Session 5 - Constructionist - Constructionism and Mindsets

This week's focus was on:

•  Carol Dweck's 'mind sets' to enable positive learning and encourage success from a 'fixed' mind set to a 'growth' mind set.
• Constructivism where students gain knowledge by learning together in a collaborative environment. The learning is transformed between the learners.  (constructionism) which is a 'social product'  from the collaborative learning process e.g. a game. 

Introduction to 'Scratch' https://scratch.mit.edu

This is a great way to introduce coding using graphics.  It has libraries for pictures and sounds, but you can add your own!

About Scratch

If you press the space bar a Merry Christmas will pop up and if you click on the snowflake it starts falling and playing music (on the scratch website).

I really need to play with this more to be able to gain some more tips and ideas - there are some on the website too!

Session 4 - Mind Lab - How do learning theories inform how our practice?

Can we know all the theories ... can we know when we are using any one particular theory??  Do we practice with a mix of theories that shape  teaching and learning. Is it an unconscious act that we select or deliberate? We are largely introduced to appropriate learning theories during our teaching training that inform how we teach and influence the style of our practice. New knowledge of theories and theorists build and develop on what we know. The theory also  depends on the learning context.

The theory that we explored today was 'conditioning'...'classical conditioning'. Our task was to explain the key principles of this as a stop motion animation  using play doh and small props. We based our animation on Ivan Pavlov's (Russian physiologist) experiment with dogs in the early twentieth century.

• Stop Action app from the apple store - we used an iPad to record this, simple and easy for students to use. 
•  Mendeley (reference manage and PDF organiser) - to store and create APA references download to your desktop. Some pdf files don't work and the reference will need to be manually typed into Mendeley.

Session 3 - Mind Lab - Reflection on questions:

• Which sectors/industries have recently disrupted?

• Sky TV cable / Satellite cable programmes are streamed over the cable rather than the traditional TV
• 3D printers allow for complex, large projects to be developed in manufacturing and construction industries
• Retail - compare before you buy in the worldwide market has affected the traditional retail store
• Agriculture/large machinery has become more automated rather than man powered

This is just to name a few...technology is changing all the time!

Does your choice of career path meant that you don't have to learn about technology?

I'm a  bit confused by this question... as it doesn't matter what career you are doing everyone will need to understand technology on some level. Technology is part of our everyday lives. Most of us own a mobile phone, computer, eftpos card and a car now has computerised features. Young children learn how to use a TV remote from a very young age and it is a seamless transition to larger devices, games, apps and innovation. It is an expectation with most companies that you have an email account, can access the internet and even government departments expect you to do this to access your information and update it. More often than not I'm asked for my email address for a form of contact than any other form of contact. You question people now when they actually want to know your street address! Technology is integrated into our daily lives whether we like it or not!

Interesting apps this week: 

• Quiver to view printed pages that come to life, fun, but limiting for my learning context.
• Aurasma - very versatile app ...ideas to use in the learning area could be that students can create an idea and have a photo  to trigger image to launch a video to explain the technique or their outcome development and key stages.

Session 2 - Mind Lab session - Industrial style verses 21st century?

It was a thought provoking experience creating a video showing the 'industrial style' teaching and the impacts on students and how we need to reflect on changes to our practice. I enjoyed playing the part of the student and could see from their prospective that innovation within the design process needs to be addressed to make learning more engaging. 

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Session 1 - Mind Lab Session - What is knowledge?

Knowledge is fluid and is a 'verb' is determined by beliefs and perspectives (lenses). I didn't really think about how complex it is. Our group collaboration using metaphor: 'knowledge as a tree' was a great way to interpret this.  The culture/lens and growing with the fluid of data/information (roots feeding in the soil)  and beliefs gaining many perspectives (tree branches) of beliefs. All the different knowledge connects, integrates and continues to grow (branches, leaves, trunk).