Hi Pod7, I’m glad to have the opportunity to share my peer review on your topic “How to Effectively Use Social Media in the Classroom” in this blog.
First of all, integrating social media into the classroom is very relevant to our current life. I think the most significant advantage you have in choosing inquiry-based learning as your teaching strategy is that it encourages critical thinking, personalization, practicality and life-long learning. The rationale for this choice is well explained, in particular how it enables learners to explore and evaluate the use of social media in education according to their goals and interests.
I think that in your subtopics, you have effectively addressed the needs and characteristics of your target audience (educators) and utilized many different resources and interactions to help students understand and master the class.
With the subtitle “Navigating Social Media Safely in Educational Settings”. I agree with the subtitle of Talking to You about the Potential Risks Associated with Social Media Use. In addition to online quizzes and reading resources, guest speakers can also be invited to share and discuss with online safety and security experts. Learners can better identify and deal with online fraud through the real cases shared by experts, which is also interactive.
In your thread on “Understanding the Benefits and Challenges of Social Media in Education”, the advice I would like to give about the assessment program is that the idea of engaging in discussion and critical thinking by commenting on peer posts is cool and relevant to your Learning strategy-inquiry-based learning. How to make this topic interesting can allow learners to engage in critical discussions by blogging separately about different perspectives on social media (sharing strengths and weaknesses, etc.)
Overall, your topic design is very logical and interesting. Hope my suggestion can help you :）
What experiences have you had with interactivity in learning environments? How did the interaction (or lack of interaction) affect your learning? Your enjoyment?
Hello everyone, this week’s blog I want to discuss and compare the similarities and differences between my past study environment in China and the study environment at uvic based on the above questions.
First of all, I want to discuss the same place, whether in China or Canada, the interaction in the learning environment is very important, such as the interaction between teachers and students in the classroom. The importance of interaction in a learning environment is recognized both in China and at Victoria University. Interaction and discussion in the classroom can enhance students’ analysis and understanding of problems from different angles, and also allow teachers to better understand students’ mastery of the content.
Differences: I think Canada and China have different sizes of interaction. First of all, China is mainly teaching in large classes. One teacher may have to deal with larger class sizes that may make it difficult to interact with teachers one-on-one. Smaller class sizes at VU may facilitate more frequent interaction with teachers and fellow students. On the other hand, I think the Chinese education model is more inclined to teachers talking more than students interacting in class, which may cause students to be afraid to speak. Canadian education encourages students to actively debate and participate in discussions.
In general, no matter what kind of interaction method it is for me, it can help me better participate in the classroom. At the same time, teachers should also use different interaction methods to help students with different personalities and cultural and educational backgrounds integrate into the interaction.
Hello Heather, by reading your Blog3, I am very happy to see your sharing about your use of Canvas as an interactive learning resource in the learning pod and how to adjust and optimize it.
I like your idea of providing alternative formats such as tactile images and audio descriptions in Canvas, which can greatly help different types of students understand the content. In addition to this method, I also suggest that you provide some easy-to-understand texts that can also effectively help students. As you said, overly complex words or long paragraphs will make it difficult for students to understand the content, so you can collect the opinions of different students to improve the content.
The theme of our Blueprint this time is about “Chinese Education”. Utilizing educational website tools such as YouTube, Duolingo, and Kahoot to design interactive learning resources on Chinese education topics provides different ways to meet the needs of all learners. I’m going to expand on these interactive learning resources.
YouTube： The benefit of YouTube for Chinese education is that students can understand each character from demonstrations, animations and graphics through audio and video and listen to explanations and lectures.
Duolingo：Duolingo’s app allows students to practice Chinese characters anytime, anywhere, except for the daily class study, they can take a little time to study anywhere. And they get instant feedback during practice, enabling them to spot and correct mistakes in time.
Kahoot：It has established a gamified learning concept, interactive exercises and game achievements bring interest and engagement to students. Teachers can design Kahoot tests of different difficulty through the feedback of the game to suit learners of different proficiency levels.
I believe our interactive learning resources are there for students to learn successfully when unexpected events occur (such as a pandemic). Because these interactive learning resources come from online media resources, teachers can make full use of these resources to help students succeed even when they are not in the classroom.
In our blueprint about YouTube learning Chinese there are many facets barriers to student success.
First of all, the content on YouTube may be distracting. Although videos can increase students’ interest in learning, they may also spend time on other videos instead of learning Chinese. Second, YouTube lacks interactive elements, such as instant feedback or opportunities for practice and conversation. I think the way to improve it can be to select some high-quality content or clips for students to ensure the quality and accuracy of the teaching videos used in the learning plan. And share video content through school platforms such as brightspace, so that students can reduce the probability of watching irrelevant videos.
