In doing this assessment, I was able to have a hands-on experience with a few different digital mediums that today’s primary and secondary students are already using. This was my first time using WordPress to present blogged material, and my first time using Piktochart to present information visually.
Regarding my future teaching profession, I found a study by Pynoo et al., (2011) to be very insightful. In this study, it was discovered that they key predictors of a digital learning environment acceptance were performance expectancy, and encouragement from colleagues to enact such an environment. In other words, teachers have an opportunity to learn from fellow teachers what works well in a digital learning environment, what does not, and what kind of performance to expect from their students. I found this to be an encouraging insight as to what I could expect in my initial years of teaching.
In addition to having supportive colleagues, Romano (2010) had some excellent advice. He suggested starting a course website to compile resources that the students could access on-line, and also post announcements and tips for help with homework. He also suggested a “web-quest” which is a teacher guided keyword search to the best websites for a particular topic, and finally he recommended getting creative with class projects by using websites students are already familiar with (like Twitter) and creating a special Twitter site like “Critter Twitter”, for example, if students were studying animal life.
According to Zolfaghari-Mashhadi and Reza-Kargozari (2011), digitally literate students can take better responsibility for their own learning, and make better decisions about what web resources to use and how to use them. They can also network easily with other students and share ideas using digital/social media, all of which contributes to the educational experience.
I look forward to implementing what I have learned into my own curriculum design, and enjoyed using these new platforms as part of my assessment.
References
Pynoo, B., Devolder, P., Tondeur, J., VanBraak, J., Duyck, W., Duyck, P. (2011). Predicting
secondary school teacher’s acceptance of and use of a digital learning environment:
A cross-sectional study. Computers in Human Behavior 27(1) 568-575
Romano, M. (2010). The new teacher’s toolbox. Teaching in the Digital Age 77(7) 13-14
Zolfaghari-Mashhadi, V., Reza-Kargozari, M. (2012). Influences of digital classrooms on
education. Procedia Computer Science 3 1178-1183
A Digital Pedagogy for today's student 