Supporting presentation of conceptual understanding such as concept mapping

 1. Descriptive Reflection:

In many cases teachers found it difficult to ensure the conceptual understanding of their students to certain topics. So, they use different ways to support their presentations in order to achieve the conceptual understanding of their students. Concept mapping is one powerful tool to support presentations. It is  a tool for assisting and enhancing many types of thinking and learning. 

It is also a diagram that depicts suggested relationships between concepts. It is use to organize and structure knowledge.

It is use for different reasons like:

1. Stimulate the generation of ideas.

2. To aid creativity.

3. Brain storming.

4. Communicate complex ideas.

5. Enhancing metacognition.

There are alot of programs that can be use to create concept mapping like:

* Inspiration, MindMaple, MindView, Prezi and so on.

2. Critical Reflection:

I like using concept mapping technique when I study any lesson because it help me to summarize all the lesson in simple and creative way. It help me to facilitate the understanding of ideas and represent the relationships between ideas.

When I use concept mapping I memorize things easily ans information still in my mind for along time.
I do not know why most teachers don't use it. It is very helpful for them and their students.It will facilitate their teaching process and supporting their lessons. Also it will help their students to best understand conceptual information and knowledge.

I study how to create concept maps with Dr. Ahmed in Introduction to Educational Technology course. The doctor tell us that when you want to create concept map follow these steps:

1. Select what are the key words or phrases.

2. Rank the concepts from the most abstract to the most concrete.

3. Cluster concepts that function at similar level.

4. Arrange concepts into a diagrammatic representation.

5. Link the concepts with lines and proposition.

I do concept map for ASSURE Model using Inspiration software. Actually it is very helpful software for creating concept maps. It give you opportunity to add pictures inside the map.

This is the link to my concept map:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_VWbCfnMUnVTZhVndMM0gxM0U/edit?usp=sharing

In the future, as a teacher I will use concept mapping to support my presentations and lessons to ensure my students conceptual understanding. Also I will teach them how to create and design effective and helpful concept mapping using different technologies. I will also recommend other teachers in the school to use concept mapping to facilitate their students understanding for concepts and complex ideas. Also to encourage their students higher order thinking skills.

Mobile Learning In The Classroom

 1. Descriptive Reflection:

Mobile learning or M-learning is modern way of e-learning to support the learning process through using mobile devices like: Smart phones, Tablet PC, PDA (Personal Digital Assistant), Handheld computers, Notebooks and other devices.

I took this lesson before in E-learning Strategy course in SQU. The instructor tell us that M-learning present unique features compared to other e-learning forms. These features are presenting personal, collaborative, situated and interactive instruction. It also provide on demand learning. I mean it can be anywhere,anytime and in any pace.

It has alot of benefits in learning which are:

1. Flexibility of learning that can be anytime, anywhere and in any pace.

2. Flexibility in term of shape, weight and can be used for different learning objectives and learners style.

3. Support different types of interaction like: student-student, student-teacher, student-machine, student-content interaction. Also the interaction can be synchronous and asynchronous.

4. Suitable for different learning approaches, individual, collaborative and self-learning.

5. Deliver faster communication and collaboration.

6. Support different formats of multimedia.

7. Inexpensive compared with other technologies like laptops and PCs.

But still it has some challenges like:

1. Technical challenges:

- Memory limitations.

- Its screen size,connectivity and battery life.

- Content security and copyrights issues.

- Risk of sudden obsolescence.

2. Social and educational challenges include:

- Assessment of learning outside the classroom.

- Supporting learning.

- Accessibility and cost barriers.

- Personal and private information.

- No demographic boundary.

1. Critical Reflection:

I think mobile learning can improve the quality of learning outcomes and provide different improvements in the educational setting. But I do not recommend for fully m-learning but I see blended learning is better. I mean it is better to integrate m-learning with the traditional learning in some courses. This is to avoid the limitation or challenges of m-learning.

It is the first time for me to use mobile in learning in this course. We discussed about the cyber safety issue for one week. You can see some pictures about the discussion here.

