The Outcome of the Module-ICT in Education

I took up ICT as my elective module for the final semester of my Degree course in Education through DE mode. I was always awed by the magic and strength of ICT skills and tools. Moreover, it is a necessity in this 21^st century world. For these reasons and to suffice my own thirst of learning, I joined this course and it proved a worthwhile experience.

The lessons varied from simple tasks of MS word activities to creating video tutorials. I learned how to use Google drive to store my essential documents which can be retrieved anytime anywhere as long as I have the internet service. All important documents are securely saved. Using Google docs to share documents and inviting others to edit was very new to me and I found it very effective. Developing interactive quiz and creating video tutorials in groups were very interesting. Despite encountering numerous obstacles, we made it to meet the dateline set by our tutor. The experience gained and skills acquired from these exercises were commendable.

We were taught the 5 ICT tools through presentation, group works, individual assignments and some even through video tutorials. While some activities demanded us to be very individualistic, most of them were interactive where we need to learn from trying, sharing and collaborating with our group members and friends. The tutor taught us the advanced web search skill which was followed by an assignment on Web search to implement the newly learned skill.

One of the most engaging tasks was maintaining reflection through Blogs and participating in the forum discussion of the module. At first, I met with some challenges of how to go with it but as I struggled on, it became much easier. With our busy schedules, writing frequently was a problem as well. I tried my best to reflect on whatever I have learnt and done for this Module. Learning surely takes time and needs perseverance.

By the end of this Module, I can claim that I am confident with the usage of Information and Communication Technologies but nevertheless, I would continue learning whenever the opportunity arises. I, definitely have climbed a higher rung of the learning ladder and for all these, I would like to thank our tutor Mr. Chenga Dorji, for teaching us tactfully and guiding us with timely feedbacks.

This is my last blog post on Reflection but would love to continue Blogging and hopefully my friends will also do the same. 

OLD! YET NEW LEARNING!

I have learnt the usage of Microsoft Word and had been using it for almost a decade now. Until now, I felt comfortable in using it with ease. Even while setting the questions, I could do independently and I thought I have sound knowledge of it. 

Yet, once again, the facts of life and learning, “Learning never stops and there is new learning for every endeavour and experience that we make,” struck me. When we were given the MS word assignment where we had to carry out lots of font activities, paragraph exercises, inserting and grouping shapes, equations, designing certificates and cards, I gained a whole set of new ideas and skills.

Mail merging was one exercise where I struggled and had consulted lots of my DE colleagues and colleagues in my school. Finally, I have learned how to merge the mails. I think it can be of great use especially when we need to send the same mail to many recipients. Being a teacher, we may have very rare opportunities to use this except when we write to the parents of our students but still then learning won't harm. We can share this piece of information with families and colleagues who need to use them on daily basis.

While equation and symbol exercises were of great help for mathematics, paragraph and font activities were helpful for all of us. For a primary teacher like me, shape activity proved very handy where we can give various outlooks using variety of features such as 3D...

Of all the activities, I enjoyed designing the cards and certificates. I have learned a bit in designing them with MS publisher but doing it with MS word was fun though challenging. I hope to use them regularly in future.

From this experience and task, I did realize that no matter how familiar we are with the content, there is always a new insight to be gained, skill to be acquired and wisdom to be accumulated.

Therefore, I urge all the readers to give a go whenever opportunity knocks at your door, whether the subject matter is old or new for I assure you that a box of wisdom and knowledge awaits you.

Group Assignment

The Group Assignment on the development of Quiz using Wondershare and Video Tutorial with Camtesia really kept us busy for the last month and the first half of October as well. 
Creating quiz was fun and playing it was even more engaging and exciting. I never knew of this stuff before. I have learned how to make quiz using Hyperlinks which was interesting too but this one "Quiz with Wondershare" was simply the BEST. I guess, if we use this quiz to test our learner's content comprehension, it would be a worth while. The children would not only find it challenging and content oriented but they would also get the opportunity to try out their ICT skills.
The final group task on preparation of Group Video Tutorial was a real challenge. Having groups friends scattered in different hamlets of the country made it difficult to upload and download our videos for final compilation. The network quality and server problems made the task even more difficult. Nevertheless, the patience of our group friends paid at last as we could finally compile them and submit on time.
 It was a rich experience and I'm sure we could use this skill for our purpose as well in future.

Way to go friends.................

Thank you

BLOG and WIKI

In this digitalized world, Blogging has become a common forum for digital natives and immigrants too. It serves as the conference hall where one can raise the concerns, opinions and feelings and get feedback from the colleagues or anyone who is influenced by the topic of discussion.

My first encounter with Blog was in 2013 while undergoing Chiphen Rigphel Course, where I created the account. Apart from that, I couldn’t post any materials. Now, this year when we the ICT electives were asked to create the account, I worked on my existing account and tried modifying them.

It’s true that learning never stops. While working on Blogs using the guidance and tutorial provided by our tutor Mr. Chenga Dorji, I learned a lot so as how to organize and manage our own blogs. Redesigning the appearance of our blogs and commenting on other’s posts were some of the highlights.  I also realized that it can be shared via various social networks.

As of now, I am quite confident with Blogging but still couldn’t figure out how to go about with the WIKI. Ofcourse I have created the account following the informative video tutorial given by our Sir but am stuck there only. I hope to learn more about it.

Blogging is a powerful tool. I wish to continue using this even when my assignments are over. I also urge my other friends to create one and use as it is very user friendly and effective mode of communication.

