Theoretical+Essay

The aim of this assignment is to create an appropriate medium to successfully incorporate technology or rather educational technology in to my teaching context. Although there are no statistical data to confirm it the current generation of students in Maldivian schools are as technology friendly and dependent as any other developing country in the world. Most students have access to computers either at home or at school or from other locations such as cyber-café’s and since the last couple of years, broad-band inter-net has been available to most areas of the country. However, it is observed that very little use, if at all, of these technological resources are being used in the teaching and learning process in our schools. It could be said that computer-supported and/or internet based education is only an emerging concept in our curriculum. According to Anderson (2006), ICT plays an important role in realizing the objectives of the changing and evolving 21st century education by providing innovative and newer styles of learning to create a more student-centered learning experience that is desired and expected by the current generation of techno-friendly students (Barnes et al.,2007). I believe that we would be putting our students at disadvantage if we do not adopt the growing trend of technology in education, and exploit the use of information technology in the improvement of our teaching, and exploit this technology to allow our students to take their learning further than the confines of the class-room walls as well as the traditional school hours (Pott, 2006). The wiki I have created, as part of this assignment, is an effort to address this need. I will now give a brief over-view of my target teaching context and go on to justify my choice of technological tools for this project. My target learner group would be students who take the subject English Language and Literature (ELL) in the Edexcel GCE AS and A Level exams. Points of note here are that these students come from a non-English background and their knowledge of English linguistic and literary concepts are limited to books specified in their subject syllabus and expository teaching content by the teacher. It would not be an exaggeration here if I state that these students are deprived of critical background knowledge and sufficient exposure to their subject content, in the set times of the time-tabled classes during the academic year and their course books, to allow them to achieve their maximum potential. It is noted that the current class-room based teaching of this subject is highly teacher-centred and the students are passive receivers of information. The learning activities assigned are often considered obligatory rather than interesting and meaningful. Students hesitate to voice opinions and rely heavily on spoon-fed or structured answers. We urgently need a way to turn this around to a more student-centred and interactive approach, which is critical for the success of a creative subject like ELL. A web-based teaching component in addition to the usual class-room teaching would open up a host of new and valuable resources for the students and I have opted to use a wiki with concept mapping and an embedded webquest. I believe that these three tools particularly match with the learner characteristics and would address their learning needs. Wikis are one of the most well-known and successful collaborative tools used in education (Cych, 2006). Wikis are considered a resourceful, adaptable, easy to use and economical (Boulos, Maramba, & Wheeler, 2006). They prove to be a powerful learning tool that enhances the learning process for students by providing a platform for them to actively engage in collaborative knowledge creation, by sharing information, resources and ideas, which in effect facilitates a combination of peer support and review (Boulos et al., 2006). Wikis are also particularly appealing in this context where different students excel in different aspects (some in the linguistic area and others in the literary area), as it promotes group learning, peer interaction and facilitates knowledge sharing and positive interdependence within the group (Lipponen, 2002). This type of mutual shared learning also adheres to the constructivist paradigm of learning where students reflect upon their own learning and gain a better understanding of their own learning processes (Chen et al., 2005 cited in Parker & Chao, 2007). Wikis also enable instructors to monitor student activity and identify weak areas without having to resort to overt assessment methods (Parker & Chao, 2007). A tool that seemed to compliment the wiki was the concept mapping tool. This tool enables students to build up their own personal concept maps based on what they already know and what they learn through new resources (Novak, 1991). This tool is particularly useful as it allows students to identify the gaps in their understanding as well as facilitating new ways of thinking about certain topics or concepts (Novak, 1991). This seems to be the ideal pathway for the collaborative learning facilitated in a wiki as concept maps can be presented for peer-review and subsequent improvement (Novak, 1991). Concept maps also create useful discussion threads which could be highly productive in the learning process (Novak, 1991). This seems to be particularly relevant in this context as sometimes students express themselves better when they are not physically facing the classroom. This also encourages students to prepare well and have relevant justifications so as to question, argue or prove their points of views. A webquest seemed to be the ideal tool to test the effective utilization of both the wiki and concept mapping, by getting students to actually engage in a collaborative learning task. WebQuests seems to be an excellent means to make the learning process, engaging, fun, interesting as well as meaningful, as students are discouraged from relying on memorized facts and encouraged to develop their own ideas, as new knowledge gets altered in to a refined understanding (March, 2003). A WebQuest seems also to serve the purpose of an evaluative tool for both teacher and students. I would like to sum up by stating that these tools have immense scope for use in the ELL class-room and can be adopted for any text in the syllabus.

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Novak, J. (1991) //Clarify with Concept Maps.// The Science Teacher//;// Oct 1991; 58, 7; Academic Research Library pg. 44

March, T. (2003). //The Learning Power of WebQuests//. Educational Leadership, December 2003/ January 2004

By: Fathimath Nasiha ABDULMUHAIMIN, 15841395