I like this experiment because it help us to learn in anytime and anywhere. The learning happened in all the day not only during the class time. I feel free when I participate. It is really nice experiment. Also it gives the shy people good opportunity to participate more than in the class setting.

With mobile learning you can learn from different applications that it has like: e-books, instructional games, glossaries , messages and so on. But because of its limitations I think more teachers not prefer to use it in learning process. Like its requirements of other devices, need for technical support, screen size of the mobiles and the need for internet connections.

I do presentation about m-learning to Individualize Instruction course and the instructor like it very much and said that the mobile learning is one of the most appropriate technologies to individualize learning. But unfortunately my laptop was disrupted last semester and I lost most of my files and also this presentation.

In the future, I hope the use of mobile learning will increase especially in higher education setting because of the high capabilities and features of mobile devices that continue improving and developing. Because of its ease of use and availability I recommend the educational institutions to plan to integrate the mobile learning in the learning process to improve its outcomes. As a teacher I will use mobiles in some lessons to change the routine of learning and to benefit from the capabilities and features of mobile learning. I will use it mainly in discussions and sharing ideas about some topics. I will do the best to ensure the good using of media in learning not for other purposes like entertainment or fun.

Supporting Teaching by Creating Presentations

 1. Descriptive Reflection:

Presentations are away of communicating ideas and information to a group of audience using different types of technologies.

Effective presentations contain at least four elements. Theses elements are:

1. Content => The information that people need.

2. Structure => Logical beginning, middle and end.

3. Packaging => It must be well prepared.

4. Human Element => Presenter and Audience.

Presentations seems as effective tool in teaching because it engaging students to participate in the classroom setting and attract students attention through using different visuals and sounds.

There are many presentation tools used to even create or deliver presentations like:

* Prezi, MS PowerPoint, Camtasia studio, Captivate, slidshare, Leeshare and so on. 

2. Critical Reflection:

I see presentations as effective teaching tool because of its features in encouraging participation and attracting attention. But unfortunately, in our schools there are few number of teachers who use this tool in teaching. I don not know way that?. They only use the traditional way 

of teaching through lecturing . Also those few teachers who use presentations in teaching they use it in boring way. They must have best knowledge in how to design good presentation with use of different types of multimedia. The teacher should integrate the multimedia into their presentations to create good and attractive presentation that best deliver the information in attractive and appealing way.

In this course I learned how to create effective presentations and how to be good presenter. Also in Introduction to educational technology course I learned that. I learned how to choose appropriate colors, fonts and visuals. Also how to highlight the important ideas. In presenting I learned also that I should use different tone of voice, be confident, use eye contact and asking questions to attract attention.

I use prezi before I take it in this course to create presentation about self confidence to Educational Counseling course with my group. Prezi is helpful tool to create presentations with sounds, videos, pictures and different format.I like it and I interested in using it. You can see my prezi presentation from this link:

http://prezi.com/zm-6ly5tynrl/self-confedince/

I also used slidshare to share my presentations and report assignments before in two course Distance Education and Evaluation Technology courses. Slideshare is also effective tool to share presentations to be available to everyone. These are examples of my slidshare work:

http://www.slideshare.net/omannooor/summary-of-two-evaluation-studies-26896435?ref

http://www.slideshare.net/yusraalalawi98/distance-learning-26750557?ref

http://www.slideshare.net/yusraalalawi98/action-model-29600638?from_search=12

In the future, I will used presentations to present the content and information to my students and I will implement all the principles of creating effective and good presentation.  I will use different tools of creating presentations to attract students attention and engage them in learning process. Also I will teach my students how to create  effective presentations and give them a chance to present in front of the class to gain some confident and implement the features of good presenter. I hope the ministry of education do training workshops to the teachers to train them creating and preparing presentations using different presentations tools.

Digital Storytelling

1. Descriptive Reflection:

Digital storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. It is a a short form of digital media production that allow everyday people to share aspects of their life story. 

Digital stories can be instructional, persuasive, historical, or reflective.

Some learning theorists believe that as a pedagogical technique, storytelling can be effectively applied to nearly any subject.

