I hate goodbyes.....

Welcome to my vodcast on ePortfolios.

So, for now, I say farewell. But before signing out, take a look at my journey throughout the semester of Intergrating Learning Technologies in my digital story - Belinda's Sandcastle.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog as much as I have enjoyed writing it!

Bye for now......

Speilberg eat your heart out!

Today in class Kate and I were required to review Mishra and Koehler's article "Too cool for school? No way!" Have a look at my last blog R u TPACKed and ready?

As we never seem to do things by halves, rather than the standard power point presentation we opted to make a video. So here it is, have a look, like, dislike or comment if you wish, or just have a laugh.....we did!

R u TPACKED and ready?

Mishra and Koeler’s article Too Cool for School? No Way! acquaints the reader with the term TPACK. Now I know what you’re thinking...and no it’s not the latest rapper on the music scene! It is in fact an acronym for Technology Pedagogy And Content Knowledge and I believe is quite self explanatory.

As educators, our job involves teaching (Pedagogy) students specific subject matter (Content), align this with aspects of Technological Knowledge and there you have your TPACK.

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The outline of TPACK demonstrates just how interrelated the strands of the framework are. The link between technological knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and content knowledge intertwine to form the framework of technological pedagogical and content knowledge.

This article discusses how expert teachers find ways to orchestrate and coordinate these three aspects into every act of teaching and how they find solutions to complex, dynamic problems of practice by designing curricular solutions that fit their unique goals, situations and student learners.

Teachers must repurpose both traditional teaching methods and technological tools for educational purposes. This can be achieved by being digitally fluent and displaying experiential understanding developed through training and deliberate practice of all the aspects of the TPACK framework and how they interact with each other.

Most of all, we as prospective teachers need to develop a willingness to play with technologies and be open to building new experiences for students so that fun, cool tools can be educational. If we are to teach as we were taught, we will not only lag behind our colleagues in content and knowledge, we will affect the learning capabilities, engagement and motivation levels of our students.

Wanna come play?

Bullies go digital

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In class last week Glynis introduced us to icybersafe.com a website powered by Ivanhoe Grammar School. It deals with the cyber bullying trends of social media, managing online behaviour and gives a comprehensive guide to managing online time, activity and advice on how to stop cyber bullies. It endeavors to equip students with the capacity to survive and thrive in cyberspace which will be increasingly an important part of their lives, now and in the future.

Cyber bullying is defined as the use of social media, e-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, mobile phones, or other forms of information technology to deliberately harass, threaten, or intimidate someone. The problem is compounded by the fact that a bully can hide behind an electronic veil, disguising his or her true identity. In this digital age it has surpassed traditional methods of schoolyard bullying and is deemed more detrimental to the victim due to its immediate and anonymous manner.

Phrases such as ‘digital reputation’ and ‘digital footprint’ refer to the online activity traceable through the collection of footprints left in the ‘digital environment’, in other words - an accumulation of personal information, content shared or other data which can be accessed by other internet users.

It is here that the responsibility falls to parents and educators to ensure that

children conduct themselves in accordance with the rights, duties, and privileges of being an offline inhabitant not just of a geographical location but of an online citizen of the globe.

I strongly suggest you sign up for regular updates from this website on the trends of such bullying.
Oh and btw, check your privacy settings on all of your social media accounts! And just for fun perform a Google search on your name and see what images you find.... Lucky for me my name is as common as bad hair cuts in the 80s!!