Reflection on Productive Pedagogies

Reflection on Productive Pedagogies

Marsh (2008) explored ways in which the introduction of aspects of children’s digital cultures into the classroom can promote ‘productive pedagogies’ in specific kinds of contexts. The author further defined the term of “specific kinds of contexts” as classroom spaces in which curriculum and pedagogy are respectful of children’s agency, attuned to their cultural capital and embedded in meaningful practices that reflect pupils’ out-of-school interests and experiences.

In the article, Lingard et al. (2001) identified that the ‘connectedness’ as a significant aspect of a productive pedagogy involves the following elements:

Ø          Knowledge integration

Ø          Background knowledge

Ø          Connectedness to the world

Ø          Problem-based curriculum

Marsh in turn examines these above 4 elements. Firstly he found out one of the main elements of the ‘connectedness’ focusing on how far work undertaken in the classroom is connected to competences and concerns beyond the classroom. When the pupils were introduced initially to the concept of a blog, they had no difficulties understanding how it worked and very soon acquired the skills and knowledge needed to post to it and send comments. Furthermore, the affordances of blogs mean that they are ideal formats for displaying aspects of one’s identity. The blogs enabled children to reference popular texts and artefacts that represented aspects of their identities and thus blurred their online and offline world.

For connectedness to the world, beyond the classroom, the lessons can be connected to competencies or concerns. In terms of knowledge integration, the affordance of the technology meant that this cross-curricular approach was an integral part of the work, given the range of online sources the children could access and the variety of software they used throughout the project. The blogging project enabled children to integrate knowledge about literacy with technology in the development of keyboard skills but also fostered digital literacy skills in which literacy and technology were integrated.

For the fourth element of the ‘connectedness’ dimension, the article focused on identifying and addressing intellectual / real world problems, was also a central element of the blogging project.

Basically, in my points of view, the productive pedagogies enable students to know and use the affordances and constraints of technology. Students are required to understand the 4 factors of ‘connectedness’. It means that student can acquire knowledge via internet but not only from teachers alone. In the productive pedagogies, out-of-classroom learning would be encouraged. In traditional classroom learning, students are given a fixed time slot to learn the subjects assigned by teachers. They are limited to ask a question to their teachers.

The digital literacies should be encouraged to enhance and foster student’s language learning but not improvement. It is because students getting familiar with technology are difficult to master. On the other hand, teachers will be still important role. They have to modify their teaching plan in integration with digital literacies. Interestingly, use of blogging to foster students in learning languages. In theoretical it is possible and practical. In reality, if students with low language ability, how they just write on blog in which they can improve their languages skills including grammar gradually. It is doubtful.

For those students with strong ability in learning, digital literacies with productive pedagogies seem to be useful. It is because they only have to overcome the technical problems on use of digital literacies.

Reflection on Heidi Shzter and Mark Warschauer

Reflection on Shetzer and Waschauer

The article provides complete framework for an electronic literacy. It divides 3 skills of an electronic literacy overlapping areas: (1) communication, (2) construction and (3) research.

For communication, computer-mediated communication (CMC) allows us to communicate with groups of people all over the world at the same time at little cost. It can be found to exhibit certain characteristics typical of written communication, certain characteristic typical of spoken communication. Although CMC is useful and helpful, it may reduce social context clues related to race, gender, handicap, accent and status, as well as non-verbal cues such as frowning and hesitating. How to communicate effectively via computer may involve new ways of interacting and collaborating.

Secondly, for construction, there are 3 important shifts: (1) from essay to hypertext. (2) from words to multimedia, and (3) from author to co-constructor. Hypertext is not only matter of reconceptualizing how to arrange words; it also involves creative use of other media, such as graphics, audio, and video. The article pointed out that on-line construction of documents is generally a collaborative process.

For research, knowing how to navigate internet sources, search for information, and critically evaluate and interpret what is found represents perhaps the most crucial set of electronic literacy skills. Simply speaking, in the past, students are required to search the information what they want to know or need, however, now students may only input the keywords on search engine online. They can acquire the relevant information. It is no doubt that students looking for information on the internet are expected to have different reading and research strategies. Besides, students are expected to have the ability of evaluation on text and multimedia documents.

This article provides a useful and helpful of electronic literacy approach in classroom applications. The table below shows difference between earlier approaches v electronic literacy approach.

