Assignment 1 - Reflection 1 Week 2

What is pedagogy?

de Bono's Hat Theory - Wiki activity

A wiki is an online tool that can be an efficient ICT in the educational setting. It is a platform that can prove to be a useful mechanism to both teachers and student's. For a teacher, it gauges prior knowledge, promotes research and higher thinking to ascertain and evaluate a competency. It is pedagogically sound and in line with learning theories. From the perspective of a student, it is an opportunity to share and collaborate ideas, opinions, research and experiences.

This week I participated in a Wiki that linked de Bono's Hat Theory to mobile phone use in the classroom. It was an interesting task as it was required participants to reflect on different perspectives of one issue, which in turn steered away from a natural, instinctive and standard approach. As a group activity it offered other student's responses, which was interesting in itself as many cohorts brought up issues that weren't initially obvious to me.

To a degree, there were elements of all the Learning Theories in this activity: Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism and Connectivism. However, Constructivism and Connectivism theories are perhaps the most interesting for discussion at this junction.

The Constructivism approach in this instance, considered that the teacher as a facilitator.  Students were given a a problem, guidelines were set and student's considered and researched their own answers before sharing them on the Wiki. The task was completed when new information was constructed from prior knowledge - an understanding of de Bono's hat needed to be understood and used as a foundation to prior to undertaking issues relating to mobiles phones in the classroom. Using this foundation, students considered their own stance on the issues from different perspectives and saved them in the Wiki for others to view and comment. Not only are students defining their own ideas from 8 perspectives but they are learning from the responses of other participants.

This activity also displayed elements of Connectivism through the use of the online technology - Wiki. The Wiki was an integral to the activity as it gave student's the opportunity to research their answers first. If this technology was unavailable and this activity took place in the classroom face to face, I believe that it would not have been as successful or interesting. It would've been quite one sided and teacher-based with the teacher heavily prompting answers creating a passive learning environment.

Overall I thought this was a meaningful activity that worked well. Although there were minor attributes of Behaviourism and Cognitivism, this task gave me an opportunity to investigate the mechanics of Constructivism and Connectivism.  I particularly enjoyed collaborating with cohorts to create a document that engaged many ideas and opinions on the use of mobile phones in the classroom.

PMI on Wiki Activity
Plus	Minus	Interesting
Engaging Student’s can participate anywhere ie not in the classroom.	Information can be lost if more than one person is posting at the same time Can visually look dishevelled at the end of the task	Have the same goal as cohorts but producing a variety of ideas and opinions. I thought Wiki was short for Wikipedia!

This activity also gave me an opportunity to make connections to my own learning experiences thus far.  It built on prior knowledge to gain a new approach via evaluating different sources (the 6 different perspectives of de Bono's Hat theory).  The reflective blog collaborates prior knowledge and new found knowledge to produce an evaluation piece.  

Bloom's taxonomy and the SAMR model

Bloom's taxonomy and the SAMR model pertain to thinking theories and can be adapted to classroom activities.  Bloom's Taxonomy was designed to promote higher forms of thinking in education.  In the classroom, activities involving analyzing and evaluating concepts, processes, procedure, and principles, rather than just remembering facts (rote learning) are implemented (www.nwlink.com).

The SAMR model was conceived to integrate technology and considers the impacts that technology can have if implemented in a sequential fashion.  It suggests following it's four steps of substitution, augmentation, modification and redefinition (www.moodle.cqu.edu.au).

The steps involved in both taxonomies can be classified moving up from passive for the lower level (teacher-based) and active pertaining to higher order thinking or participation (student-based learning).  Both theories acknowledge that there are different steps involved in seeking higher ordered thinking.

To be honest, I found this activity challenging. I attempted several diagrams to show the intricate links of both theories and the more detailed it got, the more confusing it looked, which was in proportion to how I was feeling - confused!  In the end, I  reverted back to a simplistic approach outlining the four stages of the SAMR model and elements of Bloom's cognitive domain. I added an example of an educational activity that could be conducted to further clarify the steps of moving from lower level thinking to higher order.

REFERENCES

Howell, J. (2012). Teaching with ICT: Digital Pedagogies for Collaboration and Creativity (1st edition), South Melbourne Vic: Oxford University Press.

What is pedagogy? from CQUniversity e-courses EDED20491 ICT's for Learning Design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au

Clark, D. (2015). Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning Domains.  Retrieved on 14 March, 2015 http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/media.html.

The SAMR model from CQUniversity e-courses EDED20491 ICT's for Learning design, http://moodle.cqu.edu.au

Education Queensland (2008). eLearning for smart classrooms Smart Classrooms Bytes 2008. Retrieved on 16 March 2015 from
http://education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms/documents/strategy/pdf/scbyte-elearning.pdf