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.