VLE Evaluation Questions

Please answer the following questions using the comments tab for the VLE assignment 2.

1. I created a Wiki for the topic Investigating the mortality rates for the sinking of the Titanic as a collaborative tool for students to use and as a teacher resource. Do you think Wikis make a difference in the way students collaborate? Why?

2. What other web 2.0 tools could be incorporated into the Wiki to make it more of a virtual environment for flexible learning?

3.What restrictions do educators face when using/setting up a Wiki in a school?

4. How could assessment instructions or tasks be set easier for everyone to follow?

5.Instead of a Wiki whatelse could have worked better for this assessment?

6.What are the benefits of Wikis and do you think they can be improved? What could make them better?

7.Could the topic have a second part as an extended investigation learning assessment for students of higher order thinking?

8.How did this assessment cover both the integration of History and Mathematics in a virtual learning environment? What could have improved?

9. Do you think the Wiki created was being used to its potential in educational setting? Why?

10. How would you alter this assessment to cater for all student needs?

VLE - Assignment Update

Wiki is a major component of Web 2.0, the emergent generation of web tools and applications (Adie, 2006). Web 2.0 has the potential to complement, enhance, and add new collaborative dimensions to the classroom. Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, and RSS feeds have been dubbed 'social software' because they are perceived as being especially connected, allowing users to develop Web content collaboratively and open to the public
(Alexander, 2006).

Investigating the mortality rates for the sinking of the Titanic Project can be accessed via http://www.raghda.pbwiki.com

Audience/context description

All students studying Mathematics and History to correlate both subjects by the integration of ICT. Students with low literacy skills, ESL students and students with learning difficulties they may have difficulty with mathematical/ history terminology

Catering to students with a range of learning styles ~

Sociological

The students whom benefit greatly from group activities, the collaborative element of the web technology caters for their needs.
Auditory
Some students learn best by listening, so participating in the vodcast over and over again will enable them to cater for their needs.
Visual
Visual learners benefit from a variety of ocular stimulation such as images and written information. They like to be able to read instructions or the text on their own to increase their understanding.
Tactile
Most people learn best with hands-on activities, but some gain a lot more from it than others. Some students really increase their learning potential when they are given the opportunity to do something by themselves.

Software

From the many wiki software packages available, peanut butter (Pb) wiki was chosen. This is a particularly simple to use example, incorporating features allowing comparison of previous versions, discussion pages, and user authentication, with the additional important features that it was free and that settings could be managed so only invited members could edit the content. These features are important because the teacher wants the groups to take ownership of the wiki without public interference, and wants to be sure that the content had been produced like discussion and results by the students without outside help. It is also important to the teacher that they could track who had made which edits and comments and so identify the authors of any abusive or offensive posts and take appropriate action

Online technologies to be used

Blogs
Wikis
Vodcasting
Navigation links
Google Docs

References

Adie, C. (2006). Report of the information services working group on collaborative tools. http://www.is.ed.ac.uk/content/1/c4/10/46/CollaborativeToolsAndWeb2%200.pdf

Alexander, B. (2006). Web 2.0: A new wave of innovation for teaching and learning? Educause Review, 41(2) http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERM0621.pdf

Assignment 2 VLE - Investigating the mortality rates for the sinking of the Titanic

Task/Aim:
A wiki intended to provide a resource for mathematics and history teachers that they can use with their students to help them understand the correlation between the two subjects, as well as some helpful resources for teachers of VCE General mathematics and history to use with their students. To create spreadsheets and interpret bar graphs based on data from the sinking of the Titanic.

Rationale:
The purpose of the project is to give students an opportunity to use interactive tools to create and analyse graphs and make decisions about a real life scenario: mortality rates for the sinking of the Titanic. By representing data in the form of graphs and analysing the graphs, students can apply their knowledge to investigate the death rates and survival rates of males and females. Also, students can explore the death rates of adults and children during the sinking of the Titanic.

Description modification:
This project is divided into three tasks to make it easier for the teachers/students to follow.

Students will be using Google Docs to create spreadsheets and charts and using background information on the titanic to write a brief report on the sinking of the titanic including findings and graphs from the task to correlate both mathematics and history into this wiki project.