 Mr. Chenga Dorji

WEB SEARCH

                                                                                                                                

It’s true that the status of current situation and abilities can be measured only when encountered with another new set of information or scenerio. Similarly, I thought I knew enough and was confident with the lesson WEB SEARCH but how wrong it turned out to be.

Till I learnt this lesson, I always had typed the key words in the address bar, searched and chose the most appropriate web page that popped up. It was very helpful but later with the lesson from our tutor, I came to know that it was only a basic search. The Advanced Search tools were of immense help. There were basically five search tools that are;

      BOOLEAN OPERATORS,

      TRUNCATION,

      WILDCARDS,

      RESTRICTING SEARCH USING SITE, and

      RESTRICTING SEARCH BY FORMATS

Boolean operators;

The Boolean operators are AND, OR, NOT. They form the basis of mathematical sets and database logic. These words connect our search words together and narrow down or broaden the search. This operator is mainly used when the topic contains multiple search items. We also use them to connect various pieces of information to find exactly what we are looking for.  For instance, when we want to find a book about certain topic by a particular author, we can type “Title AND Author AND Year” and then tap the search button.

AND is used to narrow down the search by typing all the key words that must be there. Eg. “GNH AND Bhutan”

 OR is used to broaden our search by writing two or more synonymes. This will ensure the search on any one of the topics. Eg. “cloning OR genetics OR Reproduction”

NOT also helps us in narrowing our search by excluding the content that we do not want to be included.  Eg. “Cloning NOT sheep”

Truncation;

It is also known as stemming. It is a technique to broaden our search to include various word  endings and spellings. We need to type the root word and insert truncation symbol (*, !, ? or #) and then search. Eg. “child*”

Wildcards;

This search tool is similar to truncation but here the symbol substitutes for one letter of a word. We use this tool when we have words that are spelled differently but mean the same thing.

Eg. “colo?r”    

Restricting search using site;

Using the site operator to search for information from a particular location on the web helps in narrowing down our search. Eg. Typing “org, bt, gov, com…” in the url

Restricting search by formats;

Another way of narrowing down the search and saving time is by restricting with file formats. Type the type of file that we are looking for will reduce our search task to a great deal. Eg. “pdf, htm, xls,docs, ppt,…

These search tools were very helpful in obtaining the desired information from the internet which has a sea of information within short span of time. The follow up activities on finding educational websites srtengthened my newly acquired information.

Given the busy schedule of teachers, I think this will be of great help as we can save our time while surfing the net either for professional purpose or pleasure.

DAY II   6^th JULY 2015

UNIT I - ICT AS INFORMATIVE TOOL

The day focused on the changing trend of teacher and learner roles in this 21^st century world and how we should modify our teaching learning experiences to make learning meaningful and effective. The most striking point was that we often forget the fact that the teachers should become facilitators instead of providers and learners had changed their roles from being passive to active leaners. 

It’s indeed true that as a user of information, we must know the forms of information that we are looking for. Therefore the session on different file formats (text files, data files, audio files, video files) were very helpful.

The information on teacher sites was another useful resource. The brief introduction to this area during the RS and the post RS assignment we did later to identify and analyze educational websites was really informative. Infact I have learnt a lot while surfing for the sites that are best for the teachers.

I have shared this information with some of my colleagues who were not aware of this resource. So, learning indeed is limitless.

Reflection on Residential School

DAY I 3^RD JULY 2015

INTRODUCTION TO THE MODULE

The module EDN 416 for ICT in Education which basically means the usage of Information and Communication Technologies in education is indeed a blessing for the teachers who strive to teach meaningfully in this 21^st century. Our tutor Mr Chenga Dorji skillfully briefed us the assessment modes, contents of the course and the expected outcome of the course. He also showed us the video clips about Digital Natives vs. Digital Immigrants.

The highlight of the lesson was the video clip. It gave a wake-up call for all the educators to redefine our ways of teaching. The characteristics of digital natives who are our current students was emphasized. They are born in the world of ICT, surrounded by various gadgets such as desktops, laptops, ipads,  ipods, play stations, and cell phones with multiples of social networking apps such as facebook, we chat, skype, emails… These children love multi-tasking and prefer visual information over textual information.

I realized that being in the category of Digital Immigrants, we should try and learn the characteristics of the natives and redefine our ways of teaching to meet their needs and interest. From this lesson, I had to ask the following questions to myself;

1.      Are we at par with the rest of the world in terms of ICT usage?

2.      How can I enhance my teaching to cater to the needs of the digital natives?

My Varying Perceptions of ICT

   I have always believed in the fact that “Life and learning are intertwined just like the tree and the vine, growing higher and stronger at each climb.” Every time, we take a lesson, no matter how old the topic is, there is always something new to be learned.

   

    For instance, when I took FIT course in my first year of the DE course and Chiphen Rigphel course in the later year, I thought, I have learnt enough about the importance and usage of ICT and its gadgets. So this year, when I took the module ICT in Education, my perceptions and confidence, whatever I'd  had just evaporated. For, there was a whole bunch of new things to be learnt. I almost had to start from the scratch.

   

   I have learnt from our tutors that there are 5 ICT Tools. They are;

•         ICT as information tools,
•                ICT as communicative tools,
•               ICT as constructive tools,
•              ICT as co-constructive tools, and
•               ICT as situational tools

    It has become very important for the digital immigrant teachers to consciously teach the students who are digital natives. I found this concept very relevant and interesting as we unknowingly struggle to keep up with the demands of our learners.

ICT in education is indeed instrumental in improving teaching and learning.