Mobile Phones..

Overview

Education in the 21st century is starting to adapt technology as a learning tool for teaching content knowledge. The Department of Education, Training and the Arts (2008) facilitates this by suggesting ICTs are being used to transform traditional learning into meaningful learning opportunities for students. This week’s activity involved this notion of learning through ICT as it required expressing ideas about the use of mobile phones in schools on a Wiki. The Wiki was set out in a table with a space to contribute ideas and each row contained different questions which related to each of De Bono's six thinking hats.

My thoughts and links to learning

I think this task was a constructivist learning task as participants are building upon their schema about mobile phones from new information found and then requires them to organise it into one of the six thinking hats. These processes are outlined in Mergel's article (1998) under the constructivist theory. Furthermore I think it is also a social constructivist activity as learning also occurred through social interaction on the Wiki as each peer had individual ideas and background knowledge which influenced others’ views or understandings on the topic.

My experiences with the Wiki

As I had some prior experience with Wikis after participating in last week’s Wiki activity, I felt more confident approaching this task. To contribute to the Wiki I offered my opinion and research which I had collected. I feel I benefited from participating in this activity as I was able to gain insight from my peers by reading their responses in the Wiki. This allowed me to view the situation from others perspectives and also made me aware of aspects which I would have not considered if completing the activity on my own.  I therefore found this a valuable learning experience.

After partaking in this Wiki I believe it would be a successful activity for learners to undertake, particularly distance education learners.  The way in which the activity was scaffolded allows learners to easily express their opinion and knowledge and read their peers’ views. This therefore benefits learners as they are developing their cognitive and affective learning through collaborative learning. This activity also combines content learning, pedagogy, and technology and this is promoted in the TPCK framework.

Overall, by engaging in this activity I was able to become more familiarised with Wikis and discover the different ways they can be used. I was also able to participate in a learning experience through working with my peers to create the De Bono thinking hats Wiki.  As a future learning manager I will be able to use this new knowledge I gained from the Wiki to create meaningful learning experiences through the use of ICTs.