Task 2

The Education System is constantly developing innovative ways to incorporate the use of technology within the classroom and school community. This approach takes advantage of both currently available technology and recently launched technology to implement within schooling programs to beneficially student’s learning. It provides activities with a wider range of variables and opportunities which help students learning move from activating their basic knowledge all the way to high levels of thinking, such as evaluation and creation. Technology is rapidly growing at such an increasing rate that is makes it crucial that we continue, as future teachers, to keep up to date with advancements so that we can get the most out of technology when supporting the classroom environment. A simple example of technology empowering students is access to the internet. This allows students to become more independent as learners by giving them the opportunity to search for the information themselves, instead of a teacher giving them the resources. This moves the role of a teacher to facilitate learning and placing a higher expectation that student’s self-mange exploration, problem solving and investigation. This expectation and opportunity helps them to grow significantly. An example of activities technology can assist with is; if a student wants to share his work or opinion in class without technology he can only compare with his fellow peers. Alternatively, when technology is used as a mode of communication, that student may share and compare with people all around the world.

 

A blog is a website which is usually run by an individual and regularly updated, with a conversational or an informal style of writing.

Scenario 1: A teacher gets the students to hand in their assignment by emailing it instead of giving a hard copy. On the SAMR model the substitution level is being used because the assignment has no functional change but how they provide the teacher with their work has been substituted from hard copy to an online copy. This is using the lower range of Blooms taxonomy such as; knowledge and understanding to complete the given task.

Scenario 2: The students write on their online blog which they use tools to check and edit spelling, grammar, font and colour. In this activity the students are at the augmented level of the SAMR model, which on the Blooms Taxonomy is the applying level. This task is within the middle level on Blooms Taxonomy as the students already have the understanding and knowledge of the task and are now at the applying stage.

Scenario 3: The teacher gets the students to use a blog to post their opinions of a specific topic. By using a blog they can share with other users and compare their opinions with people from all around the world. This doesn’t just increase the number of people involved but also by connecting with others from around the world, the students can see a wider range of points of views. These viewers may read the blog and provide alternate perspectives as they may represent a different age group, sex, country, religion and/or culture. All these factors can insignificantly influence the opinions of a topic. Therefore by having the activity constructed in such a way, the modification level is being used in SAMR model, which draws from the analyzing and evaluating level of the Blooms Taxonomy scale.

Scenario 4: Instead of the students writing a post for their blog they create a short digital video. They will continue to add regular videos with the aim that after a year they can create a timeline of their videos to compare them from the first to last. This is the highest level on both SAMR model which is redefinition level and the Blooms Taxonomy which is to create.