	Earlier approaches	Electronic literacy approach
Communication	Based on speaking and listening	Also includes computer-mediate communication
Construction	Based on linear texts. Excludes nonprint media Tends to focus on individual writing	Also includes hypertexts Combines texts and other media Strong focus on collaboration
Reading & research	Restricted to print sources Focuses on linear texts Excludes nonprint media Tends to separate reading skills Focuses on library search skills	Includes on-line sources Also includes hypertexts Combines texts and other media Views critical evaluation as central to reading Includes searching and navigating on-line sources
Learning paradigm	Often based on curricular learning paradigm	Based on interactive learning paradigm, with emphasis on autonomous learning

As the mentioned in this article, the framework is designed to be used as a tool for planning tasks and projects for the language classroom that use computers and the internet as tools for personal and professional empowerment. In combination of communication, construction and research, skills and activities are suggested to promote autonomous learning and meaningful language use.

The electronic literacy approach causes many implications of the three overlapping areas caused many implications on challenging the boundaries of traditional teaching. Teaching students to ask questions and find answer in a global, on-line context raises provocative sociopolitical issues that teachers need to comprehend in order to effectively teach strategies for autonomous learning and language use.

The strengths of electronic literacy approach in terms of communication, construction and research. Many of the ideas in the communication section of the framework encourage the teaching of speech acts and conversational strategies and functions reminiscent of notional-functional syllabi. Creating web pages and web sites can be supplementary component to a language class that meets occasionally in a computer lab, or it can be a course in itself. As for research, teachers might progress from teacher-directed projects, which provide necessary scaffolding for beginning internet users, to student-orientated projects so as to promote autonomous learning.

Although the electronic literacy approach can benefit the students and teachers, the CMC as in the article is very difficult to master. In reality, technologies always change and improved, even will be phased out. Today the technology we acquired will be out of date tomorrow. It is the limitation for electronic literacy approach. We are reluctant to keep a peace with the development of technology.

Nowadays, the price of laptop computers, tablets and smartphones, I do believe that it is essential equipment for students like watches and calculators are to be permitted for carrying into schools and class. Basically, some developers started investigate ebooks for teaching and learning. So the electronic literacy approach will be widely adopted.

Assignment 2

Mobile Learning: Small Devices, Big Issues

Sharples (2009) et al fully examined the meaning of mobile learning and its implication on learning. The article includes four important keywords for our reference: Mobile learning, conversation, context and collaborative knowledge building. It is an interesting topic nowadays because most people have their own smartphones since it ever invented.

2.                       First of all, the article explored issues under three broad themes: (1) what is mobile learning, (2) designing mobile learning and (3) evaluating mobile learning. In the meantime, it also discussed three mobile learning projects within the context of these themes. For (1), the early definitions of mobile learning were confined on the use of mobile technology – “it’s elearning through mobile computational devices: Palms, Windows CE machines, even your digital cell phone (Quinn, 2000).” We are reminded that the focus on technology could not be help assist in understanding the nature of learning even overlooking the wider context of learning as part of increasingly mobile lifestyle.

3.                       The authors gave us a full and clear definition of mobile learning in unpacking the term of “mobile” as follows:

                             i.                Mobility in physical space;

                           ii.                Mobility of technology;

                          iii.                Mobility in conceptual space;

                         iv.                Mobility in social space;

                           v.                Learning dispersed over time.

It can be seen that “mobile” under the definition can be understood as no fixed locations, technologies, topics, social status/identities and time in learning.

4.                       The theoretical foundations of mobile learning placed mobility and context as the objects of analysis and examined how learning flows across locations, time, topics and technologies. Context is a central construct of mobile learning. It was because the traditional classroom learning is founded on an illusion of stability of context. In terms of mobility, the context is continually created by people in interaction with other people, with their surroundings and with everyday tools. In the meantime, there are two technical terms of “exploration” and “conversation” explained. In the former, it either involves physical movement or movement through conceptual space, linking experience and concepts into new knowledge. While the later one, it is a channel that learning can be enable within or across contexts no matter how different locations or communication modes are used.

5.                       Collaborative knowledge building can be promoted by a distributed system of meaning making by employing both the explorations and the conversations. A characterization of mobile learning can be understood as knowing through exploration and conversation across multiple contexts, amongst people and interactive technologies. Conversation and context are crucial constructs for understanding how mobile learning can be integrated with conventional education. Importantly, the authors stated that mobile learning offers new methods in extending education outside the classroom, into the conversations and interactions of everyday life.

6.                       In order to promote the conversation within and across contexts, the design of technology for mobile learning was the central task. While Naismith and Corlett (2006) found out five critical success factors for mobile learning projects:

                             i.                Access to technology

                           ii.                Ownership

                          iii.                Connectivity

                         iv.                Integration

                           v.                Institutional support

It was noted that the above success factors were largely identified from observations of critical incidents in pilot projects.

