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?