From reading Winnie blog, one of the main benefits of open education for Chinese character learning is increased access to educational resources. This also brought a lot of inspiration for our group topic this time. For example, we can design free learning materials and resources, including online courses, interactive tools and language learning platforms and so on. This also increases the diversity of various learning languages for the students.
Game-based learning is a learning method that incorporates game elements into the educational process to increase student motivation, engagement and learning outcomes. From this article, game-based learning encompasses two types of teaching styles; one that uses serious games for teaching and the other that uses gamification methods for teaching. The biggest difference between them is that the concept of serious games is that learners play games and learn about a subject through playing games, while gamification is learning a subject in a learning environment that uses game-like elements such as competition or collaboration.
Regarding how to effectively use game-based learning in the classroom, I think an economics class I took last semester gave me a lot of inspiration. Ten minutes before the end of the usual class, the teacher will let us participate in the Kahoot game. The content in the game is the more important knowledge points of this lesson.
Some benefits of game-based learning :
Increased learning initiative: By participating in this game, students will be more motivated, and the way the game is ranked will also bring encouragement to actively participating students.
Get timely help and feedback: By participating in this game, students not only review the key points of this lesson, but also quickly understand what areas of knowledge they still have unclear, and they can seek help from the teacher in time.
Increase the interaction between teachers and students: create a relaxed learning atmosphere through game-based learning, and allow teachers to understand students’ weaknesses and adjust course content.
Reference:
Chan, C. K. Y. (2023). Assessment for experiential learning. Taylor & Francis.
Kaneko, K., Saito, Y., Nohara, Y., Kudo, E., & Yamada, M. (2018). Does Physical Activity Enhance Learning Performance?: Learning Effectiveness of Game-based Experiential Learning for University Library Instruction. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 44(5), 569–581. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2018.06.002
Describe an example from your life of when you were taught using each method described in this article: behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism.
In this article I learned about three related learning theories (behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism).
First, behaviorists believe that learning is the connection between stimulus and response, and their basic assumption is: Behavior is a learner’s response to environmental stimuli. An example of behaviorism in my life is that when I learned words as a child, my mother would look at me with fierce eyes when I did wrong, but when I mastered the word skillfully, I would get rewards.
Second, the cognitivism approach emphasizes understanding and mental processes (such as thinking, problem solving, language, concept formation, and information processing). My example is when I was learning fractions as a child, rather than rote memorization, my teacher would first introduce the concept of fractions, give a clear definition, and explain their relevance in real life. They might use visual aids like score bar charts or pie charts to visually represent scores.
Finally, with regard to constructivism, they believe that knowledge is not abstract, but is related to the context under study and the experience that the participants bring to that context. My example is that in class, the teacher asked us to discuss the issue of inequality between men and women and express different views. These discussions made my learning process consider different explanations and think about different assumptions.
Below are my results and reflections on this course.
Examine the application of social media to support learning
In week 2, I understand and learn what PLN (Personal Learning Network) is. By reading the article: “What is Personal Learning Network“. The author explains PLN in the article: PLN is a place where you may gather, collect, interact, create, and share information and expertise with a group of people from all over the world, at any time. Jiaxin proposes in her wow and wonder: PLN allows people to study at their preferred time and locations. I think the emergence of PLN not only helps me better explore other people’s learning experiences through social media but also brings distance learning opportunities to students who cannot access educational resources in remote areas. So the emergence of PLN not only allows me to share and exchange my learning experience in the global community but also to get the latest information from domain experts. It also got me thinking about how to use PLN as a link for my studies. For example, I use Twitter as my PLN platform for learning which gives me a good platform for an interchange of learning experiences. I followed for example the official Twitter account of UVIC to learn about the school and some learning experiences.
Explain personalized learning and its relation to learning theory
Personalized learning, in my opinion, is the selection of different educational settings and programs based on different needs and abilities. I remembered that in week 3, I learned what connectionism is. By reading the article： “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age”. The author mentions comparisons with traditional learning theories (Behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism). The emergence of connectionism is based on the arrival of digital spaces and the development of technology. Connectionism articulates a learning paradigm that responds to changes in society’s current structure, according to Tian’s blog. When new technologies are adopted instead of traditional learning techniques, the way people learn and their goals change. Thus, connectionism is a theory of learning in the digital age, where learning is distributed across social networks. It also got me thinking about how to use PLN as a link to my learning. Knowledge and information are connected through links between different nodes.
