Placement week

Animation

I really enjoyed this weeks seminar, and looking at other peoples post they did as well, it is a lot of fun and there is a lot of different applications you can play around with, to customize your animation, i am thinking about some how linking my assignment project into the animation, so it gives me a good reason to use it again. We used a program called '2simple 2animate' this program enables you to create your own animations. It can help develop and encourage individuality and creativity in users of any age, it has different user levels for every age group.You can draw, capture and scan images, then click play to see how your video is coming along.

We also looked at a website called http://delicious.com/ It is known as a 'social bookmarking website' this is where you can create your account and then you can keep, share and discover the best websites.

Research Week

I went home for my research week, and like most peoples blogs I've read, i left most for my work to the last couple of days as well. During this week off we were set tasks in most subjects, for ICT we had to have a look at and start work on your wikis (pbworks), and start thinking about our assignments and what we want to do it on, at first i was a little unsure of what we were set, but i do think of myself as quite creative and have always been good at art and design so hopefully this should be a good project for me. I have had a few ideas but as still thinking them though.

Wikis

This week we had to work on our 'wikis'. My groups subject was 'Education of today in the third world countries' and my individual topic was 'What is education like in the third world countries?'. For this i had to use my own knowledge, and research all i could about the subject. My main goal was, trying to make the information interesting and exciting so it was easy for other to learn, the best way to do this i found was by adding pictures and video clips to my page. These break up the large paragraphs of writing and they say a picture speaks a thousand words.
This is the link to the wiki http://es1b2011.pbworks.com everything on it is worth looking at but to excess my page click on 'present' then 'Education of today in the third world countries' and then click on 'What is education like'.

Reflective Learning: Part Two

The class has been looking at two reflective learning documents, the first of which was titled 'blogs as a reflective learning tool'. It explains how blogging can help in many different areas and subjects, for example:

• Interaction
• Communication
• learning
• Education
• Technology

It also writes about how your blog supports reflective learning, it helps you to evaluates and reevaluate your work, it reinforces your knowledge of the subject. It looks a two particular examples. Kolb and Gibbs.
Kolb 'there are many examples where experience alone is not sufficient for meeting particular learning goals.  In such situations, it seems to work better if the raw experience is packaged together with facilitated exercises which involve thinking, discussing, or creatively processing cognitions and emotions related to the raw experience'.
This is a diagram of Kolb's cycle it can be entered at any stage, but all the stages must be completed in the correct order to learn. The main aim is reflection, but the learning must be tested in new situation. The learner must make a link between the theory and the situations, by planning, acting out, reflecting and relating it about the theory.



Gibbs has 6 steps to aid reflective learning. Gibbs main different is he takes into account feelings and emotions, which can play a very important role in learning.



His 6 main points are:

• Description: needs to be factual, with relevant details and aims.
• Feelings: reactions and feelings at the time? Did you feel change? If so why? How did they effect your actions? Looking back have your views changed?
• Evaluation: what was positive/negative? What made you think? How do you feel now?
• Analysis: needs to be in depth, fully examine and explore the different factors effecting the situation, plus look at change and develop these ideas.
• Conclusion: sum up what you have learnt, the main factors effecting the situation, and what improved.
• Action plan: what would you do differently, What needs developing or planning. What resources are needed and where would you source them.

Reflective Learning

Today lesson was mostly about reflective learning, we started by opening up the website https://bubbl.us/, it is a website set up for the sole purpose to create mind maps online in and easily and colourful way, which you can print and share with others, it's a great way to brainstorming and mind mapping online. We were using the subject 'reflective learning'. As a group we discussed the different issues surrounding the subject, with the uses of the mind map, we were able to link together the related subjects, because a lot of the topics could be linked together the mind map helped simplify the task. This website made the task interesting with the different features and colour, plus helped with the understanding and is a good way to remember the information.

www.pilkipedia.co.uk

We chooses this website because of the large amount of information available, the easy layout and the good links. The information is set out in a simple and friendly manner, and is written in a way that is similar to Karl Pilkington. It covers almost every aspect of Karl's career and life, and most of the information is backed up with a link to further information. The website is updated regularly, and can only be updated by members of the website. So the information should be reliable and reputable, all the facts and quote mentioned in the website are all backed up by the offical 'sky' website.
 

First post

My names James, im currently studing Education studies at Swansea. I have just started and only in the third week.