Your thoughts on using Wikipedia in the classroom

Personally, I have never used Wikipedia as a resource in the classroom, however, I can see how Wikipedia can be used effectively. The major pitfall associated with Wikipedia appears to be that information is ‘crowd sourced’ leading to misinformation as the reliability and credibility of the author/s is ambiguous. What I can determine as its major pitfall, is the very reason Wikipedia could be used as an effective resource. Wikipedia can allow for information literacy skills to be developed as it can be a resource that is scrutinized, analyzed and evaluated to determine its credibility. Wikipedia can contain credible and reliable information with additional links to expand the search criteria of a particular topic and furthermore, Wikipedia can be used as a collaboration tool for students to complete team research tasks. While there are people that criticise the citation and use of Wikipedia who are by far more intelligent than me, I believe if used and modeled correctly, the positives of Wikipedia far outweigh the stand alone negative characteristics.

ETL 501 Learnings 1

Reading the prescribed readings has highlighted a few things as I reflect on my profession as a teacher in the context of the school that I am currently teaching in and as a novice parent of two boys under the age of three.   

Firstly, The description Loose (2016) provides of the revised taxonomy was very thought provoking working through the taxonomy, simplifying its process.  Prichard (2009, p. 11) mentions that the  learning theory Behaviourism, allows for learning to occur without fully understanding a concept challenging my initial thought that Bloom's Taxonony was a lineal process.  

Secondly, some concepts covered by Pardoe, Pritchard and Johnson allowed me to reflect on some of the teaching strategies and programs currently being implemented in the school I work in. The significance of self-esteem and its positive effect on a student’s achievement (Pardoe, 2000, p. 55) is an area of action for the DEC as they are currently implementing the 'Well Being Framework' centered on the wellbeing of students. This concept raises issues of content driven curriculum or the welfare of students. Working in a low socio economically disadvantage school that caters for students of varying abilities I believe balancing a student’s welfare while meeting the educational needs being a major challenge that exists and previously existed. The behaviouralist approach alone is not en effective teaching practice as extrinsically motivating students can lead to students taking shortcuts in their learning (Pardoe, 2009, p. 54). PB4L is a program deeply ingrained in the school I work in. Pardoe's statement question my belief of the program as this program is based on rewarding students for their positive behaviour. I understand that students need to learn correct behaviours, and school is doing this well as it has high expectations of appropriate school behaviours and respect for the school, other students and teachers and perhaps this is a stepping stone to eventually encouraging intrinsic motivation and self-regulation (constructivist theory) regarding a student’s studies, particularly throughout stage 6 studies. Currently an AVID program is running in the school and I see the constructivist approach with student reflection and active engagement through group work and Cornell Note taking practices implemented throughout the delivery of content. 

  

Fourthly, as a parent and teacher, I was very interested in the reasons that could hinder a child/students language and communication development present by Pardoe (2008, p. 19). TV, gaming and eating in isolation attribute to poorer communication skills, a skill identified as an essential skill for future success. Through modelling effective language in the classroom and home I hope to attribute to the success of current and future students as well as my own children. Furthermore, through observing the type of game students play during their recess and lunch break, it was evident that most of the games follow the behaviourist approach based loosely on Skinner's step  by step process known as frame, where the learner progresses to the next stage based on correct answers. Students playing games are subject to this type of learning where they receive immediate feedback and only progress to the next level when the achieve outcomes or get the correct answer (Pritchard, 2009, p. 12) 

  

Finally, I thoroughly enjoyed the analogy used in the prescribed text by Pardoe (2009, p. 93) for  self efficacy and self regulation, a Constructivist approach. Pushing a child on a bike without the stabilisers, the teacher initially doing a lot of work, then letting them ride by themselves falling (learning) while the student is doing the work for themselves. 

ETL 501 Reference Resources activity.

I don’t believe the notion of abandoning reference material, the library at the school I currently work in has two reference sections, resources available for students and a ‘Teacher Reference’ section only available for teachers. Although these sections are diminishing in their physical form some digital resources are being added to these section on the library cataloguing system such as Online Britannica. Perhaps this term should be kept for non-borrowable resources as this also provides security for rare resources such as ‘The Abo Call’ located in library ‘Teacher Reference’ section at my school.

My definition

Digital and print resources used as an initial point of investigation providing users with specific points of interest, enabling further analysis.

Additional:

I spoke to the teacher librarian at my school today about reference material in the library. Our discussion focused more on the ability or inability of students and teachers borrowing reference resources. The TL provided the reason for reference resources not being borrowed, “not allowing reference resource to be borrowed and their location in the library allows for readily accessible and easily available resources”. Interesting.

ETL 501The Dynamic Learning Environment. Bloom's Taxonomy Activity

Revisiting Bloom’s Taxonomy and reading the revised Bloom’s taxonomy was a worthwhile activity as I found the information about “Google Proofing” questions or tasks for students to be a pivotal learning point for myself. Creating and implementing questioning through tasks or class discussion that follow this cognitive process I believe will benefit my students. 

While completing the activity I was easily drawn to the tools Google provide as I currently use some of these tools, however, I consciously sought other tools from sites such as ‘Cool tools for School’ and ‘Web 2.0 Guru’, trying to break the Google habit. The school I currently work in (7-10) implements ALARM, A Learning and Responding Matrix. This Matrix is introduced to stage 4 students with a scaffolding template using verbs similar to the revised Bloom's Taxonomy verbs. With each yearly progress parts of the scaffolding are removed with the expectation that students will implement this scaffolding throughout their stage 6 assessment where applicable, offering reason for the learning level stage 4 and 5 placed in this activity. Further resources could be added with the refinement of my search abilities and better management of my time.