Recognize that the Internet is not a neutral or equal space for everyone
What made me realize that the internet is not a neutral or equal space for everyone is through reading the article “Visitors and Residents” in Week 4, which mentions: Older people will never get as high a level as younger people’s technical capabilities. Prensky divides the elderly as digital immigrants and the young as digital natives. He argues that our students today are “native speakers” of the digital languages of computers, video games, and the Internet. Nick said in his blog: Adults will never be able to learn a new language as well as children since they will not be immersed in the language as they grow up, and the same is true for technological learning. And for people who were not born in the digital age, the Internet is very unequal. This reminds me that in China, because of the epidemic, many people cannot go out and can only buy food through their mobile phones, but the elderly who are not good at using the Internet are left behind. Likewise, it has been argued that the capabilities of social media platforms generally do not translate into other online spaces or tools (Stoerger, 2009), although this is difficult to quantify. Therefore, the differentiation of different social networking platforms also made me think about how to use PLN on some specific media platforms to differentiate it from life. For example, Twitter conducts PLN, and Instagram publishes some life content.
Apply social media to develop a personal learning network in support of your personal and/or professional development
I used a lot of social media throughout the semester to develop a personal learning network. At the beginning of the class, the professor introduced us to two programs, Github and WordPress. We made good use of Github for sharing classroom educational resources and created an ebook about Zenly with my team.
WordPress is a great PLN platform. It can take what we want to share in a new way by blogging. We can comment on articles of interest as node connections for the PLN. Learning about these two social media apps is something I think is great and rewarding.
Identify privacy issues and practice online behaviors that are legal, safe, consensual, and ethical
The openness of online content makes it easier for people’s privacy to be leaked and spread. This is because of the insecurity and immaturity of network technology. According to Tian’s blog, the frequent incidence of personal privacy breaches in recent years has resulted in a crisis of faith in big data, because thorough data analysis can provide more valuable data, making it simpler to become a target of network assaults. My blog for Week 6 also mentioned that rumors and misinformation will flourish, fueled by social media. It got me thinking that when I sign up for a social media app, they ask for my location, address book, etc, which also increases my risk of leaks.
Recognize data ownership and licensing (Creative Commons, Copyright, Fair Dealing, and Public Domain) as a core practice when creating, sharing, or using resources online
An important characteristic of personal data is its originality. I think the attribution of data is an important area. It reminds me of music ownership. A long time ago, pirated music was everywhere, and this is a problem that has always plagued us. In the back, record companies cooperate with music software to download songs for a fee. It has greatly reduced the occurrence of pirated records and solved the problem of copyright. Mia also mentioned this in her showcase: One-way users can avoid copyright infringement is to make sure the music in the video comes from the TikTok app. This is because TikTok has licensing agreements with various artists (Gardoce, 2021).
Practice digital, networked, and open literacies in support of learning about social media and personalized learning
In this study, I have learned and applied many social media software for PLN. They are all completely open. I also enjoy reading and wishing others could write some comments on my stuff. Because it helps me think and progress. As a new educational method, the Internet is also an important component of schools. The diversity of information on the web also affects my thinking. In the ninth week of reading, adult learning theory is mentioned. Adult learning theory is based on the idea that adults and children learn differently, and that these differences should be acknowledged and accommodated. And I should also use the four principles of adult pedagogy to improve and develop my future learning.
By reading Chapter 6 of the article “Emerging Technologies in Distance Education”. By reading Chapter 6 of the article “Emerging Technologies in Distance Education”. This chapter is about personalized learning and learning theory. The Adult Learning Theory is mentioned in the article, is predicated on the idea that adults and children learn in different ways, and that these differences should be recognised and accommodated.
What made me wow are the four principles of adult pedagogy:
Adults should be involved in planning and evaluating their learning instruction.
Experience is the foundation of learning.
Adults tend to take courses that have a direct impact on their jobs and careers.
Adult learning is not content-centered, but problem-centered
What made me wonder is the way adults learn is very different from the way children learn, how can you use the experience to improve your own learning?
This week, by watching Queen’s video #tresdancing, a short film about screening surveillance. What I feel wow is about this video is the use of surveillance to help educate. At the beginning of the video, the girls were canceled during the exam due to some normal environmental influences. What struck me the most was that the system monitors a girl’s eye movements to make sure she’s not cheating. And what makes me wonder is whether this excessive surveillance system violates people’s privacy? For example, people’s identity characteristics, family environment have been recorded.
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