Constructing a narrative and communicating it effectively require the storyteller to think carefully about the topic and consider the audience’s perspective.

It's for teachers, to teach different learning styles and connect to students’ interest in technology, and, for students, to improve their ability to use online content and electronic tools to communicate ideas and implement learning and personal expression.

Digital stories give students an opportunity to experiment with self-representation, telling a story that highlights specific characteristics or events, a key part of establishing their identity.

Creating and watching digital stories has the potential to increase the information literacy of a wide range of students. Moreover, digital stories are a natural fit for e-portfolios, allowing students not only to select representative artifacts from their academic careers but also to create compelling resources that demonstrate the students learning and growth.

2. Critical Reflection:

Actually I like writing stories from I was in grade 9, I feel that is very attracting and helpful to share knowledge and information especially with children in kindergarten and elementary school. It will engaging them and improve their higher order thinking skills like imagination and problem-solving.

I think it is also benefit for higher education students especially when they have some distance courses. The instructor can create digital story to describe the whole lesson and share it to them. In this distance courses I think they also can create personal storytelling to identify themselves to the other course members and also to the instructor. 

There are different tools to create digital stories like, wikis, blogs, photostory, animato, storybird and so on. In this course we use animato online software to create stories. I like it. It is very easy to use.

You can see in this video how to create digital story using photostory program.

Actually I use photostory to create short story in Instructional computer course. You can see it in this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfxjMaKqWQ8

In this course we also learn how to create story board to plan and organize what you want to design. We use it in designing Active Inspire lesson. We first draw the slides that we want to design it and then decide on colors, font, size and visuals. You can see my group story board from this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1_VWbCfnMUnb2dkdjk3U1B2NVk/edit?usp=sharing

In the future, I will use story telling technique in some lessons to engage students and catch their attention especially with elementary students. I will teach them different tools to create stories and let them choose one of them and create short story about themselves. I hope the teachers and students increase the use of digital storytelling because I see it as powerful tool to share information and ideas and also to ensure the understanding.

Technology in Education

1. Descriptive Reflection:

There are a variety number of technologies in the world but some of them are instructional technologies. Instructional technologies mean the design, development, utilization, management and evaluation of processes and resources to be use in learning. And the technology in education is the improving of educational performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technologies.

Educational technologies includes, hardware such as PCs, laptops, smartphones, overhead projector, visual

equipment, whiteboard and so on, software and internet applications such as wikis, blogs and activities.

It has alot of advantages in educational settings like:

1. It change the roles of students and teacher. When students use technology they become active rather than passive in educational setting. Also, the teacher will be facilitator rather than the center of education or the only source of information.

2. It will increase the motivation ans self-Esteem of the students.

3. The students will be  able to acquire an impressive level of technical skills.

4.Encourage students to cooperative and work collaboratively.

5. Help to accomplish some complex tasks because of the support and capabilities of technology.

6. Improve students attention and increase the use of outside resources to improve the learning.

2. Critical Reflection:

From my experience I actually benefit alot from using technology in teaching and learning processes. I use it in these areas:

1. I use it for searching for information from different online sources.

2. Using different media and technologies in my presentations like, overhead projector, computers and presentations software.

3. Using technology to interact with my teacher and friends to share information and receive feedback.

4. Get course materials through e-mails, moodle, social network and storage devices.

5. Create, doing and submit my assignments.

6. Solve problems for scientific subjects like math, physic and chemistry through its related software. 

Also in this course we used different types of technologies such as, white board, Active inspire, prezi, storytelling programs, whatsapp application, wikis  and now I use blog to write this reflection. Actually I like all these technologies and I feel it help me in many areas.

Now a day regarding to the different type of technologies the world become as small village. You can share information, connect with others from different places and so on. It make every thing possible and easy.

In the future, I will use different types of technologies that I see it helpful and benefit in the teaching and learning process. As technology teacher I will also describe the  educational technologies to my students and inform them about its benefits in their learning. I recommend the educational institutions to increase the use of technologies to benefit the teaching and learning process and improve the performance of learning outcomes. The ministry of education also should try the best to provide schools with different types of technologies that appropriate for improving learning.