The appropriate applications you have used to support your teaching.

 The appropriate applications I could use in the future would be Padlet, I think it would be a really good way of getting my students to communicate in a new and innovative way as well as keeping the discussion on the topic and knowing that everyone can voice their opinion in class. “One of the good features of it is that educators can make their wall posts interactive, by dragging and dropping different media and uploading files to them. With features like export, subscribe, email and social sharing, educators can easily make their wall posts collaborative” (Team and Written, 2015).

Hot Potatoes is useful as it had different types of activities within the application and I could use all of these with my students. I could use the competitive nature of them and make a game out of it so the learning is fun and engaging for them. I think they would respond to this very well. A review done by Language, Learning and Technology (LLT) Vol5Num2 review of hot potatoes explains “They do not require programming knowledge, yet they still offer flexibility for teachers who have more advanced knowledge.” 

Getting my students to use Wordle for them to remember key terms would be great as they can choose the layout and the colour scheme for them and it is a creative way of remembering terms they would need to write in their logbooks. (TeachersFirst review – Wordle.) explains that it is a terrific visual tool to share on an interactive whiteboard. It is a way to help students see and memorize text, especially visual learners.

Reference

LLT Vol5Num2 review of hot potatoes (no date) Available at: http://llt.msu.edu/vol5num2/review3/

Team, E. and Written (2015) Padlet - paper for the web. Available at: http://edtechreview.in/reviews/243-padlet-paper-for-the-web

Barriers to the effective use of technology in education.

The barriers to the use of technology in education depends on the classroom facilities. If the classroom you are teaching in does not have the facilities to use technology to teach then you cannot use technology to teach. These days everyone assumes that everyone has the technology but unfortunately, it is not always the case.

For instance, research has shown that the ways of teaching can be different depending on teachers' different beliefs even when the teachers have similar knowledge and skills (e.g., Ernest, 1989). This statement made by Ernest is true, as a drama teacher I don’t believe it would always be appropriate to teach with technology.

It would also depend on the places funding for the facilities. Some educational establishments unfortunately do not have the funding for the facilities the use of technology to aid the learning and teaching of the subject.

As a teacher, I feel that is more important to find out how your students learn as it is more important to teach the learners in the style that best suit them. Different student learn in different ways and we are taught to help learners learn by applying our knowledge of how that students.

References

Kim, C., Kim, M. K., Lee, C., Spector, M. J. and DeMeester, K. (2013) ‘Teacher beliefs and technology integration’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 29, pp. 76–85. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2012.08.005.

How technology has changed the way we learn.

Technology has changed the way in which teachers take lessons, there is a lot more interactive learning with the development of technology. Ahead Program (2009) mentions some of these skills, as identified by The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) that will help students to work and live in the twenty-first century. The skills include conducting independent research, thinking critically, solving problems, using technology to communicate and collaborate, and understanding societal issues related to digital citizenship. Knowing that this is the direction in which education is moving would incorporate technology into their classes or into the students learning.

It would be hard to incorporate technology into one of my acting classes as the classes normally take place in rehearsal rooms, studios and theatre spaces which are more open and there are no laptops or technology within the rooms. To incorporate technology into the lessons, I would book out a computer lab for my lessons and for the students, or a classroom with an interactive whiteboard. For example, some use an interactive whiteboard only to project content while others use the board to support interactive student inquiry processes (Hall, 2010).

It would also be helpful to get scripts on phones and be able to highlight them instead of having them on paper, therefore students would constantly have their scripts as when they have paper scripts they can forget them.

References

Kim, C., Kim, M. K., Lee, C., Spector, M. J. and DeMeester, K. (2013) ‘Teacher beliefs and technology integration’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 29, pp. 76–85. doi: 10.1016/j.tate.2012.08.005.

Njoku and Udochukwu, C. P. (2015) Information and communication technologies to raise quality of teaching and learning in higher education institutions. Available at: https://www.questia.com/read/1P3-3688346891/information-and-communication-technologies-to-raise 

The value of mobile technology in teaching and learning.

The value of mobile technology in learning is growing immensely, and will be used more frequently in the future of education. “Such wide application of technologies, in a sense, can be attributed to the purpose of enhancing effective and cost-effectiveness of delivery of education” (Wong and Pang, 2015).

For the subject I teach, technology would be hard to use. Acting has always used technology within the subject for lighting sound and projection which is something new within acting and performances. Programs like Qlabs are becoming more frequently used on courses to train the students on how to use the technology that is advancing.

