As beginning teachers, it will be important for us to build and maintain a network of relationships. This will help us keep connected to others who have similar interests/values to us in relation to education.   I am particularly conscious of this as the time nears for us to all leave university and begin our fledgling new careers.

I found the last lecture session from the lady at EDNA very useful and decided to check out what they have to offer.  Here is a link to my profile on EDNA http://me.edu.au/p/madhu.  It links to this blog and on early inspection, does look like a useful way to build a professional online profile.

Just read this news item in the NY Times about a firm that offers online math courses to American school students.  A typical example of use of technology for objectivist teaching (refer chapter by Robyler).  Reading the article made me wonder why “drill and practice” style programs (like the one described) manage to get such good press.

Programs such as the one described in this article can easily be shown to get results (ie improved scores in traditional tests). Paul’s blog points out there haven’t been too many studies to prove the effectiveness of constructivist teaching approaches – I think the reason must lie partly in the fact that our assessment methods are still rooted in objectivist frameworks (at least in mathematics).

A conundrum that will no doubt face us as beginning teachers!

 References

Roblyer, M.(2006). Learning Theories as Bases for Integration. In M. Roblyer (Ed). Integrating educational technology into teaching.  4th Edtn. pp 36-52. Pearson/Merrill Prentice HallUpper Saddle River, N.J.

I just read an interesting article in today’s Washington Post about how some schools in the US are using internet-based classroom portals to provide information to students and parents on student progress and assessment outcomes as also information on assignments that need to be completed.  For parents it provides a connection to their children’s academic life – a connection that diminishes when the children move to high school.  This would also ensure that parents receive ongoing reporting on their children’s progress at school rather than the once/twice a year written report.

The prac. school I was at already maintained online markbooks. All that would be required would be to enable secure access to students’ records to only those authorised (carers, teachers, student themselves). 

Grandmother’s report card http://www.flickr.com/photos/victoriabernal/2289482819/  Made available under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic licence

In response to Maree’s blogpost,

• We definitely need student teachers to be exposed to a range of technology tools and provided with opportunities to think about and experiment with various ways of using these in the classroom (similar to what we are currently engaged in as part of this course). If we have tried something at uni, we are more likely to use it in our teaching.
•  On an ongoing basis, we need to keep abreast of new tools/ technologies and their potential for use in an educational setting.  We could do this in a variety of ways – we could actively seek out information by subscribing to blogs of interest, reading, networking with like-minded peers etc.  Traditional professional development courses are also an option but likely to be behind the curve?