Usefulness of Blog

Blog is a very useful and interactive tool that can be used by teachers in his/her teaching approach to add variety into lessons or learning for students. Content, multimedias such as videos, interesting links to website can all be incorporated into a single blog for easy access by the students. Moreover the blog could also provide interaction platform for exchanging comments, ideas & feedbacks among students or from teachers to students.

In summary, the blog is a good platform for teachers to facilitate interactions with students as well for teachers to put up important information for students in an interesting manner to engage their learning. However there are some restrictions with blog; (1) teachers have to constantly monitor the blog to ensure that the comments made by students are valid and they are not misusing the blog and (2) documents cannot be shared on the blog therefore teachers will have to find other sources to do file sharing.

Homework for Session 5 - My Preference on the Multimedia Design Presentation & Justifications

I would prefer to learn from multimedia design, version, 2. With the presence of the pedagogical agents, it incorporates images, interesting conversations and movements in the multimedia presentation. This makes the presentation interesting and will make me want to know more of the content. In addition, it will provides a more lasting impression as compared to the presentation without the agents.

The first constraint for incorporating the agents will be the synthetic voice projected from the agents. The voice may be unclear at times but it can be compensated by increasing the volume or to review that page again. And second constraint will be that the creator must be equipped with technical skills in order to incorporate the agents effectively.

Pedagogical Approaches

I have learnt various pedagogical approaches in the third session of ICT course. Choosing the different pedagogical approaches carefully for different teaching needs will definitely enhance teaching effectively. And students will have more opportunities to be exposed to experiential learning in which it will make learning more meaningful and fun. For example, using Problem Based Learning will encourage students in narrowing down to single problem and finding multiple solutions to it. And in this process, students get to learn independently and be resourceful. Another pedagogical approach example is Knowledge Building, the students will be able to learn from each other as this approach requires teamwork. Creative ideas can be generated in this process and this will encourage learning of a topic beyond the textbook context. This process will help to enrich and broaden the student’s perspectives.

Views on Engaged Learning

My opinion towards engaged learning will be that learning will no longer be a one way dissemination of information from educator to learners. Learners will get to participate and be involved in the process of learning. Participation and involvement will greatly encourage learners to learn faster and remember the content longer as it requires learner to explore and think deeper into the content. And through engaged learning, educator can also receive immediate and direct feedbacks from learners. With the immediate and direct feedbacks, educator will then be able to make modification to the teaching content and method accordingly within a short period of time. This engaged learning process will make learning more effective and fun.