Session 2: Learning Resources and Technologies

 Session 2: Learning Resources and Technologies

The common goal to make quality education accessible to all irrespective of their physical demographic ensured continuous growth of distance learning. The advent of latest technologies supporting such learning continues to improve day-by-day that now many are more comfortable learning outside of traditional classrooms. This led to an escalating demand for more online educational platforms by educators and learners to ensure active engagement and quality learning taking place. Using online educational platforms, quality and enriched lessons are delivered in real times (synchronous) via some conferencing tool or recorded and shared (asynchronous) so that students are engaged at their comfortable chairs. It becomes extremely important for the educator to ensure the learning goal and pedagogies used along with the digital tools are kept at the focus of learning instead of incorporating a tool that does not support quality learning. Hence the focus of session 2, “Learning Resources and Technologies” discussed most of the aspects of digital tools and invaluable information on open educational resources (OER). The activities designed in the session allowed me to explore and learn multiple web 2.0 tools and OERs that I can incorporate in my current MAF11; Foundation Mathematics A course offered by College of Foundation Studies at Pacific TAFE.

 

Web 2.0 is a dynamic, user-friendly tool that provides enormous opportunities for teaching and learning which focus on user collaboration, sharing of user-generated content, and social networking using various means (Konstantuinidis, Theodosiadou, & Pappos, 2013). They are the internet tools that allow users not only to receive information but allows to create and interact with content. Some of the most popular web 2.0 tools that we are frequently involved with are Google Drive, Twitter, YouTube, Wikispace, Facebook, and Moodle. The features of these tools continuously allow interaction and promote a customized learning environment rather than students passively receiving information from teachers in a traditional classroom. Since there are lot of materials and contents in this tools, it does not guarantee quality learning if the right content is not identified for students by the educators. One needs to understand that these tools can help improve the teaching and learning if it is used for the right purpose, which is done by outlining clear learning outcomes. One of the web 2.0 tools I found very useful is GeoGebra. It is a mathematics software for all levels of education that is available on multiple platforms including applications, desktops, tablets, and the web. It is a comprehensive software that provides a different learning experience on topics such as geometry, algebra, spreadsheets, graphing functions, statistics, and calculus. It was developed in 2002 by Markus Hohenwarter, which was his master’s thesis project at the University of Salzburg for which he was awarded the Microsoft Education Award. He has used Java and HTML5 to develop this software and provided a CC-BY-NC-SA license. Since then, the software is currently available in 52 languages, used in about 190 countries, and is downloaded on average by about 300,000 users each month (Hohenwarter & Lavicza, 2010) and have received several educational software awards in Europe and USA.  Geogebra software provides students and teachers with basically three tools; classroom resources, Online Calculator, and a teacher to create lessons for students. GeoGebra brings a lot of educational value to teaching and learning. It supports teachers to improve students’ understanding and build confidence in mathematical concepts through effective teaching and learning (Azucena, Gacayan, Tabat, Cuanan, & Pentang, 2022). Azucena et,. al (2022) further state that GeoGebra provides an excellent learning experience for students by allowing them to discover and visualize mathematical concepts. The other benefits of using Geogebra can be  documented from page two of the journal titled “The use of Geogebra software for teaching mathematics”.

The other key learning from session 2 was on OERs. OERs are created for teaching, learning, and research materials that are made available in the public domain and have different types of licenses to allow users to use, re-mix, improve, modify, and share content (Bell, 2017).  In present times, OERs are highly accepted by teachers and students and are considered equal in quality when compared to traditional teaching and learning styles using textbooks (Weller, Arcos, Farrow , Pitt, & McAndrew, 2017). OERs treasure the culture of engagement, teamwork and sharing. There are lot of OERs present at current times and it becomes imperative for educator to identify and share the best content that is aligned with the learning outcomes of the course or topic they are teaching. The short course on understanding OER offered by Commonwealth of Learning (COL) was something very resourceful. It provided opportunity for me to locate, identify, learn about copyright policies and understand the degree of openness of licenses while evaluating an OER. Using the skills learned through this short course, I was able to identify 5 different OERs that I can incorporate in the Foundation Mathematics Course I am engaged with at CFS. These OERs are directly linked to the lesson objectives and will surely assist students in understanding the concepts covered in those topics.

 

Reflecting on session 2; Learning Resources and technologies, I note the importance of using the right OERs in lessons. These OERs provide different ways to teach the same content and help me develop more professionally and academically.  It allows me to learn and share best teaching practices of certain content which will definitely my future students. Learners can benefit similarly by reaching out to educational materials which is of highest quality and suits the way they want to learn. These 21st-century learners tend to be more engaged in digital tools than books and hence these digital tools should become the means to impart knowledge and make them learn. At last, this session allowed me to learn some new web 2.0 tools shared by the Ed403 participants which were indeed very interesting, useful and applicable to me for future work.

Reference

Azucena, L., Gacayan, P., Tabat, M., Cuanan, K., & Pentang, J. (2022). GeoGebra Intervention: How have students' Performance and Confidence in Algebra Advanced? Studies in technology and education, 1(1). Retrieved from https://philarchive.org/archive/AZUGIH#:~:text=GeoGebra%20in%20learning%20mathematics%20has,Tamam%20%26%20Dasari%2C%202021).

 

Bell, S. (2017, 05 12). Research Guides: Discovering Open Education Resources (OER). Retrieved from T University Libraries : https://guides.temple.edu/OER

 

Hohenwarter , M., & Lavicza, Z. (2010). GeoGebra, its community and future. Retrieved from https://www.unsam.edu.ar/escuelas/humanidades/centros/c_didacticas/Hohenwarter-Lavicza-GeoGebra-ATCM-Final.pdf

Konstantuinidis, A., Theodosiadou, D., & Pappos, C. (2013, October ). Web 2.0 Tools for supporting Teaching. Turkish online Journal of Distance education, 14(4). Retrieved from https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/155873

Weller, M., Arcos, B., Farrow , R., Pitt, R., & McAndrew, p. (2017). What Can OER Do for Me? Evaluating the Claims for OER. In R. Jhangiani, & R. Biswas-Diener, The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science. (pp. Pg:67-77). Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315773128_What_Can_OER_Do_for_Me_Evaluating_the_Claims_for_OER