7.                       The authors pointed out that evaluation is a central activity in the lifecycle of interactive systems design. The evaluation can consist of unpredictability of the context of use, of the learning process and of the mode of use. Looking beyond the “wow” effect will be at last employed for evaluation. In general, the evaluation of mobile learning might be assessed by usability, educational effectiveness and overall impact. In specific, three levels can comprise: (1) Micro-level; (2) Meso-level and (3) Macro-level.

8.                       In the article, there are three exemplars of mobile learning that show how children can be helped to explore the physical environment, how learning can be supported across contexts, how mobile technology can enable conversation for learning and how new methods of evaluation can reveal the practices and outcomes of learning outside traditional settings.

9.                       The first one is MyArtSpace: Learning with Phone Technology on Museum Visits. It supported learning through explorations and conversation across the contexts of classroom and museum. The students used the phones to capture photos, notes and audio recordings and send these information via the GPRS phone network to a personal web sit.

10.                   The second one – The AMULETS Project: Bridging Outdoor and Indoor Classroom Activities Using Smartphones, PDAs and GPS Devices – explored how to design, implement and evaluate innovative educational scenarios combining outdoor and indoor activities supported by mobile and ubiquitous computing. The students are provided with the said communication equipment to perform activities in the subject of natural sciences, history and geography.

11.                   The last one – The Mobile Digital Narrative: Collaborative Narrative Creation with Mobile Phone Technology – realized an approach to support collaborative creativity with mobile technologies. It includes the creation, from idea generation to final production.

12.                   Sharples (2009) provides useful explanation on the term of mobile learning. From literal interpretation, it will let us have an impression that mobile learning may be relating to smartphones. In fact, the mobile is not only including smartphones, but also relating to abstract and relative concept of mobility. In tradition setting, we learn knowledge from classroom setting and taught by teachers with a syllabus. However, mobile learning let students participate the activities what they want to learn such as visiting museum or outdoors using handheld technologies. With development of technology, iPhone can consist of all functions mentioned in the article. Thus the students can only pay attention to the topics what they would like to investigate. Simply speaking, in terms of mobile learning, we can acquire knowledge outside the classroom setting of our own accords.

P.S.  The 3 exemplars have common ground of "Collaborative knowledge building". The students can contribute their efforts and creative ideas on their projects. I think it is the central place to promote learner autonomy. Simply speaking, they may use their technology or devices to realise their ideas or planning on learning. [Lewis 23/April/2013 morning]

For the definition of smartphones, basically, I agreed with Wikipedia that “there is no official definition for what constitutes the difference between them [smartphones and feature phones].” The distinction between both phones can be vague.

 
I remembered that that my first mobile phone was owned in 1996 and it is a band of CDMA type which was only provided by Hutchison (now “3” called). Its monthly service fee was charged at $298.00 and only voice calling at free-100 minutes was provided. On God! Nowadays, if you can pay $298 now, you have unlimited plan on mobile data and voice calling. Simply speaking, technologies are deflated very quickly. All functions including calculators and clocks other than phone calling are built-in and cannot be upgraded and modified.

 

 

Beside the mobile phones, the PDA is a mark for mobile device. You might probably hear the name of Palm OS and Pocket PC with Windows CE. But these device cannot be used as phones.

 

At that time, the mobile phone can be used as telephone only without any distinct features. Around 10 years ago, Nokia, a former mobile pioneer, offers a series of mobile phones including game playing, photo-taking and video-recording. It changed our mind that the phone can be used as communication only. In 2007, N73 provided mobile version MSN and 3G connection. This is the starting point that mobile phone can use certain software offered other than NOKIA itself.

The iPhone 3 was invented and changed the concept of mobile phones. Basically, there is only virtual keypad provided. iPhone integrated the apps as part of its functions. That means the apps is not extra function but a part of function of the phone. The Google Android emerged to share the mobile phone market subsequently. Please note that Symbian invented by NOKIA may not be treated as smartphones even though it can operate the same manner with smartphones. But actually, it is very stupid to run the apps and go on-line. This is the reason NOKIA itself abandoned their operating system and change to use the Windows phone system.

From my observation, smartphone must be installed with an operating system like iOS and Android that can provide apps offered by third parties. It is not only operated as phone calling, but can be seemed as computers including but not limited to word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, photos and videos taking and editing.

 

 

Session 5 - Virtual Spaces

Session 5 – virtual spaces

In the past, I am a traditional one that I go to bookstore to buy or library to borrow the learning materials. I rarely rely upon the internet in learning languages (both in Chinese and English). Although these online materials are believable, they are not presented and arranged in symmetric manner. For language beginners, if there is chunk of information to be digested, they must be having congestion finally.

