TED Talks

I decided to use this video from TED Talks as my subject because I sometimes fear preforming in front of people when playing rugby or the drums so 'How I beat stage fright' caught my eye and I felt a sense of good will after watching it. The video is about Joe Kowan, a songwriter who didn't have the confidence to show anyone his songs until the age of 30, when he decided it was time to put his fears behind him and show people his work. He uses humour to entertain the crowd but still gets his point across and I found it very inspiring on how he overcome his problems and fears, becoming a new confident person which allowed him to do what he wanted to do.  The song he uses to give his story is very funny, and you can tell that the audience are all intrigued.  His positive attitude inspires you to believe in yourself, and no matter how hard you may think something can be, you can still achieve it if you put your mind to it.

Blog Review - A New Approach

I've decided to write my blog review on "A New Approach". I decided to read and review this blog as I like to be up to date with all the new gadgets and believe that technology is going to have a massive impact on education in the future. Technology is used so often that people need to be educated to keep up to date with new changes and new techniques. Although this blog was initially made in 2007,it's still updated very frequently so there's always something new to look at and the information is up to date. It has plenty of tags on the right hand side which can be useful if you're looking for certain posts and even has a radio which you can turn on whilst scrolling through which adds a nice touch. Each post tends to have the same font style and similar size, with headings being bolder and larger to make the layout clear and easier to read. Each post contains media which is relative to the blog whether it's a video, app or an image, keeping it interesting whilst giving information at the same time. There are also has some fun and interactive applications available to use such as voting polls. The blog helped to give me ideas for my own posts and I would definitely recommend it to others that are interested in technology or are thinking about making a blog. A blog provides you with tools and method of uploading almost anything you need to display information and is a great way of creating a project of work, a good way to represent a business and also a useful app to use for making a diary or a page for your own entertainment.

Here's a link to the blog that's been reviewed; http://mandy-newapproach.blogspot.co.uk/

Glog

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A Glog is useful when different media is needed on one page. Here I have used text, images and a video from youtube to provide information, personal advice and examples of a chosen topic. Glog could be useful to teach as it's easy to function and children would be fascinated by the different media available for them to look at.

My Photo Story

My idea for my photo story came from looking back at the photo's taken on my first holiday away with the lads. Hundreds of photos were taken but I tried to summaries the holiday by using a small amount of images that were taken throughout the week.

Twitter

Twitter is a social network that is used by millions of people. You can publicly post whatever you like to say and can also add images and links, and it allows you to see what other people post. Unlike Facebook, you don't add people as friends and send requests to be signed up to each others profiles. On twitter, you simply follow someone and their tweets will then appear on your home page with the rest of the people you follow, unless the person has made their profile private. Twitter also has other features which allow you to communicate and keep up to date with society. When another person makes a tweet, you can "retweet" and/or "favourite" it. Retweeting it will add it to your personal page, and it will be shown on the home page for the people following you to see. Favouriting it will put it in a list with your other favourites, which are only viewable if you click on someone's favourite list. You can also reply to peoples tweets which easily allows you to have conversations and send messages back and forth to each other similar to texting. This means that everyone can see the conversation as they are tweets you're making on your personal page and they will show on he home page of those following you. However, Twitter also has a feature called "Direct Messaging" which means you can directly message someone and they'll be notified about it and be able to read it and reply without noone else being able to see it.

 Advantages of twitter;
1. Able to follow celebrities and other profiles which you're interested in
2. Keeps you updated with what's going on
3. Can communicate with people and see tweets and photo's which you may find interesting or funny
4. Free way to share images and to communicate with people all over the world
5. Often find interesting information and can learn alot of new things from others

Disadvantages of twitter;
1. People can get hold of your personal information and use it for
2. Can easily get addicted
3. Bullying can be popular on social networks
4. Stalkers can use twitter to find out what people are doing and where they may be