Martinez states that “Technology enhanced learning (TEL) has shaped the way we teach and learn nowadays” (2012). “The internet and the technology advances have provided a virtual space where learning can take place outside the classroom.” (de Andrés Martínez, 2012) . A great way of using technology within acting is to encourage the students to write their logbooks as a blog, this will help the lecture to know that the students have not copied or plagiarised. This would help the teachers to check the work for plagiarism to get them to submit their blog through turn it in. An example of this would be, Turnitin is used for detecting plagiarism and marking electronically, and it has been found to be very valuable for teaching staff (Buckley & Cowap, 2013).

References

Buckley, E., & Cowap, L. (2013). An evaluation of the use of Turnitin for electronic submission and marking as a formative feedback tool from an educator's perspective. British journal of educational technology, 44(4), p.562-570.

De Andrés Martínez, C. (2012) ‘Developing metacognition at a distance: Sharing students’ learning strategies on a reflective blog’, Computer Assisted Language Learning, 25(2), pp. 199–212. doi: 10.1080/09588221.2011.636056.

Wong, B. Y.-Y. and Pang, S. (2015) ‘A framework for effectiveness of institutional policies on technology-enhanced learning’, in Technology in Education. Transforming Educational Practices with Technology. Springer Science + Business Media, pp. 175–186.

Photostory

I liked Photostory straight away as it was very easy to use. This would be a useful and effective program to use within my subject. I think it would be effective to use for the students to look at physicality and facial expressions to gain the mood and atmosphere of the play being looked at. It would get students to evaluate and analysis the way in which they convey emotions and how they show it through their facial expression and body language.

Blog Review

The blog I am going to review is http://actingwithoutthedrama.blogspot.co.uk/ . This blog is written by Ben Hopkin who has different acting classes throughout America, the use of the blog is to inform previous and new people into the acting classes provided. The blog has a lot of information in its post and is really long and informative about the type of acting classes, what is would cover, how much it cost, who the class is aimed at (Newbies or experienced) .

I like the design and layout of the blog. The first thing that drew me in was the photograph of Shakespeare. Ben likes to use images a lot in his blog and I find that refreshing it breaks up all the information he gives to you, this is such a good thing to give to the readers as it gives their brain a break from loads of information. The images have a humorous caption with them too, something that is taught in acting (light comedy relief). The colour scheme represents acting as black is a colour that is used often within the area. The font was a clear one used like Calibri (Body) but the text was small and could have been bigger, but that is totally a personal thing as I like bigger text as I find it easier to read and I liked the fact that the majority of the text was white as it kept it neutral. The things that the blog wanted to emphasise to the reader was in red or blue and pieces of the blog were even underlined for extra emphasis. This helps the readers see the important information quicker and clearer because if it was all in red and the important bits were in white I don’t think it would stand out as much. I also noticed that any payment information was in a light blue and was underlined for the reader to notice the difference in colour and it was important information.

Ben has also put his twitter feed down the side of his blog so you could also follow him on social media, this is very clever to link your blog and social media together, as it can link the people from social media to the blog and vice versa.  

 Overall after looking at a few blogs, I think this has been a good blog for me to review as I was unaware that you could use a blog to inform audiences in this way about acting classes as I have never seen it done and I think it is a really good way to advertise acting classes. Blogs are often something used by performers to inform people about their work on a production. But for Ben Hopkin, the creator of this blog has gained a following through his blog and used it to advertise his acting classes.

Do Schools Kill Creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson | TED Talks

This Ted talk in particular is inspirational to me because it is linked to my subject. I have already studied this speech for my third year degree as my political speech. It is a speech about Creativity and education. At the beginning of the speech Sir Ken Robinson states that “throughout all the Ted talks that day no one knew what the world would look like in 5 years’ time”. Yet we are meant to be educating the children for the future. In this speech it is also stated that children are creative and innovative from a very young age. As the speech develops, the point is made that we “unlearn” our creativity and come to focus on simply providing teachers with the correct answer and become scared of being wrong and taking a risk or being creative. This is what the education system does as children get older, they get more aware of being wrong. Robinson asserts that “all kids have tremendous talents. And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.” Robinson points out that each individual has particular talents and that it is important to focus on these talents that in some ways are naturally occurring; they are the areas to which we are most inclined. However, the education system forces children to learn a range of skills, many of which they have no interest in. This he implies wastes creativity and potential. We should nurture creativity and the willingness to take a risk even though that may at times turn out to be wrong. We learn from both the right and wrong choices. This talk applies to the performing arts because students must be prepared to experiment and at times fail because only then do they find out what succeeds. The process is a whole; both the success and the failure.