              Under such circumstance, I rely on the traditional paper books in learning language where can provide readers with a content what they need to learn inside.

Pinterest Activity

Firstly I get in touch with the Pinterest and have an impression that pictures are more than texts. Simply speaking, there is interactive by graphics and pictures in Pinterest. It seems to me that the Pinterest provides users with a variety of category including education. We need to find out or search what we want to know or learn. Besides searching information or materials, we have to spend the time to digest the content whether or not are suitable for us in teaching or learning languages. On the contrary, the paper book including textbooks and reference books can be better to save the time if these are recommended in curriculum.

              It appears to me that the Pinterest only be regarded as additive comparing with our teaching or learning languages. It can initiate our interest in learning language but cannot be instead of traditional teaching or learning languages. If you were beginners, you can only follow the posts whereas if you were advance user, then you can give your posts in respect of teaching or learning languages.

              We should aim at leaders in teaching or learning language but not followers in the Pinterest.

If we really need to apply Pinterest in teaching or learning languages, I am view of that it should be integrated with the smartphones. It is because smartphones are common and popular to us in our daily life. We need not turn on our desktop computer or notebook to be online by smartphones. so somehow it is formless to encourage ourselves in using technology for our learning or teaching. Likewise, it may be an alternative channel or pathway for us to communicate with others online. In particular, teachers can stay in touch with their students online outside the classroom.

Last but not least, I really hope there will be more apps like Pinterest available or provided for our teaching or learning.

Part II

At the time of my secondary school, because of nothing teachers graduated from English at their university, they did not know to teach students a method how to learn English. It was very frustrated. The passing rate of English language in HKCEE only reached 40% and included most of grade in D or E.

Since I started my jobs, I have found that my English standard cannot afford daily use. It led me to abandon contact English.

Anyway, for key to success in learning English, in my mind, only your mind is whether or not determinative. Next, whether or not you can find out suitable textbooks for your study and reference. Fortunately, after completion of my undergraduate, I am able to select the books in learning English.

I am of view that if you want to improve your English, then you must learn the grammar rules. Your construction in oral or writing will be improved and better than before. Watching DVD and following their English subtitle are also crucial to beginners.

Learning English in Part I

Learning English in Part I

This semester, I take two subjects of learning and teaching English. I learned a lot of theories but no one can be applied to my situation. In my secondary school, this is Chinese as medium of instruction school. So I could contact the English at English Language lessons only. At that time, I was not interested in learning English. So my English standard is basically an illiterate. It was very common to others at that school. To be very honest, there were no graduate majored in English studies. Perhaps at that time, the job markets are highly demanding on university graduates. So a very limited number of graduates would be willing to enter the education sector.

In Hong Kong, there were two public examinations for secondary 5 and 7 students to sit it. For the former, secondary 5 students were required to sit for HKCEE with at least 7 subjects including Chinese and English Languages. If candidates passed 5 subjects with E (pass grade), they could be entitled to S5 certificate level. Whereas if candidates can get 14 points in 6 subjects of HKCEE, they could get a place of secondary 6 and 7 (or called matriculate level).

Of course, I could not pass in English Language at HKCEE. So I could only find jobs or repeat for HKCEE again. Besides, no further formal studies I could pursue. Fortunately I could pass the English Language at HKCEE at second times. But I was not still eligible for entry of matriculate level due to under point 14.

I am sure to say that I am an illiterate of English before 2004. I could only write Chinese for formal communication such as correspondence with governmental department. I remembered that my first computer was a notebook type with Chinese version of MS Windows ME. It means that I can only understand the Chinese interface. Likewise, I installed MS Office in Chinese version. For my job, I needed not use English. Usually employers will provide me with employment contract in Chinese only. Perhaps they have a strong assumption that I don’t know English. But it was surprised that those contracts in Chinese are ungrammatical in Chinese grammar and unlike register of Chinese legal terms.

There is a breakthrough in 2004 because I was admitted to CityU for doing my associate degree of legal studies. I do remember at the first lecture at CityU. I could only realize that the lecturer spoke English. However, nothing I could understand. As common knowledge, students learning law must have high standard level of English. Nevertheless, my English ability was substandard.

In 2007, I completed my 3-year programme of legal studies and was admitted to CityU again for my undergraduate programme. It was unbelievable that I entered into a programme of Linguistics. Basically, I was improved a bit of little in English. After graduation, I put English grammar books on my desk. Frankly I enjoyed learning English grammar suddenly. Perhaps for my studies of Linguistics, I have Syntax knowledge to do so. English grammar in mind is similar to formulae. We just need know and understand its principle and operation and then we can produce a complete sentence without grammatical error.