Delicious.com & Animations

In the lecture this week we created a book marking site at http://delicious.com . This site is for you to write down useful website you may need to remember. For example I added the blogger website to my list and also the wikispace website. This website logs any websites you add so you can recall certain websites that you may not have remembered and it also allows you to share your websites with other users.

We also created animations in the lesson. We used a very simple animation application called 2simple 2 animate to do this. I firstly created a growing flower animation where the flower would gradually grow from a simple stem into a blossoming flower. We then tried to make things a bit more complex (however using simple ideas) and use the slightly harder version of the application to created a quote or a saying. I attempted to create the saying 'Two heads are better than one'. My slides consisted of arrows pointing to two heads with a happy face, a tick added to this page finished by one head on its own with an unhappy face. The class then had to guess what saying the animation was showing, which they did successfully :)
I found the application very fun to use and relatively easy. It's a great way of visually communicationg an expression, idea or concept and will be very useful if I decide to use it in my project.

Update

Last week we learnt how to use Wikispace properly. My group got together and created a folder within our class folder. We looked at the different areas of Education in a third world and included websites and pictures to show to our class the next lecture.
Throughout other areas of the Educational Studies course we have been expanding deeply on the different areas of Education and my mind has been opened up to the vast directions of research within Education. I will be able to use what I have learnt so far in my Uni course on my weeks placement at a Primary school in 2 weeks time. I will even be able to look at aspects of ICT and how schools incorporate ICT within Education.

Wikispace

As part of the ICT section of my University post we had to create a group Wikispace and answer 'What education is like today in a third world country?'. I found the site really easy to use and very useful. It is good if you need to complete work in a group as all the group members can edit what has been written. Although not everyone found it as easy to use, the step by step video we watched before hand on youtube showed everything we needed to use the site. You can also add pictures and website links to for everyone to look at. If there needs to be a group task to complete in future and my group is unable to meet face to face, wikispace will make it easy for us to share and develop our ideas.

Evaluation of presentation

http://digi-promotion.com/#axzz1b8UCTOTl

We decided to do our presentation on Japan as our group had a lot of interest in the Country and the tourist attractions surrounding it. We came across the this site after typing it into google and searching through to find the most relevant and reliable website. We also used tools such as 'easywhois' and the use of the colon (:) in google to check if the website was relevant to what we wanted. The last update on the site was very recent which makes the site relevant and up to date, making the information reliable to use. A nice feature that this website has was the langauge help. It told you some basic conversation sentences in Japanese so that any tourists wishing to go there could practise a bit of the language beforehand.
The website however did not have a search engine to the search the website itself which could overall improve the sight.
Overall this website was very useful and reliable to use for tourist information to Japan.

Reflective Learning

I can't say that I have ever consciously thought about my own reflective learning, however sometimes I think I do it without even knowing about it.
Reflective learning looks at the different areas of learning. A good reflective learner looks at areas such as what they are learning, how they are using what they are learning, the strengths and weaknesses of their learning and also how they can improve and build on their learning process. This can help them to focus on their development as an effective independent learner and by thinking about their learning and writing things down, it can help to clarify thoughts and emotions.

I reflect on my own learning by talking about what I have just learnt to others. For example sometimes I talk to my friends about the new things we have learnt after a lecture and what maybe could have been better, without realising that this is actually a part of reflective learning!

Any form of reflective learning should be involved in order to achieve the best in any area of learning :)

Reflective Learning Brainstorming - Bubble

My brainstorming mind map for 'Reflective Learning' using a website 'Bubbl.us'. This would be a very useful website to use with my project.

My first blog :)

My name is Laura and I am 18 years old. I am currently attending Swansea Metropolitan University studying Education with the hope of becoming a Primary School teacher at the end of it :) I have always wanted this career as I love children and want them to have a positive school experience just like I did.
I have amazing family and friends!!

I've never blogged before so i'll leave it at that for now! :)