Learning in the 21st Century

Introduction Most teachers begin their introduction to Pedagogy and Learning Design with Bloom's Taxonomy as a guide. So it's a useful place to start, as you begin to come through the initial phase of constructing some sort of functioning Learning Ecosystem online and move to wanting to deepen the quality of your Online Class. Something really important to remember as you move into this deeper level of ICT integration, is to explain the rationale for each step to your students. This is also really new to them and so guiding them through it carefully, deliberately and as slowly as needed is important if you want to get proper engagement and establish a fully functioning system. My experience is that normally teachers, including myself, underestimate how much time this setup stage actually takes. Bloom's Taxonomy and Extending it to the Digital Realm Make a Copy of this Doc >

  Introduction I decided to do this post, as I am busying completing my minor dissertation and one of the key skills I am needing to upgrade is my ability to find useful, credible and relevant academic literature for my research area. As I have dug deeper into the problem, it was interesting to see how many different approaches there were and how the skill is a strange mix of being systematic and creative at the same time. I also had a friend who is an experienced academic who made some very helpful videos on the topic and so I have included them in this post too. Charting a Path The world's knowledge, whilst mostly converted into digital form these days, is still really spread out amongst a varied collection of sources. These sources comprise things like open source repositories, university libraries, private databases, journal articles, ...  etc. Access to these sources or repositories is not always free and even when you do manage to get access through a university l...

This is a fantastically useful study that tries to pinpoint the factors that contribute to student achievement , through conducting a Meta Analysis of current research in the field. For all teachers it is worth bearing in mind those factors that make the biggest difference when designing learning engagements or running departments. Original Article 

Introduction As most of the world has gone into a sudden phase of online learning. I thought it would be helpful to put together a starter pack of simple resources. I used these to get my classes up and running fully online, over the last week. The main things I focused on were: A place to put learning resources that students could easily get too. A way to to create a sense of community alongside the work we were doing.  A way to keep track what was going on with my students and give feedback in an efficient manner.  Having a Place to Put Things & Sequence Learning  So my go to tool for getting setup was just a simple Google Doc with 3 columns and a contents page. To add to the visual appeal I used different fonts, colours and clear headings. I have included a basic template below for anyone to use if they would like. You could also use things like: Google Classroom, Edmodo, Managebac, a Google Site, the list goes on ...  In the end you just choos...

I just finished a course in Learning Design and  I am keen to keep experimenting with the new skills I developed, so that I consolidate them for the longer term. The first small task I have decided to undertake, is to use the MYP Unit planning framework to design a learning experience based around the subject area of Euclidean Geometry. Below is a Google Form I made, to make engaging with the framework a little easier. There is also a Word Doc Template I found. Over the longer term I am not quite sure which will be more useful? My hope is to be able to create an amazing unit on the topic. In order to do this I have  collected some of my best resources on the topic below. Once I am satisfied I have all the resources I need, I will then put summarise it all into my final unit plan. Unit Planning using the IB MYP Planning Framework Planning tool for MYP Maths using a Google Form  Instead of Using a Google Form - A Word Doc Template could also be used Te...

Introduction:  I recently completed a project, building a Bot for the Learning Design Module in my Masters in ICT at UJ. It was quite an eye opening experience to see how far the technology has come and how accessible it really is. Below are all the resources that I used to make the Bot, so if you want to build one, this post should at least save you some research time. The Bot that I made with the help of my group members was a Bot for a student Help service.  Initial Research Stage: I started by just reading as much as I could about Bots to get a general understanding. Building a Bot basically boils down to trying to build either a rule based Bot, which is a lot like a decision tree being used as a conversational model. Or trying to build an AI bot which uses existing libraries and tries to match input from the user against these libraries to figure out meaning. I chose the rule based Bot as it better matched the context of my project and because I think an AI Bot w...

I just finished reading Andrew Yang's, ‘War on Normal People’ and I wanted to record my thoughts while they are still fresh in my head. So here it goes ... This book looks at the way in which the the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) over the 21st century  will affect the economy and the jobs of the people in it. A key theme is that if we leave our current capitalist system unchecked during this change, it is likely to end up with many people being left without jobs and massive disruption to the fabric of our society. The book serves as both a warning to society as well as an outline of the changes that need to be made, in order to adapt effectively. It’s written from the perspective of Andrew Yang, a once corporate lawyer and entrepreneur who started the Venture for America Initiative and is now running for the office of the president of the United States of America. Yang writes with a refreshing honesty and grit, from the perspective of someone who has been in the tr...

This is a collection of all my latest training resources for ICT that I have either developed or found through my professional learning network.

I built this for my class to try to understand the difference between simple and compound interest and also how to setup a spreadsheet with good design.

Straight Lines Imagine buying a cup of coffee for a friend that cost $1.50, then imagine buying a 2nd cup of coffee for another friend. Thing about how much extra you spent for that 2nd cup. Okay, buy another cup for a third friend. It total you have spent $4.50 for 3 cups of coffee. The relationship that describes how the cost increases as you buy more and more cups of coffee is called a straight line relationship or linear function. Parabola Consider trying to organise a Round Robin Tennis Tournament with some friends. When you first start planning the tournament, only 4 of you seem to be able to make it. Then the day before, a 5th member joins and then on the day itself, your cousin is in town and he wants to play too! How many matches do you need to arrange so that the tournament could take place with either 4, 5 or 6 players ? The relationship between the number of players and the number of matches to be scheduled is parabolic, or forms a parabola when visualise...