Computing Specialism Y2 – Page 2

Session 4: Prep Work – Well Designed and Poorly Designed Websites (Blog 6)

Well Designed –

This is the school I went to as a child and then the school I worked as teaching assistant before university. The old website was dreadful so I was pleasantly surprised how much it had changed, including having a look which staff have left! The simplicity is what made me think how well designed it is. It was photos with text to find the most popular links and the navigation bar can be used to find other parts of the website. Like any good website the layout stays uniform throughout so finding the navigation bar when moving onto another page, it is easy to find and get back to where the homepage is.

Purpose – I believe the website works well for its purpose to be read by children and adults. The ease of navigation is a great advantage. I particularly like the integration of class blogs as many schools are still playing catch up and have not recognised the importance of blogging for the children and parents/carers to see what their children are doing.

Communication – The quick links to newsletters and the preview feature for the newsletter pages allows you to read it quickly or click to download it to then read which I really like.

General Layout and Text/Colour – The grid format makes the information easy to look at and to scan the website to find the link you want. The text is an easy font to read and the colours are based on the school badge (which I still can picture in my mind) and is used well throughout. The colour contrast nicely so it is nice to look at.

Poorly Designed –

This is the school website of the placement school I was in first year. I chose this website because it is too busy and hard to read colour scheme wise in my opinion. Being totally honest I found it difficult to find a badly designed website and I would say mostly I can navigate it fine, however the busy look and hard to read colour scheme is a pet peeve of mine.

Purpose – It is quite fit for purpose however for children to be navigating the website I think they would struggle. Other users like parents/carers, especially those are not used to navigating websites, could have difficulties of finding the information they want.

Communication – I believe the busy look does not give a great impression of the school. There’s too much information: the twitter feed, news, images, videos, text everywhere across the page, the scrolling text, calendar dates. That much information is FAR too much to process, especially on the homepage!

General Layout and Text/Colour – With text everywhere, scrolling and static with images, it is not great. There is a navigation bar which does appear on each page and quick links of “Admissions” and “Ofsted” are useful too. The text/colour is not optimal because the background is blue, so is the text. The two main colours are yellow and blue, which would fine with it did not clash with each other due to the mass of information. A more simplistic view would be more beneficial to children wanting to use the website, as well as those less-experienced with navigating websites.

Conclusion –

From looking at various school websites before choosing these two, I could see how children may be wanting to use the websites as well as parents/carers. Because of this simplicity is key, even as an adult and very experienced with navigating websites, finding the information you want needs to be easy and not scanning across huge amounts of information, especially on the homepage. The homepage is the first thing you see and it gives the vital first impression of the whole website. If something is cluttered then I would think the school is the same, throwing vast information at you and it is hard to take it all in. First impressions are key because as most schools have a website, potential parents with children could be looking at the school’s website before sending their child there.

Session 3 Reflection Blog (Blog 4 & 5)

In this session we started by discussing the preparation reading on the impact of educational blogs on pupil’s writing. The main point I took from the general discussion with my peers was how important the setting up and managing the blog is to make children want to use it regularly. Because of the openness of blogging, I can understand how beneficial it can be to allow children to write more.

School blogs can share children’s work and even give news all online. Originally, children would write a blog post and have only the children in their class comment and read each other’s. But the invention of Quadblogging eliminated the pitfall that could be noticeable regarding the number of comments on children’s posts. By linking schools together, it could be argued children were more engaged with their posts as they knew it would be more likely their peers would be reading one another’s and commenting. It allows for more learning than just the work that is set as children are able to converse with other countries and cultures.

As discovered from the report in the preparation reading, there are many children who wished to write creatively more. The 100 Word Challenge was created by a retired education practitioner to accommodate children in their wish. Similarly to school blog posts, children could feel more engaged with their writing when they know others will read it. A lot of the time with children writing in schools it can stay in their books and only be seen by teachers. The use of the internet and the web results in children’s work being recognised on a much larger scale to a bigger audience.

To finish, we then investigated the use of educational badges and how they could be used in the classroom. Mozilla Badges launched in 2011 and originally was for the use of adults applying for jobs to support their CV. However, our group considered if they could be used in the classroom by teachers. As a method of getting to know the children better, children could display their achievements, hobbies and interests for teachers and others to see. I believe this is great knowledge to have in the back of our minds as teachers when planning lessons when considering how work could be presented and carried out by specific children in the classroom.

