Reflection day 4 and 5

Day 4 and 5

On the 4^th Day, the lesson on Co constructive tools like Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Forms was carryout by our tutor Mr. Tandin Wangchuk and Changa Dorji. The ICT course has truly paved the way for the learner like me to become aware, appreciate and equipped to use ICT in the Teaching-learning. The computer serves as a teaching tool in the sense that the teachers used computers as their instructional materials in supplementing the cognitive development of the students when it comes to technology. ICT has great help for both the teachers and the learners, for the teacher it facilitates our instructional method and improves the teaching-learning methods and materials. For students, it contributes a lot to their cognitive development and learning experiences.

By making use of co constructive tools, we can share our understanding with others and gets lots of new ideas from others too. It serves as a plate form where anyone can co-edit the same documents without having to meet an individual. To be frank, before I enroll in this module, I have no idea about the co-constructive tools and what it means and used for. Our tutor explains and demonstrates how we can keep our documents and important files in the drive. Even we are given hands-on practice, how we can open word, excel and PowerPoint which store in the drive. The tutor also demonstrates how to create survey forms and questionnaires and told us that it will automatically analyze our data in Google. After that, we were given the task to create a survey form of our choice using all the components and ask us to share it with our tutor and friends. This constructive tool in fact would be very useful for me as a teacher and administrator whenever we wanted to conduct surveys and developing questionnaires. Therefore, I will make the best use of the tools if I ever had to conduct a survey or research.

I feel that working with Google drive is very useful and comfortable especially by knowing the following benefits.

1.      We get 15GB free so that we can store files, save email, attachments, and backup photos directly to drive.

2.      Keep any file: Photos, videos, presentations, PDFs- even Microsoft office files. No matter what type of file it is everything can be stored safely in the drive.

3.      Share how we want: Files in Drive are private until we decide to share them; we can quickly invite others to view, comment and edit any file or folder we choose.

4.      Safe and secure: Our file security is crucial. That’s why every file in Drive stays safe no matter what happens to our phones, tablets, or computer.

5.      Save Gmail attachment: However an attachment in Gmail and look for the Drive logo. Here we can save any attachment to our drive to organize and share them in a single, safe place.

6.      Powerful Search: Drive can recognize objects in our images and text in scanned documents. So we can search a word like “Eiffel Tower” and get text documents with the word, as well as images of the actual Eiffel Tower.

7.      Google photos: Store our photos in drive and see them come to life with Google photos. Get that expertly edited look without the effort, plus animations, movies and more.

8.      Chrome books: Google drive is built- into chrome books, so our files and photos are automatically backed up. We ‘ii get 100GB of free storage for two years with most new chrome books.

9.      More Drive Apps: Edit our profile photo, do some landscaping create a mind map, and more. Over 100 Drive Apps can help us do more with our staff. Try them by installing one from drive collection in Chrome web store.

1.  Docs, Sheets, Slides: Create and collaborate with others, share documents and files, build out spreadsheets and make a presentation on the fly with our Docs, Sheets and Slides Apps.

1.  Google form: Lets we run a survey or quickly create a team roster with a simple online form. Then check out the results, neatly organized in spreadsheets.

1.  Google Drawing: Layout diagram, create flow charts, and then easily add them to other documents or embed them on a website with Google Drawing.

1.  Scan Document: Scan all our paper documents with a drive for Android. Just snap a photo of documents like receipts, letters, and statements- and drive will store then instantly as PDFs.

1.  Work offline: Make files available offline. So you can view them when your phone or tablets losses service, like on a plane or in a building with a bad connection.

1.  See Old Version: We can look back as far as 30 days on most file types. Making it easy to see who has made changes and go back to previous versions. That’s file versifying made easy.

Without the support and encouragement from my tutor, I won’t be able to know the above benefits. To be frank, now I am very much used to it and I will continue using it throughout my carrier. So, it is important that every individual take responsibility to recognize the different contributions that ICT can make to teaching and learning and acknowledge the importance of each of them, and make wise use of it.
Learning the Google apps really made me easier to handle my professional and personal work where I would rather say "a complete Package" to problem-solving of handling any documents and their availability- anywhere and anytime. In the school's PD program, I share with my colleagues the convenience and handy tips in storing and publishing our documents using these apps. Some were aware of the apps but didn't have an idea of how to go about it. I had a perfect opportunity to provide hands-on experiential learning and many of them did make use of it like storing their important documents by scanning Identity Card, School certificates.....

Reflection day 3

Day 3.

The lesson on the third day was on Web Search. It is one of the most important components in the ICT world. Our tutor is familiarized with a web search and its benefits. My understanding as per on web search was finding materials on the web is rather similar to the process of finding books in a library. If we have strategies to find the information we need from the larger library with millions of books. A similar approach is needed to find information on the web.

Our tutor also said finding things on the web is a little trickier as search engines don’t always do a great job of picking out the best sites for our search topics. Many of the sites that come up are simply advertising and a short summary. However a little bit of effort we will be able to find enough credible sources. I also came to know about the search engine and the meaning and its definition. It says the Search engine is a list of web pages maintained by a computer program called robots. A robot periodically scans for web pages to add to its lists. Each robot does this in a different way. There are many search engine used different methods to search for the result.

