Monthly Archives: March 2017

Today we had a guest lecturer Darren Savage who discussed how technology is going to progress in the future. He introduced us to some new technological advantages such as Estimote Stickers.

Estimote Stickers hasn’t specifically been design for a school environment, but I feel this could be adapted to engage students and benefit learning.  Estimote Stickers is currently used to display information once a phone or application is held in front of the sticker, this provides the extra snippets of information.

This video gives an introduction to Estimote Stickers:

I feel that this could be used in the classroom as the Esitmote Sticker can be re-codded therefore re-used, these stickers could be placed around the classroom or school. The children could then have activates that link to specific  sticker, these stickers could ask questions or provided facts and information on certain topics.

What are Badges? Personally I have never heard of this therefore I’m going to start with introduction to these.

This video gives an over view of what badges are:

Benefits of Badges to Teachers:- 

Using Badges in the classroom allows teachers to personalise their class as well as set tailored targets that a visual and realistic for the children. For children to be motivated I feel that the visualisation of their targets can encourage them to reach them, children are also able to view own progress allowing them to work at their own pace. This can also be used as an assessment tool for the teacher as they document a child’s progression. Having this sorts of details information can also be used to set new targets for the class as a whole or individual children. Badges can be a motivation tool in the classroom, they can also lighten the load of the teacher as this allows the teacher to share these with the children online as well as in their books with ease.

Benefits of Badges to Children:- 

Badges allow children to engage with their learning as they are able to see when they have achieved a target, being able to see their achievements can motivate  the children to set new targets themselves and not wait for the teacher. Children can create personal targets that they are able to work towards at their own pace. Having badges can create a sense of self competition as the children strive to meet the next target or goal.

Personally I would have to do more research into this before implementing it into the classroom.

After reading Salmon’s 5-stage framework and e-activities I found that children need to be supported through a structured developmental process, this means that children need ‘scaffold-ed learning’ this allows them to build on their current knowledge and experiences. Salmon talks about a five stage model that provided this structure, it also provides examples of how participants can benefit form increasing skills that leads to success.

This is the 5-stage framework and e-activities:

Each stage requires the children to master certain technical skills, each stage calls for different skills. Moving through the stages the child increases their interaction with others as well as improving technological skills. Technical support is provided by e-moderators and this promotes action and interaction, Salmon says that nearly all children will progress through these stages. Salmon is a aware that children will take a varied amount of time to progress through each stage, children all learn at different speeds according to their skills, and it is vital for teachers and e-moderators to support their learning. Using this model to design development processes and build a programme of e-activities for online learning will provided knowledge of how individuals are likely to exploit the system at each stage as well as avoiding common pitfalls.

To ensure that the children are progresses through the stages it is important to motivate them. Teachers should not to assume that the online aspect will be enough to motivate the children to progress. Many children are lead by ‘achievement’ motivation, they require tasks that can easily be achieved where as others will need ‘competence’ motivation which requires the child to believe they can achieve what they see as a difficult task.