Person to person communication technologies

This week's discussion was about person to person communication. The class brainstormed examples of communications and categorised them into Asynchronous and Synchronous. 

Definitions:

Asynchronous: Not occuring in real time

Synchronous: Occuring in real time or at the same time 

We also discussed the advantages and disadvantages of both categories.

Gender Equity

A variety of state, national and international data indicate that, on average: boys dominate early literacy re-mediation classes. Boys from year 3 on wards achieve lower scores than girls do in relation to national literacy benchmarks for reading and writing. There is a need to address these issues when they are younger. By the time students reach high school, boys tend to reading and write less than girls.


According to the Program of international student assessment (PISA), boys lag behind in reading ability. 


Focus of assessment: Mathematics, reading, scientific and problem solving.
- 41 participant countries
- 15 year old main target
- 276,000 students
- knowledge and skills


This raises issues for teachers to consider in order to help bridge the gap between genders. Glynis asked our class to discuss the following question in order for us to develop strategies that are inclusive of all students and encourage boys to enjoy reading.


Q: How can information and communication technologies applications impact positively on your student's writing and reading generally and for boys in particular? 


- develop strategies of comparing texts to one another
- students could realise that information and opinions depend on the author
- learn to enjoy reading and writing
- blogs, wikis, discussion boards
- participation in virtual worlds (gives a construct and purpose to write)
- creating websites
- digital resources with literacy as a focus
-digital story telling
- there is formal and informal reading, we need to use different constructs to promote equality. look at the diversity of the reading matter
- include subject matter that boys enjoy reading, such as game manuals and magazines. These texts are surprisingly technical and require a large amount of cross referencing and data storage. Boys just don't realise they are reading because these texts explain game rules, codes and cheats.

The Gunning Fog Index

The Gunning Fog Index is is such a useful tool which calculates the readability of texts. You simply copy and paste a section of any text from a website, book, magazine or newspaper into the box and it will calculate the readability of that text. I find that this is such a beneficial way to ensure the text that you will be using in class are age appropriate for your students. It determines how difficult a text is. It is estimated that a result of 8 is needed to be understood universally and a result of 12 can be understood be a wide audience and is about the difficulty level of high school texts. 


I decided to paste my previous blog-post into the box. The results showed 11 punctuation marks, 265 words and 35 words with 3 or more syllables. The gunning fog index has calculated my blog post to be 14.61, which indicates a level appropriate for university. I would recommend teachers to use this as it easily allows you to distinguish what is suitable for your class without guessing. levels one to six are appropriate for primary school aged students.

Equity issues in education

Today's professional experience class was delivered by Glynis Jones. We spent time talking about various equity issues in education. Not only were there issues within one classroom, but between classrooms, between schools and between different countries. There are a multitude of issues that include, the digital divide, socio-economic status, skill set of teachers,  access to government funding, generations X, Y, Z, attitude towards technology, international divide and gender equity. 


Glynis shared with us, stories of her experience in other countries. An interesting experience was that some classrooms, be it in a primary, secondary or tertiary setting, may have access to new technology such as laptops, lighting, smart boards and overheads, but the infrastructure does not support the functioning of these equipment. That is, these places may have the resources but lack the connection such as a constant and stable supply of electricity or internet connectivity.
The digital divide is an issue that affects primary classrooms today. I have realised that the teacher must plan for students that do not have access to the internet or the computer at home. Even children who have both of these resources at home may not be given permission or priority when accessing the computer. Thus, teachers should provide students with sufficient time to complete assignments, allow them to use a variety of resources such as books, magazines and newspapers or provide students with alternative times to access the school computers such as during lunch or library time. 


Our class discussed the gap in equity between classes and we all have had experiences of these. I remember in year 12, I was very fortunate to have  amazing teachers that were supportive, hard working and provided constant feedback to improve our work towards the HSC. However, I knew this wasn't the case for every student, some of my year group felt they were missing out or were disadvantaged by the way their class or teacher functioned. Students can feel disadvantaged when there wasn't equity between classes. It is also important to consider the workload of the teacher, whether he or she has time to give feedback. This is where email policies apply and teacher should aim to collaborate or agree on certain methods of ensuring classrooms are as fair as possible without hindering the personal decisions and teaching styles of individuals.

Blogging in the primary classroom

Our reading was called ‘The influence of classroom blogging on elementary student writing’. We found that the article was about an investigation conducted over a period of one year on a year 5 class focusing on the effects of classroom blogging on writing skills. Prior to that, there had been little research on primary school blogging with the majority of case studies based on secondary and tertiary students. The study aimed to introduce students to using technology as a means of improving their writing skills. The subjects of the study were 5^th graders in an American classroom with some limitations to the research. These were the lack of diversity in ethnicity and numbers of students within the classroom.

Initially in the early stages of blogging, the students displayed a number of difficulties in their writing. These included disjointed sentences, lack of complex language and sentence structure, lack of expression like figurative language, self centred ways of writing and thinking and the inability to hold multiple readers’ perspectives when writing.

The study found that as the school year progressed, the students became more confident in their writing ability, as well as improving their writing skills they also improved their communication and social skills through commenting and feedback provided by both the teacher and peers in the blogging world. They also developed empathy and the ability to hold multiple reader perspectives by reading other blogs and reflecting on comments. This in turn provided students with motivation and encouragement to continue writing and editing their work, resulting in a feeling of empowerment, confidence and writing with a purpose.

Davis, A., &McGrail, E. (2011). The influence of classroom blogging on elementary student writing.Journal of Research in Childhood Education,25 (4), 415-437.