Dani's Massey University Portfolio

Academic integrity is an area I became familiar with while studying for my Bachelor of Education 12 years ago. My understanding of it (very basic I now realise) was to always make sure the ideas or information you get (particularly when completing assignments) are recognised using a referencing format such as APA. With the introduction of 1:1 device use in my primary school classroom, and the use of these devices to create digital artefacts and share learning online, it has only recently become apparent to me that my students need to be skilled up on the legalities of ownership and using content from the internet in their creations.  Last year was my first year teaching Year 4/5 students (with 1:1 Chromebooks). This older and more digitally capable class opened up a whole new world in terms of the content they could create to demonstrate their learning. It also opened my eyes to their lack of understanding of the legalities and permissions involved with using content from the int...

After reading a wide range of literature in module 3 about motivational strategies, I have come to realise that there are many factors that impact on cultivating student motivation. Based on what I have read, I propose the following recommendations for cultivating student motivation. These include; understanding teachers' pedagogical approaches, fostering learners' self regulation skills, and purposeful programme design and supports. Understanding Pedagogical Approaches  Bonk & Khoo (2014) highlight many strategies teachers use to motivate learners aligned with particular pedagogical approaches and learning views. These include behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism and socio-cultural views. Behaviourism pedagogy involves the teacher emitting knowledge to the student and providing instant feedback and rewards for successful learning achievement. Cognitivism entails the teacher breaking learning into manageable chunks, supporting students cognitive processing - recogn...

What have I learnt about multimodal/multimedia tools for use in a blended primary school environment? After looking at a range of digital tools in online  activity 6 , it has motivated me to do further reading about multimodal and multimedia use in educational contexts. Through my work as a teacher in a blended primary school environment, I have used a range of multimedia tools to help present lesson content to my learners with the aim of catering for a range of learning preferences and styles. The platform I mostly use to present learning material is a class site using the google sites platform. Although my students appear to enjoy the material I share with them on the class site, I have never been completely sure whether their learning is advantaged by this in comparison to more traditional approaches.  A few of the articles I have read in recent days have provided me with insight and clarity into the advantages and disadvantages of using multimedia to present learning ma...

What? I have always thought that critiquing an article was about finding something wrong with it, but after reading the guidelines on the Massey University Owll site about how to critique an article , I discovered that this isn't the case. It is about identifying, evaluating and responding to the author's ideas. Out of the two articles we could choose from to critique, I chose Bonk & Khoo's (2014) article on Online Motivation from Four Perspectives because it was easy for me to relate it to the education context I work in being a blended primary school classroom. It also referred to four perspectives I had recently read a lot about for assignments I had completed, so then looking at motivation through the lens of each of these perspectives became a lot easier to understand and was interesting. I found the guiding questions provided by Maggie very helpful for completing this critique . So What? I feel that I did an average job of critiquing the article, as it was...

Creating a Podcast Reflection: Click on the link to access my  Podcast . Podcasting is something I really didn't think I would ever do as part of my classroom programme. This is mainly because it is out of my own personal comfort zone and I'm sure many others would agree (cringing at the sound of my own voice). In preparation for making this podcast, I made sure that I made notes to answer the question posed by Lucinda to better prepare myself for recording my voice - especially since I knew others would listen to the podcast. Overall the experience was not as scary as I thought and after thinking about some of the benefits podcasting could provide for my learners, and listening to the ideas of my peers on their podcasts, I decided to do some further reading about multimedia design for learning. Firstly I read McAdle's (2011) chapter on Design the Learning to Fit the Need. She mentions multi-sense learning as a learning principle to consider when designing training pr...

What have I learned about motivational strategies? Initially when I read Bonk & Khoo's (2014) article I thought the motivational strategies referred to in online activity 3.2 were the Tech Variety Principles, however after reading the article again I realised these were two different things - that were woven together. The motivational strategies I found for each of the four learning perspectives are as follows: After looking more deeply at motivational strategies, and realising that the Build a Pterosaur activity was the activity I found had the best motivation and engagement strategies (but had the least amount of technological affordance), I realised that it was important to read further about motivation in online learning/courses to gain a better understanding as a teacher who highly values blended/online learning. I came across mentions of online courses having high drop out rates and ICT in blended environments leading to disengaged learners in many of th...

Screen shot 1: My contribution to activity 1.2 demonstrating my initial understanding of the phrases instructional design, design for learning and learning design: Screenshot 2: Clarification from an explanation provided by Lucila Carvalho (Lecturer): My Reflection: The first screenshot shows my lack of understanding of the difference between the design types - especially 'design for learning'. A quick google search to try and inform my understanding proved to be very unsuccessful and further contributed to my misconception about the difference between design for learning and learning design. I found Lucila's week 4 news update to be very helpful and contributed to a light bulb moment for me.  Goodyear & Dimitriadis's (2013) quote shown in screenshot 2, really resonated with me because it is so true that you cannot determine whether a child will learn from anything that we design for them. We can only attempt to design for their learning with th...