Reflective writing and effective teaching

Reflective writing is important in effective teaching as it helps the teacher reflect and analyse lesson. This is important for the lecturer to gain more confidence in their abilities and to improve upon the areas that they are not confident in to help them gain more confidence and improve upon them.

 It also helps the lecturer discover new teaching strategies to use in the session by thinking about what they did and how it could have been improved. They can select what to use next time to make it a more effective lecture.

 By reflecting and trying different teaching strategies the teacher is not stuck in the type of learning that they like but they are using it to help them to improve as an effective teacher. Also, they can discover what type of learners their students are and use that when planning the lecture to cover all bases of learning so that each student understands what the lecturer is teaching within that lecture.

 By recording it through programs on ICT or doing a reflective blog, it enables you to be clearer with the information where if you write it on paper it might get lost or you might not understand what you have written. I think using this blog to reflect on the lessons we’ve had on the programs and also how we would use technology in our teaching is a really effective way to communicate.

Me and Microsoft

My experience with Microsoft has been a good one. Whilst I have not used all the programs on Microsoft, I have used several different programs these include: Word, PowerPoint, Publisher and Outlook. I have had good experiences with all of these programs.

 Microsoft Word.
I use Microsoft word regularly, for essays, lesson planning, and lesson handouts. Word is a very simple and easy program to use by splitting things up into sections you can find what you want easily. Word is a program that even I would use Word to create lesson handouts which would aid my students in the area we were looking at in acting.

 PowerPoint.
I don’t use PowerPoint as much as Word but I find it fairly easy to use, I would only use PowerPoint in my teaching if I felt it necessary and as I do acting it is not always appropriate to use. I might use it if I have to introduce a new practitioner and method and style of acting. The only negative to using PowerPoint is that it can be time-consuming to create but once you have created the PowerPoint then you have the resource to reuse and update for future classes. It can also be presented as a handout for students to use as reference point and to make notes on.

Publisher.
I have used Publisher to create posters for shows that I have done. One module on the BTEC course is “Marketing for the Performing Arts”. This often means that students need to design and produce posters to advertise their final performance. The students are assessed on the quality of their advertising and by default their ability to use ICT. As a lecturer, I have also used Publisher to create templates which I have used to support students who find this aspect of the course difficult.

Outlook.
 I have used Outlook for the last 3 years as it is what we use for our student email. I find it very good as it has storage so you no longer have to send yourself your work, you can just save it onto your drive and pick it up from there.

 Ed Excel
I can see the uses of Excel but I found it really hard to work as I didn’t fully understand it. The programme was really technical to use and I would have to take a lot of time to learn how to use it. I see that it would be good to use for keeping a register and knowing how much absence a student has had. It is essentially an efficient way of keeping records and monitoring students which I need to develop my skills in.

These are the main Microsoft office programs I use or have looked at during the I.C.T module. This part of the course has enabled me to see how certain programs have new applications, for example, using Word to reference texts.

Padlet

This online program is great for students to look at other people’s ideas and use them as a springboard. It is interactive and would be good for students to interact without having the problem of the students talking over each other and everyone being able to express themselves in a controlled manner. If there were resources within the teaching space I would use this program for students to express their opinions, thoughts and feelings about the area within the subject that they would be looking at in class.

Kahoot

I liked the program Kahoot when we first got shown it but I don’t think I would be able to use it within my subject area as it is an assessment program. It would not suit the type of assessment that my students would do. As the assessments my students normally do are performance and presentation assessments.

Socrative

I liked Socrative because of how simple and easy it was to use and I would love to find a way to use it in my classes. Unfortunately just like Kahoot it would not be an appropriate assessment strategy. Like Kahoot it is a quiz assessment program, I would maybe be able to use it if I had just taught a class on a practitioner and I had the facilities but I would not use it as a formative assessment strategy. The assessments my students have to do are practical and performance.

Nearpod

I also liked Nearpod as it is an interactive program and I think it would work really well in one of my lectures that I teach “Marketing for the Performing arts.” As the students don’t like the fact that the lessons are not always interactive, I would use this as a tool to make the lesson interactive for the student and get them involved in the session. The students can view the presentation on their phones or tablets which helps in classes like mine where you can’t always get computers in the room. Nearpod also lets you add in questions in the presentations for the students to do so you know where your students are and what they have learnt.

Prezi

 I found Prezi hard to get to grips with at first but after some time of trial and error with the program, I got used to using it and feel like it is a really creative way of making a presentation without using PowerPoint. With Prezi, the design of the slides is already done as they have basic format backgrounds or you can create your own. If I had the correct resources in my classroom I would use this program the same as I would with PowerPoint for giving facts on a practitioner their method and how they came up with their method.