Virtual Classes?

I came across an article from The Australian website entitled Lecturer Learns to Sort Out Virtual Classes(September 2008) which I found to be an unique idea regarding the future of education. The article is not about the learning of ICT content, but using ICT as a medium to teach as students could ‘attend’ a lecture without physically being in the room.

At the University of Wollongong, Professor Farzad Safaei believes that current online learning for university students is one-dimensional as interaction only occurs through chat rooms. His plan for the future is to  “simulate a classroom environment where students can be ’seated’ and listening to their  lectures as if they were in a physical classroom……All that is required is an internet connection, webcam and speakers….A lecturer would be able to launch their presentation slides in the virtual environment and the entire class would be able to watch and hear the lesson as if it was being conducted in a classroom.”

Personally I think it would be interesting to see if this method of teaching would be a success, however it also makes me wonder if it is taking technology too far and although we live in a technological age, not everyone has access to a computer at home. If you would like to read the article in full, click on the following link: Lecturer Learns to Sort Out Virtual Classes.

 

 

Presentation 6: Simulation and Modeling

Example we created using Microsoft PowerPoint

This week was my turn to present and as you can see, my partner and I were given the task of exploring Simulation and Modeling! It was hard to begin at first because we had to understand what this application was before we could design a task for it. We discovered that they are interactive, digital resources that serve an educational purpose. Both are designed to help students learn about different facts, skills or processes but in different ways. Simulations are more about entering a virtual environment or time period, where as models mostly display the information and facts and are similar to an explanation.

After searching through many online simulations and models (some which are free to utilise and others which are not) we decided that our task would be to create the life cycle of an animal using Microsoft PowerPoint. Click here to see the animated slide that we created: Life Cycle of a Butterfly. This is an example of creating a model and this task could be implemented over a series of lessons and linked to English and Science & Technology.

Through our research we found that the most useful websites to access simulations and model were ‘The Learning Federation’ http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/ and ‘Shambles’ http://www.shambles.net/. These provided databases of several great digital resources that are diverse and fun. To learn more about this topic, click on the page entitled ‘Task B- Part C: Research into an ICT Application.’