplanning and final project success will comply with curriculum standards of technology competence and knowledge as well as 3D modelling.


No comments:

Post a Comment