Session 3: Prep Reading – Educational blogs and their effects of pupil’s writing

This week’s preparation reading is written by Barrs and Horrocks and can be found here https://www.educationdevelopmenttrust.com/~/media/EDT/files/research/2014/r-blogging-2014.pdf

From reading how one teacher is using blogs how he believes is the correct way so it inspires children to want to respond, it has given me a great idea for my future practice. For a more creative way to setting homework, I could record myself giving the instructions whilst acting out a certain situation or pretending to be a character so that the children can fully understand what my expectations are for the task. This method of setting homework I believe is better because it assists children with EAL or poorer readers who may not understand the homework/classwork by reading a paragraph of instructional text. In this article it mentions the similarities when comparing children writing blogs and children writing in Literacy lesson, however in some tasks, using blogs can allow children to engage in the task in more unique manner. Children blogging from home can allow more independent thinking and also support from parents/carers to further understanding from a different point of view. The interactivity of blogs allows social interaction between a child and their peers and the teacher through commenting. I think compared to writing and commenting in children’s workbooks, blog commenting is more effective as it orders the comments and replies under one another.

The article argues how children enjoy writing stories the most, possibly from the openness and creative thinking it involves. Through blogging children can write and reflect on anything with a more unique method than in their workbooks. A teacher once told me “classroom workbooks are for Ofsted and learning is for children”. Even though this could be argued as a more extreme outlook on Ofsted’s involvement, I agree on some levels with children do not necessarily only learn through writing everything down however how can you prove or confirm children are learning without any evidence? When teachers were asked for this article what makes for good writing they responded with: “good content and ideas, real meaning and purpose, imagination, originality and creativity, fluency and momentum and a strong sense of a reader/audience”. Some teachers regarded the children’s blogs as something that does not need to be as critically assessed like literacy books for example, the teachers preferred to look at the content in the blog contained instead. The interesting finding in this article was that teachers believed they saw an improvement in the quality of writing as the school year progressed and more blogs were being written. But, ‘a London deputy headteacher wrote: ‘It didn’t quite have the benefit I was looking for in that way. I would like to say it has improved the quality of their writing but I can’t at present.’’

Session 2: Follow-Up – Implications of learning communities in primary education (Blog 3)

The follow-up activity this week is to reflect on our knowledge and views of learning communities.

From a teacher’s perspective there are many advantages to VLEs becoming more widely used. The main selling point is the accessibility of VLEs such as Fronter or Moodle. By having the resources, instructions and the chance for assessment of the children online through the internet and the web, teachers can set homework and/or classwork that is readily available to the class. Whilst working in a Primary School through my job and on BSE, I observed the prior approach used by most teachers of giving a physical copy of the homework for children to complete. One recurring problem became apparent when children forget to bring the physical copy back into school to hand in. Whereas when teachers use a VLE to set homework, it could be something uploaded and handed in online; this then eliminates the situation of “I did my homework, but I left it at home”.

Children may also enjoy using VLEs for the ease of accessibility because all the resources and teacher’s instructions are online and can be referred back to at any time. This makes it easier for children to understand the task and enables parents/carers to have a grip on what the children’s homework/classwork is at any time throughout the school year. Also, as most of us have done homework and honestly forgotten it, some children may appreciate the use of a VLE to avoid the stress of scourging through their school bag looking for homework could now be a thing of the past.

However, VLEs may not be the best option for everyone or every school. As teachers will need to learn how to use a VLE, some may be nervous about involving computers when they have been handing out homework physically for years. Also, not all VLEs are created equal; some may be very clunky and difficult to edit and adapt to suit your class. The BBC has done research and found schools to support the evidence that some VLEs to be clunky, but some believe it opens valuable communication between school and home (2010).

Children may not like using VLEs either. For example, similarly to teachers as some VLEs are hard to use, children could have issue uploading or downloading homework/classwork from home. Also, even though it is 2016, some children may not have consistent access to the internet and the web away from school. Another issue raised by Barber & Cooper (2012) is the opinion that using computers and the internet is likely to been used at home for leisure and switching that focus to appropriate use for educational purposes is a challenge for schools.

Personally I love the idea of using VLEs in my future classroom as I prefer involving technology wherever I can to make my life simpler. Some of the barriers to using VLEs I believe can be avoided if the school trials the software first before deciding which is best for them. Additionally, by giving teachers an input to what they want from the VLE will avoid some of the pitfalls and allow them to see the benefits to using one. Selwyn (2011) argues technology-based education is seen to provide a more conductive way to facilitate the informal, collective and communal forms of learning which many educationalists believe to be important.

What is Fronter?

How does Moodle work?

Video URL – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hltvryZ-Llc

For more information on how to use Moodle – [embeddoc url=”https://eportfolios.roehampton.ac.uk/linfootj/files/2016/10/using_moodle_2e-19dialr.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google” ]

References:

BBC (2010) Why you should use a Virtual Learning Environment, accessible here: http://www.bbcactive.com/BBCActiveIdeasandResources/WhyyoushoulduseaVirtualLearningEnvironment.aspx

Barber, D. & Cooper, L. (2012) Using New Web Tools in the Primary Classroom, London: Routledge

Cole, J. & Foster, H. (2008) Using Moodle, 2nd Edition (first edition published 2005), Sebastopol: O’Reilly Media Inc.

