Three More SITE Presentations: Pre-Service Teachers, Wikis, and Social Networking

Reflective Digital Media in Teacher Education
Timo Portimojarvi, University of Tampere, Finland

  • Developing curriculum of teacher education
    • Cultural view of curriculum and profession
      • Historical, cultural, and political objectives
      • Teachers are social and cultural actors
      • The development of the curriculum is a practice-based research process
    • Three-level curriculum model
      • Personal level – autobiographical and individual process of developing a personal and professional identity
        • Experiential life world
          • Streams of situations, feelings, actions and ideas
          • In Te, experiences in teaching practices, studies, and personal life
        • Rich multimodal documentation
          • Record of situations, experiences, and moods collected easily and quickly without critical selection
          • Basis for reflection on action (or already reflection in action)
        • Personal mobile devices
          • cellular phones for imaging, recording, and making notes (“lifeblog”)
          • Blog-based digital portfolio
      • Group level – social processes of becoming a member of the profession
        • Conceptual and practical life world
          • Practices, requirements, and cultures of the community
        • Combining and considering information
          • Dialog with peers and proportioning individual and shared new conceptions with formal requirements and personal prior knowledge
        • Shared virtual spaces
          • Group blogs and an aggregated entity of the personal blog
          • Wiki-based collaborative document creation
      • Public level – skills and attitiudes in participating in public discourses
        • Discourse of teacher profession
          • Developing curriculum and the working culture of the school
          • Connection to larger networks of colleagues, parents, and other partners
        • Producing, reproducing, and publishing formal information
          • Outlines, plans, and statements for the future
          • Reflection for action, done for preparation of future moments in various contexts, based on re-interpretation of earlier reflections
        • Public forums of participation
          • Open forums, blogs, wikis, and other environments
          • Skills for participating and the use of tools learned in teacher education
  • Reflective learning in teacher profession and education
    • Teacher as reflective practitioner
      • inquiry-based approach to his or her own work
      • critical reflection as a tool for ongoing personal and professional development (revising curriculum, improving their work environmenent, professionalizing teaching, developing policy)
    • Teacher education (reflective action in 3×3 levels)
      • Refection on, in, and for action
      • Reflection about content, process, and permises
  • Enhancing documentation and reflections with digital media
    • Student journals or portfolios
      • Often used in higher education context
      • Can promote reflection in many ways through varying strategies and devices
    • Digital media supporting learning and reflection — new tools for:
      • Recognition and awareness
      • Documentation
      • Sharing
      • Discussion and dialog
      • Presenting
  • Framework for reflective media in teacher education
    • Aspects of the study
      • Type of media
      • Forms of activity
      • Focus of reflection
      • Digital media skills
      • Relation with information
    • Levels of study
      • Individual
      • Group
      • Public
  • Results of implementing this framework will be shared in the future

Technology-rich Teacher Education: Faculty Concerns During Involvement in a Technology-Rich Cohort of Teacher Candidates
Loretta Donovan and Tim Green, Cal State-Fullerton, USA

Can We Model Wiki Use in Technology Courses to Help Teachers Use Wikis in Their Classrooms
Swapna Kumar, Boston University

  • Project Steps
    • Began by looking at wikis — invited them to find three wikis used in education
    • Looked at good and bad wiki designs using Wikispaces or PBWiki
    • Dicussion on the challenges, questions, usefulness
      • Activities that the wiki is useful for
        • Reconsidered projects that they had students do in collaboration previously
          • Brainstorming
      • Instructions for using it
      • Grading of wiki work
      • Boundaries for students
    • Individual use of wikis
      • Teachers developed an activity for an element of their curriculum
        • Teachers say that students are writing better: more explicit in detail and more careful in language
  • Follow-Up Study
    • Gather data from how teachers used wikis in thier classrooms and student reactions

The Mash-Up of Web 2.0 Technologies: The Future of Podcasting and Social Networking
Brad Reamsbottom and Calvin Toth, University of Lethbridge, Canada

  • Podcasting: Subscription-based audio and video available for students
  • Where are students accessing podcasts?
  • Students prefer social networks
    • We went there, and they don’t want us there
  • Why did we forget about other places besides social networks
    • It takes more time to create a blog, podcast, vidcast
    • It needs to be entertaining (not just a lecture on YouTube)
    • News has to entertain and make minds inquire
    • iTunes U requires lots of setup
  • Podcast Problem Solving
    • Create synamic content — students don’t want to hear more lecture
    • Make it available using the tools that they use
      • Viddler
        • Video-based website that allows dynamic commenting and blog integration
        • Acts as an informant and supporting resource
      • JumpCut
        • Online video editing tool; import video, photos, and audio and edit them into a creative and fun presentation
      • TokBox
        • Web-based video conferencing
        • Send video email and make video calls
        • Video emails can be embedded on blogs
        • Blogs can hold extra resources to support the podcast
      • YouTube
    • Let your students make it viral
      • If it is attractive to them, they will repurpose it and repost it in their blogs
  • Remember the Rules
    • Keep it fun and creative
    • Don’t lecture
    • Don’t limit yourself
    • Share it, don’t force it
    • Create inquiring minds
    • Imagery and sound
    • Tag it