Vygotsky's disagreements of Jean Piaget's theories

Vygotsky made his theories around the same time as Jean Piaget who was another theorist who also specialised on cognitive development. Like Piaget, he believed that children are actively involved in constructing their own learning, discovering and developing of new understandings. However, Vygotsky was a social constructivist where was Piaget was a cognitive constructivist, so he placed more emphasis on social contributions to the process of development, whereas Piaget emphasised on self-initiated discovery. A lot of Vygotsky’s theories contradict those of Piaget as he did not believe in the stages and content of development. Another disagreement was on the order of the process. Vygotsky argued that learning is an aspect of developing, so he thought social learning must come before development, whereas Piaget’s notion stated that children’s development must precede their learning.

Why use a Voki?

I decided to use the 'Voki' Web application because I believe that it can be very useful for education. A Voki can help to keep pupils interested and focused as it adds something different and is also interactive, allowing children to have hand on experiences. An app like this is great for teaching younger children, a cartoon character that they can listen to and can personally edit will instantly capture their attention. Apps like these are simple to use and are available to anyone. Trying to learn a lot of information can often be difficult and a child can easily lose interest if the learning style stays the same, for example reading a book or listening to a teacher talk for an hour can often bore a child and it's very unlikely that they will actually learn something. Adding something like a Voki to the content can make a big difference, and will help to improve a child's computing skills at the same time.

Voki

Wordle

Wordle is a useful way of emphasising words and helps to summarise content providing an alternative, more appealing approach to bullet points. In education Wordle can be used by teachers to stress key points to pupils, to quickly recap on lessons and can also promote self reflections, preventing you from going off-track and sticking to main factors.  Pupils can also benefit from using Worlde to make brief points on topics, promoting self reflections which prevent the child losing track and allows them to illustrate information as a picture.

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Memory

Memory is our ability to store, retain and to be able to recall information in our brain. Just by hearing or reading information it doesn’t mean that you’re learning, you have to be able to remember the information in order to have knowledge of it. Chunking is a strategy used to help us remember things in groups. This can be very useful and effective but it also has it’s negatives. For example, chunking is often used to learn the alphabet but by only remembering it in a certain order, it makes it difficult to remember certain parts of it without going through the whole pattern e.g we all know the alphabet, but would all struggle to do it backwards because we have all learnt it using the chunking technique.

Systematic procedures also help to improve memory. An example of this would be using a sentence to help spell a word, such as Billy Eats Cakes And Uses Six Eggs to spell the word because. This method is also often used to remember patterns, such as the colours of the rainbow and the planets of the universe.  The only negative of this method is that people rely on it, and are unable to remember the pattern without using this technique.

Creative Development

Creative development is created through aspects such as responding to experiences, expressing and communicating ideas, developing imagination and exploring media and materials. Children benefit from free play and unstructured art activities, but left entirely to their own devices children’s play and artwork can become routine and repetitive. To solve this problem children need stimulation and creative problems to solve. Adults can help children to develop their creative skills through play by providing activities and creative problems to solve, creating stimulation.

'Creativity emerges as children become absorbed in action and explorations of their own ideas, expressing them through movement, making and transforming things using media and materials.' (Early Years Matters, 2007). An example of an activity that is used to help creative development would be allowing children to use clay to make their own model of an object. By letting the children make their own individual model, they develop physical manipulation and physical actions by squeezing, moulding and cutting the clay. They also share skills and knowledge with each other which helps them learn and improve on their problem solving. This activity helps the children learn because they enjoy the sensory qualities and they are able to have fun and use their own creative ideas whilst making the models. 

Reference;

http://wales.gov.uk/topics/educationandskills/earlyyearshome/foundation-phase/?lang=en

My Education Journey

I started off at Gowerton infants school as it was in my local area. I then moved on to Gowerton primary, which was when I started to play sports such as foootball and rugby. After this I went on to Gowerton Comprehensive where I sat my GCSE's and got the qualifications to go on to sixth form at the school. I then had the choice of what A levels to take and by passing these courses after two years I was able to join Swansea University.