Selwyn, N. (2011) Education and Technology, London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd

YouTube video (2014) Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), accessible here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hltvryZ-Llc

Session 2: Prep Reading – Supporting community cohesion through ICT: The epartners programme in Northern Ireland (Blog 2)

Reading Source:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500148X

The preparation reading this week was a journal article published by Austin, Hunter et al based on the research completed to ‘promote community cohesion and assesses the role that information and communications technology (ICT) can play to encourage collaboration within a social psychology framework.’

The article first informs you about past efforts used to try encourage community cohesion. The various methods initially stated were ‘Integrated education’, ‘Common curriculum’ and ‘Shared education’. All three of these efforts I believe made positive strides towards the goal of community cohesion as Niens et al (2013) states ‘while the curriculum has had the effect of making a difference to pupils’ attitudes, there was considerable added value for both the pupils and teachers when contact was part of joint study of the curriculum.’ After exploring other means to aid community cohesion, the use of technology was considered more recently. This effort seemed to be very positive as ‘the most recent research indicated that even a year after the contact came to an end, pupils were reported as displaying more tolerance than matched pupils who had not been involved (Austin, Rickard, Austin, Smyth, & Grace, 2014).’

The rest of the article discusses the epartners program that used past efforts to build upon the progress linking schools through technology made. The program ‘was set up by the Ulster University in 2013–2014 as a partnership between the School of Education and the Department for Widening Access.’ The main program used throughout this study was Fronter which is a Virtual Learning Environment. From my own research into Fronter I learnt ‘East Barnet School were the first secondary school in the UK to actually adopt a VLE and have been using Fronter as the chosen Virtual Learning Environment platform since Autumn 2006. Fronter has been acknowledged as a leader in its market, and one of only 10 Learning Platform Service Suppliers to be certified by the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) in the UK.’ http://www.eastbarnetschool.com/parents/fronter-vle/

The outcome of this study found that many of the children did not find issues with working collaboratively with their peers of different backgrounds or religious beliefs. As Barber & Cooper (2012) states, children do not come to school with one set of experiences, differences in social and cultural background influence the amount of exposure a child has to computers and the internet. The sectarianism in Northern Ireland was not apparent as some people associated with the study may have believed. Overall, the four broad conclusions drawn from this study are as follows:

‘First, the use of technology, while not without some technical problems, can be used effectively as a link between schools.

Second, a strong focus on non-contentious areas of the curriculum has been shown to engage both teachers and pupils at a level that is not threatening and can provide a valuable platform for genuinely collaborative work which has clear academic value.

Third, the support of the churches and a range of other stakeholders in the epartners program has provided a valuable building block for further work.

Finally, the use of ICT with university student support offers a highly cost-effective means of harnessing existing resources, both human and technological, to address a problem which is a drain on the public purse and a barrier to community cohesion. At a theoretical level, it adds a further element to our understanding of the types of contact that are likely to be productive within the framework of the contact hypothesis. In that sense, although the focus for this piece of research is in Northern Ireland, we hope that it has resonance wherever the negative effects of separate and parallel lives can be mitigated by purposeful contact.’ In support of this, Selwyn argues “many psychologists would now share the view that learning is a profoundly social process” (2011:76).

Through further research and reading I found this YouTube video from Bill Hunter (one of the authors of the source article) which is very informational about online learning and community cohesion.

References:

Austin, R., Hunter, B. & Hollywood, L. (2015) Computers in Human Behaviour, Supporting community cohesion through ICT: The epartners programme in Northern Ireland, Londonderry: Elsevier Ltd, accessible here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756321500148X

Barber, D. & Cooper, L. (2012) Using New Web Tools in the Primary Classroom, London: Routledge

East Barnet School (2017) accessible here: http://www.eastbarnetschool.com/parents/fronter-vle/

Hunter, B. (2014) Bill Hunter – Online learning and community cohesion, YouTube video, accessible here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJpqS6Py4uc

Selwyn, N. (2011) Education and Technology, London: Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd

Session 1: Follow-Up – Answers for Young People – Tim Berners-Lee (Blog 1)

The follow-up reading this week is a webpage written by Tim Berners-Lee where he answers a lot of FAQs for anyone researching and/or learning about how the World Wide Web has invented. Whilst reading this for myself I found various sections very informative and of great interest. Particularly, where Berners-Lee explains how webpages are found and opened on your computer when you click a link by your computers sending packets of information to other computers.

Additionally, myself partially included, a lot of people in the world use the internet and the web every day and have no real insight to what or how it happens to work. From my initial personal experience of the internet and the web, I can remember my dad bringing home our first personal computer and having dial-up internet during my time at Primary School. At this time I did not use computers for the web until later on when we upgraded to broadband.

I believe Berners-Lee summarised the internet and the web very concisely by stating that the World Wide Web is a tool and ‘that any really powerful thing can be used for good or evil.’ His hope is that ‘the Web can help people understand each other.’ Berners-Lee continued on to finish by stating, ‘Let’s use the web to create neat new exciting things. Let’s use the Web to help people understand each other.’

Reading Source:

https://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Kids.html