Journal
Wednesday, 2nd September 2009
Today I went to the University of Melbourne to get my DEECD ethics documentation signed. I've posted it now so that should all be underway. I've added an extra year to the submission date for my proposed data collection to extend my options.
Sunday, 6th September 2009
I've had a very productive weekend. On Friday night I printed out the Storyboard circle (menu) and then used a pencil to write some basic guidelines on each section to keep as a working document to organise my thoughts on a conceptual level. This simple idea really helps me sort things out. An example of this is the Literature review which I've decided to reserve for issues that I feel are important like digital portfolios and student engagement.
Last night I decided to expand my Research methodology section to include three sections with corresponding graphics to demonstrate their interconnectedness. These sections are research, teaching and learning.
I've also decided that my first new animation should deal with literacy and contractions in particular.
Friday, 11th September 2009
Inspired by my media wall idea, I've moved all of my files into one giant folder called "Media all". This enables me to back up everything together from one folder. Smaller sub-folders like Storyboard can be backed up more frequently without having to include other large files such as my films.
Sunday, 20th September 2009
Friday was the last day of the school term so now I have two weeks off. We had staff drinks after work at a local bar and some of the teachers were talking about ICT. A comment was made that children are often lacking basic skills such as cutting and pasting. This teacher was talking about actual cutting with scissors and pasting with glue. She felt children were missing out on basic skills like this because there was so much pressure on them to be learning academic content from a very early age. This has informed my implications section where I'm now suggesting that students should be making things. When it comes to ICT they should be authoring multimedia.
I've also coined the term Web 2.1 to suggest that technology is often embraced as a gimmick or fad.