Motivating Students to do Homework

I tried using the scoring system from WIN TV's "Hotseat" as a way of providing feedback to students on their homework performance. The class I tried it with was a low performing year 10 maths class but I expect it will work with a wide variety of classes in secondary schools.
What I did was write a vertical list of scores on the right hand side of the white board to mimic the layout in the TV show. (ie from bottom to top $100, $200, $300, $500, $1000, $1500, $2500, $4000, $6000, $10000, $20000, $50000, $100000, $250000 & $1000000.) I marked the level they were at based on whether they answered the homework questions and crossed out the top levels when a wrong answer was given. They got to the $1500 level showing they weren't performing well. I did create enthusiasm. I'll try it again and see if it translates to the class as a group being motivated to do better at homework.

Getting the Learning Student Centred

EPL day 9 and I have taught 5 classes - all going well.

I have been working on making my classes more student centred (within the limits of the school's resources) than they would normally be. To this end what I have been trying is asking a student to go through a problem on the whiteboard (I have been teaching Y10 Science, Y11 Physics & Y12 Physics). The results were very encouraging in that while a student was doing something on the whiteboard the rest of the class was fully engaged. It was interesting to me that there was nothing high-tech needed to do this.

I started off asking for volunteers and it was usually the smartest or most outgoing students who would volunteer. My MT recommended that I should not ask for volunteers but rather choose a student. I tried this and it worked even better because it was much quicker and it wasn't hard to get several different student to do things in in a series of problems. My MT said I should try choosing the student who was paying least attention. I try it and it worked very well. It certainly got the least engaged student fully engaged and the rest of the class were fully paying attention too. Sometimes the student won't know what to do in which case I say, "you can ask the audience". The result has been that the rest of the class is eger to help. Having all the students concentrating 100% on the work is an amazing thing.

An interesting development was when a student whom I chose to do a problem on the whiteboard copied my presentation style in that without prompting he asked an other student "in the audience" to do the calculations.

These techniques appear to yield very promising results.

Synopsis

Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) for Learning - Synopsis

As someone who started school in 1965 and completed year 12 in 1977, I can certainly say that the available technologies have significantly increased since my time as a school student. There has also been substantial changes in the expectations of students since then. Prior to 1980, computers in Australia were almost exclusively in the realm of universities, government departments and big business. They were not something most children ever got to play with. In 1980, the successful Japanese computer game, Space Invaders spread in Australia as an arcade game - the first major use of computers for entertainment. In 1980 almost no Australian homes had a computer but in 2010 almost all Australian homes have a computer.

Most children now grow up with computers in their home which they voluntarily use regularly. These children are clearly engaged by these technologies and so it makes good sense to use these technologies in their learning.

Information Communication Technologies can offer much more educational effectiveness because they involve the student doing something. Based on Dale’s Learning Pyramid, ICTs which involve students doing something, can result in fifteen times as much information being retained by the average student in the same amount of time compared to them just listening.

My MT, who is 2 years older that me, is also well aware of how effective ICTs can be and has made a point of using as many of these resources as possible. The school has a site licence for Clickview that extends to students and teachers taking copies of the videos home in a file system called “schoolbag”, loading the viewer software and watching them at home. The school also has also a collection of animations and images related to the various classes he teaches which are available to all teachers and students.

I have also taught a year 11 physics class in which the students used Windows Media Player to rip music from uncompressed audio CDs to MP3 files using a variety of compression rates for a variety of music genre. These files were then listened to using Audacity (free audio editing software) which also could produce a spectral plot of the music. The students could hear and see the effects of the MP3 compression algorithm in a context that they were interested in. I began this class with questions and explanations of wave theory but while they were working I had the opportunity to talk to individual students and determine how much they understood as well as explaining more details. The students showed a substantial increase in understanding during this class. I don’t believe that these students could have learned this much during this class without the hands on use of ICTs. This is just one example of how effective ICTs can be and I believe the opportunities are there if we look for them. As a learning manager I will be looking for all the opportunities I can find.

Another example of the use of video is the movie clips I took during the year 12 Physics excursion to the Palmara Dragway during the breaking distance demonstration. While format compatibility can still be an issue, once you have the details worked out it can be straight forward but it needs to be tested on the school equipment in advance before attempting to use you own video in a class. In this example I deliberately edited it so there were no students looking at the camera. Schools can have varying policies on photos and videos in which individual students can be identified. Some schools have parents sign a blanket media release at enrolment or otherwise keep a list of students (if any) whose parents have not agreed to their child being identifiable in photos or video.

Flickr is a resource that I intend to search in the future when looking for specific examples. Sharing photos and video in such an uncomplicated way is a great resource for teaching material. Slideshare is similar in that it is a website for sharing PowerPoint and Keynote presentations. Again a great place to find free resources.