We were also introduced to different kinds of operators. They are

1.      Boolean operators: are used to connecting and defining the relationship between our search terms. The three Boolean operators are AND, OR & NOT.

-          Use AND to narrow our search

-          Use OR to broaden our search by connecting two or more synonyms.

-          Use NOT to exclude terms from our search result.

2.      Truncation means the ability of some search engine to locate related terms from a root keywords and wild card.

3.      Wildcards: is a symbol used to replace or represent one or more characters?

This really helps me to enhance my little computer knowledge and also help me in doing my assignment and daily teaching and learning.

Towards the end of the lesson, we were taught using Google books and Google helps centers. From the lesson I came to know Google books is a Google service that makes discovering a book's contents easier for use on the web. And also I came to know the Google help center help form like Chrome, Account, YouTube, Gmail, Google Play, search Drive photo, etc..,.Whatever I have learned, I am going to share and implement with my learners and friends. Moreover, it really equipped me with the ideas and knowledge on ICT that I am going to use in the 21st-century classroom. 

Reflection day 2

 Day 2.

The second day started with the video clips regarding the means and methods of teaching in the 21^st Century. It is very important as an educator to know how we can be teachers in the 21^st Century classroom. In addition, students and educators today must have ICT literacy and use of technology in the context of teaching and learning.

The main purpose of ICT in education is generally to familiarize the learners with the use of technology or working with computers. It also enables learning through multiples intelligence like simulation, games, this enables active learning through all senses. ICT is not only for learners it is also for educators in the 21^st century. ICT should evolve in education because it serves as educational or instructional materials that supplement the needs of the learners when it comes to technology.

As far as I am concern, the teachers in the class use mostly the lecture method of teaching at present. So however the teachers teach children to feel boring in the lecture method of teaching and the valuable educational ideas are lost as a result of it. Since we know that now we are in the 21^st Century, the school or the educators try to promote new ways of teaching and learning and then evaluate how well their efforts have led to results. Moreover, the teachers have to engage and educate, to facilitate and motivate the 21^st Century learners, their methods of teaching must be more closely aligned to students’ methods of learning. Students today are partly shaped by their environment, which is media-rich, electronic and digital, a communication medium, and so on. So we expect our students to be lifelong learners. We educators too must continue to observe experiences and knowledge and stay current. Teachers must change and learn and adapt as the horizons and the landscape change.

Therefore, in order to equip with the 21^st century teaching and learning strategies our tutor has introduced the following topic in detail in our residential classes.

·         ICT as informative tools

·         21st-century skills

·         ICT in education meaning and definition.

·         Finding and using information through ICT.

We being teachers for this century now we have to learn and find ways to teach our children how to think critically. I would utilize whatever I have gained from my tutor and I would also make the best use of the skills learned here to make children understand better and use the ICT in their day-to-day life.

Reflection Day 1

Day 1.

As a saying  “Better late than never”; by keeping the above said in mind, I have chosen this module wholeheartedly so that I can learn something and give support to the digital native students of the 21^st century.

On the first day our tutor, Mr. Changa Dorji started presenting the work plan and briefed on assessment of the module. I was very excited to know that I am going to learn the thing I have never heard or experiences before. In course of time, I tried to interact with my tutor and friends in order to learn and get clear concept of the topic that I am learning.

We are also taught through video clip on Digital Native VS Digital immigrant. I came to know the different between digital native vs. digital immigrants. Some of the differences I came across are:

Digital Native	Digital Immigrant
Born after 1980	Born before 1980
·         Prefer receiving information quickly from multiple multimedia sources ·         Prefer parallel processing and multitasking. ·         Prefer processing pictures, sounds and video before text. ·         Prefer to learn “just –in-time”	·         Prefer slow and controlled release of information from limited sources. ·         Prefer singular processing and single or limited tasking. ·         Prefer to provide text before pictures, sounds and video. ·         Prefer to teach “just –in-case”(it’s on the exam)

 After watching video clips and hearing from our tutor, I felt we the digital immigrant should learned lots of things to cater to the digital native students. As a teacher for 21^st century students we should redefining our teaching and learning process through graphic (audio and visual). Moreover teachers should teach class without using paper, chalk and chalkboard in order to introduce more technology to our students, so that the children won’t feel boring in our teaching. But lots of teachers still lack the skills to teach current teenagers in the way they are familiar with and can understand. Lots of information is coming to them via the internet and everything they do is through the technology; the learning, the reading, downloading and listening to music, writing, designing and most importantly; communicating with the world. And if everything teenager do is through the technology, why then is there so little taught through the technology. It’s time for change. We know that things are changing at an ever increasing rate and will continue to do so in the lives of our children, so we need to be role model for lifelong learning.

Now we as a 21^st century teacher should accept the embedded performance of our youngsters and adjust accordingly. Then they will be motivated to learn.

Kuzuzangpola to my tutor and all DE ICT friends.

This is my first time using the blog. I am very happy and thank my tutor, Mr. Changa Dorji, for providing such an opportunity to know and use the blog.

Therefore, I am looking forward to learning a lot from my tutor and my ICT friends.

Wishing you all the best.

Tashi delak

Sonam Tenzin