Diana Pérez Marín Information and Communications Technology in the 21St Century Classroom
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Diana Pérez Marín Information and Communications Technology in the 21st Century Classroom Diana Pérez Marín Information and Communications Technology In the 21st Century Classroom Managing Editor: Aleksandra Mreła Language Editor: Mark Judge Published by De Gruyter Open Ltd, Warsaw/Berlin This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license, which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Copyright © 2014 Diana Pérez Marín ISBN: 978-3-11-040144-8 e-ISBN: 978-3-11-040145-5 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. Managing Editor: Aleksandra Mreła Language Editor: Mark Judge www.degruyteropen.com Cover illustration: © Thinktock/YanLev Contents Acknowledgment VIII 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Overview of Bloom’s Taxonomy 3 1.2.1 To Remember and Understand New Knowledge 7 1.2.2 To Apply and Analyze Knowledge and Competences 7 1.2.3 To Evaluate and Create 8 1.3 How to Use This Book 9 1.4 Exercises 10 1.5 Solved Exercises 11 1.6 References 13 2 To Remember and Understand New Knowledge Using Online Educational Resources 14 2.1 Introduction 14 2.2 Education Portals 15 2.2.1 Definition 15 2.2.2 Features 18 2.2.3 Taxonomy and Samples 20 2.3 MOOCs 25 2.3.1 Definition 25 2.3.2 Features 26 2.3.3 Some Repositories of MOOCs 28 2.3.4 Using a MOOC in Coursera Step-by-step 29 2.4 Google Resources for Education 32 2.4.1 Gmail to Communicate with Students 34 2.4.2 Google Drive to Create and Share New Resources On-line 39 2.4.3 Google Calendar to Organize Your Class Events 53 2.4.4 Google Video to Find Videos and Google Book to Find Book 56 2.4.5 Google Sites to Create Your Own Website and Google Blogger for Blogs 58 2.5 Dropbox 63 2.6 Exercises 67 2.7 Solved Exercises 67 2.8 References 70 3 To Apply and Analyze Knowledge and Competences Using Formative Evaluation Tools 72 3.1 Introduction 72 3.2 Hot Potatoes 73 3.2.1 Introduction and Installation 73 3.2.2 JCloze 75 3.2.3 JMatch 81 3.2.2 JQuiz 85 3.2.3 JCross 91 3.2.2 JMix 94 3.2.3 The Masher 97 3.3 JClic 99 3.3.1 Introduction and Installation 99 3.3.2 JClic Player 101 3.3.3 JClic Author 105 3.4 Exercises 115 3.5 Solved Exercises 116 4 To Synthesize and Evaluate Using Assessment Tools 120 4.1 Introduction 120 4.2 Delicious 121 4.3 Webnotes 126 4.4 Prezi 132 4.5 Animoto 136 4.6 Exercises 139 4.7 Solved Exercises 139 5 Future Trends (I): Pedagogical Conversational Agents 142 5.1 Introduction 142 5.2 Overview of PCAs 144 5.2.1 PCAs Taking the Role of Teachers 144 5.2.2 PCAs Taking the Role of Students 148 5.2.3 Pcas Taking the Role of Companions 151 5.3 Let’s Practise with the Willow Agent 154 5.4 Taxonomy: How to Choose Which PCA to Use 157 5.5 Exercises 159 5.6 Solved Exercises 159 5.7 References 160 6 Future Trends (II): Mobile Devices for Education 162 6.1 Introduction 162 6.2 Hardware 163 6.2.1 Tablets 163 6.2.2 Digital Whiteboards 166 6.3 Software 168 6.3.1 For Tablets 168 6.3.2 For Digital Whiteboards 172 6.4 Exercises 175 6.5 Solved Exercises 176 6.6 References 176 7 Conclusions 177 7.1 Introduction 177 7.2 Synopsis Table 178 7.3 Troubleshooting 181 7.4 Exercises 182 7.5 Solved Exercises 183 List of Figures 186 List of Tables 193 Index 194 Acknowledgment I would like to dedicate this book to my loving husband. Iván, my days and nights are full of light thanks to your company. I give thanks every morning for the opportunity of knowing you, and for being able to share my life with you forever and always. And, many thanks to our beloved unborn baby, for being with me during the hours of writing, and rewriting, patiently listening to the continuous typing. Hopefully, when you are bigger, you will be able to read what your mummy wrote while you were still a little embryo. I love you both very much. I would also like to dedicate this book to my family and friends. Thank you for always being there with me since I was a little child. Thanks to my mum and dad for educating me, for loving me, and for allowing me to become the person that I am now. Thanks also to my sister, Sonia, who is one of the biggest presents life has brought to me. My life would have not been the same, without you. Special thanks to my University, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, which has been a second home to me. Thanks for giving me the opportunity of working there as a teacher and researcher. My lifelong passion has been, and continues to be, the desire to teach. With this book, I hope that teachers, and future teachers, find the tools that make this passion of teaching fruitful and an experience so wonderful that your students get the same excitement that you feel teaching your subject. Finally, thank you to you, my reader, because this book is useful as long as you read it. Please, do not only read, but practise using the tools, feel the passion of teaching, apply the knowledge, and enjoy! 1 Introduction 1.1 Introduction Let me start this book by sharing with you my experience while I was watching the video “The history of technology in Education” by SMART1. I enjoyed that video very much. Please, watch it, and if you cannot watch it, at least consider Figure 1.1 with one of the snapshots of the video. Figure 1.1: A snapshot of the video with its storyline I imagined myself teaching in the Pythagoras Academy in 510 BCE just talking to my students. I would have questioned them about the purpose of nature, language, music, arts, math, etc. I would have waited until they all had answered and shared their insight and ideas. Later, I felt sad because I imagined that it would have been just 20 students, while most of the population lacked a proper education. Moreover, I felt really sad when I realized that there was no technology, as simple as a notebook or a textbook, so that the students could take and share notes, or even register in some way the knowledge, to transfer and enrich it. If you were not there listening, you missed it! Later, according to the video (in America), there were the first public schools in 1600. I felt happier because Public Education meant more students who could come to class, and there was basic technology for them: a blackboard, some chalkboard slates and books. But then again, I felt sad, because I imagined I would have made my students repeat a hundred times the same sentences so that they memorized them by heart. Is that the purpose of teaching? 1 See the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFwWWsz_X9s (last visit on June 30th, 2013). I assume basic knowledge of how to use Internet, if not please read Cadenhead (2002) a step-by-step guide to start using Internet. © 2014 Diana Pérez Marín This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. 2 Introduction Three hundred years later, the audiovisual age started. This was a huge change in general, and as usual, such changes affect education too. So, I imagined myself entering the classroom with my overhead projector, asking the students what they saw, and discussing that with them. I felt happier as a teacher with pedagogical goals, and with some technological advances at hand to enhance the teaching experience. Again, the technology is seen as a tool, and if, as a teacher, you learn how to use it, it can feel really good to have such tools! Moreover, there are other ways for students to gain and share their knowledge: listening to radio programs, watching TV and reading books. Some researchers tried to use TV as a powerful teaching medium, according to the old Chinese proverb: Tell me and I’ll forget show me and I may remember involve me and I’ll understand Television makes “showing” possible, it was more than talking and listening, and you could even record the programs with a video recorder, using VHS tapes to watch the programs several times. Even, at the end of the decade, with the first computers, you could start watching some information on your computer screen. Later, it would be possible to record your own CD or DVD and watch it whenever you liked. Can you see a problem with that? It seems wonderful, but read again the Chinese proverb; we are just at the second line, what happens with the most powerful line: “involve me and I’ll understand”? Watching television or a CD/DVD in your computer are passive activities, you are a spectator whose opinion is not sought. You do not need even to think! You are not asked to get involved, so how can you get involved? And then, the Internet appeared! It was such a big revolution, first for the military and researchers at universities.