The NetSpot website has Mahara open source e-portfolio software running on it. Mahara supports linking to other sites so quite a substantial e-portfolio can be managed from Mahara. Its has the capability of providing different views of sections of the same material with the ability to tailor and control what different individuals can access. For example, you can allow the Principal of a school who may want to employ you a different level of access to students who you are teaching. Netspot is independent of schools and universities so it can me be maintained as a personal account.

Picnik is an example of a free on-line photo editor. It’s strongest point is that it is free and on-line, making it very easy for students to access and use. While it doesn’t have the capabilities of Adobe Photoshop, it is freely available on-line making it a great resource to know about.

PowerPoint and similar software for producing slide presentations is effective and has become common place in business and in education. Earlier versions of this type of software just handled text, graphs and photos, but later versions can now include animations and video clips. I expect to be using PowerPoint presentations in a significant proportion of my classes.

Engagement theory is based on the idea that students must be engaged in their work to achieve effective learning. (Kearsley & Ben Shneiderman, 1999) It requires that students:-
• Relate - work as a group
• Create - solutions to real problems by extending their knowledge and using it meaningfully
• Donate - this knowledge should ideally be of value to people outside the school
ICTs are great tools for this type of learning. Blogs and wikis are particularly good for facilitating group work. The amount of easily accessible resources available such as wikipedia, google, etc. and specialist material on school based servers mean it is practical for students to own their learning process, resulting in much more effective learning with life long learning skills, better equipping them for the knowledge economy.

References:

Kearsely, G & Shneiderman, B (1999) Engagement Theory: A Framework for Technology Based Teaching an Learning

Presentation Software

Power Point Presentation

Slide presentation software is a good way of presenting information to students.

Waves

View more presentations from Murray Peterson.

This is a slide presentation I produced, designed to introduce wave theory to Y11 physics students. It comprises my text and a photo combined with some images and animations from my MT. I did try to include some video but the software had compatibility problems with the PAL 1080i mp2 file and still had compatibility problems with the file downsized and converted to a 640 x 480 (VGA) avi file.
Most schools are well set up for PowerPoint presentations from a laptop or desktop PC and this is probably the main advantage of using this software.
The concept of a "slide presentation" is not new. Originally, this was done with photographic (film) slides using a slide projector because this was an effective teaching technique. It increased the retention rate significantly for most students and the effect was even greater for visual learners.
To produce these slides, photographs were taken of printed text and diagrams then the film needed to be processed. A rather slow process. Slide presentation software such as Microsoft PowerPoint has made producing a series of visual images much faster and more convenient. Such software can include photos, animations and movies with some limitations.

Online Photo Editing

PICNIK

These photos of a Cicada are demonstrating the difference between the original photo and the same photo enhanced using Picnik. The upper photo is enhanced while the lower photo is the original. The results in this case is subtle, the original photo being quite good to start with - maybe I am biased because I took it? I felt to manipulate this photo any more would detract from it. The main three enhancements used were colour saturation increase (algorithm that multiplies the chroma values by a constant), brightness increase (algorithm that adds a constant to the luminance values) and sharpening (algorithm that multiplies the derivative of the luminance values by a constant). Picnik does not have any image gamma adjustment capability which can be surprisingly useful in many photos. The advantages of Picnik is that it is free and available on the web making it realistic for students to use - a very important consideration. Personally, I have and use Adobe Photoshop CS4. Comparing Picnik's capabilities to Photoshop is never going to be flattering, but when it comes to availability, Picnik is great.

Photo Sharing

Flickr

WithSunday's
Originally uploaded by Lawntech

This is a photo taken by another Flickr contributor - I assume from the lookout above Whitehaven Beach. I posted it to my blog from the Flickr blog posting facility. By doing this all the permissions details were taken care of. ie The photographer was credited even if it is his login name.

NetSpot

MAHARA e.Portfolio

Mahara is opensource software that is run on the Netspot web server. It is designed to manage portfolio information on-line, with selective inividual access cababilities. It is a great way of storing documentation of the work you have done. This is expected to play an ever increasing role in the selection of emloyees in the Education sector.

Mahara is quite capable software, with files of almost any format being able to be either stored on the site or linked to. Its selective access could enable groups such a School Principals, students from a particular class or other individuals to access the information meaning that the actual course material you are using to teach students could be readily accessed and evaluated remotely by a differnt prospective employer.

The shortcoming in most online material at he moment is what sort of access Education Queensland is prepared to agree to both in and out of school. I expect this will be sorted out at some time in the future to provide for more effectiveness in education.