Documenting the challenges of implemening ICT in schools in South Africa.
What is crowd speaking?
Most readers of this blog have the same thoughts about the use of technology in education. Don’t you feel that it should be made a reality in our schools?
To give expression to our thoughts we may individually blog or tweet – we may even retweet a message when it resonates with us. But our individual voices are soft and it frustrates us when we feel that we are not heard.
If a crowd of us speaks in unison, perhaps this will make a difference.
This is where “crowd speaking” becomes a possibility. How can the crowd of us like-minded people speak together? Social media provide the platform, and a tool like Thunderclap can concentrate our individual voices into one massive thunderclap.
It works like this: one person posts a message and others are then invited to allow Thunderclap to share that message on their behalf at a specific time. The impact can be great. For example, if 100 people agree with my message and give consent that it be sent to all their Twitter followers or Facebook friends, and each one of them has 100 connections, the message will go out to 10 000 people simultaneously! What a powerful amplification of my small voice!
As an experiment, I have posted a message on Thunderclap. Please participate, and ask your contacts to do the same. Click here, and follow the instructions. If this trial works, it may prove to be a valuable tool to get our message broadcasted … and hopefully heard!
Free tool to help you to create an interactive classroom
Since the launch of the Beta version of Qurio at the annual African Education Week conference in June 2013, EDGE Campus has been hard at work in simplifying this tool even further. More features have been added, making Qurio applicable to a wider audience.
The new Qurio will be launched towards the end of October 2013.
What is Qurio? It’s a web based tool that simplifies audience interaction and data collection by allowing anyone to create and distribute digital tests, quizzes, opinion polls and surveys with ease. EDGE Campus claims that, compared to the tools currently used for these purposes, the new Qurio is simpler to use and works across a wider range of devices.
Qurio has been made freely available to all school teachers; in addition it’s making steady headway into the lecture environment where it is being trialled on a number of campuses as a virtual clicker/audience response system.
Lectures, events, conferences, workshops: none of these have to be one dimensional any longer. Owing to Qurio’s low data consumption and ease of access via any internet connected device, speakers can easily interact with their audiences and receive instantaneous feedback.
A unique Qurio Code distribution system links each respondent to a particular Qurio through either a URL, or a short code. This makes Qurio well suited for digital and non-digital communication environments, such as print, radio and television. It’s just a matter of sharing the code with the audience, either by writing it on a blackboard, putting it up on a screen or sending it out via email or social media.
EDGE Campus has created additional resources to assist users in understanding how it works. “We realized that eyes light up when folks see how simple it is to use Qurio. Because we haven’t completed our demo-mode yet, we decided to create some explainer videos and a few documents to show people how awesome it is without having to sign up and trying it for themselves,” says the developer.
While their passion lies in education, EDGE Campus realizes the value that Qurio can add to a host of other fields and they encourage anyone who may be interested to give it a try.
If you want to find out more about Qurio go to their Keep It Simple website, where you will also be able to sign up to be notified of the October launch.
You can connect with EDGE Campus on Twitter (@edge_campus) or on Facebook (EDGECampusHQ) or send an email if you require further information (info@edgecampus.co.za).
[This is a guest post, written by Gareth Heuer of EDGE Campus.]
Will clickers make your classroom interactive?
Clickers – also called voting devices – allow learners in a classroom to respond simultaneously to questions posed by their teacher. Some teachers use cell phones (already in the pockets of learners) for the same purpose. It is claimed that harnessing technology in this way results in an interactive classroom.
How does it work? The teacher asks a question – typically a multiple choice one – and allows learners to use a clicker or cell phone to select the correct answer. The results are collated and if a data projector is available, a graph can be displayed immediately, showing how many selected the correct answer.
Clickers can be a useful continuous assessment tool in classrooms. But does the use of this technology transform the classroom into an interactive one? Not necessarily.
The mere fact that children interact with a piece of technology does not guarantee that they are interacting with the learning material. When the teacher displays the results graph and learners see whether they were right or wrong, and how many in the class were right or wrong, this also does not guarantee interaction; it is the same as handing a marked test paper back to learners.
But when the teacher uses the information gained from the voting exercise to reason with the learners, interactivity can happen. For example, she may ask those learners who chose the wrong answer for the reasons for their choice. Likewise, she can ask the learners who chose the correct answer to defend their choice. In this way a lively discussion between learners will be triggered, with the teacher guiding the discussion so that the learners can draw correct conclusions. Now we have an interactive classroom!
The value of technology in this case is that of a catalyst for interactivity. In the same way as certain chemicals act as catalysts to let other chemicals react with one another, voting devices can spark off interactivity. Interactivity happens between learners and learners, between learners and the teacher, and between learners and the learning material. The technology is only the catalyst, but all depends on how the teacher uses it!
Make your classroom interactive by using a visualizer
Teachers, do you want to make your classrooms more interactive? A visualizer may be just the piece of equipment that you require.
A visualizer – also called a visual presenter, digital visualizer or a document camera – is a digital camera which, connected to your computer, allows you to display images through a data projector. It functions in the same way as the old overhead projector, but with all the additional benefits that modern technology offers.
You can use a visualizer to display a page of a textbook, allowing you to zoom in, highlight text and make annotations. Whatever is done, can be saved; it is no longer necessary for learners to spend valuable time to take down notes. A good visualizer will allow you to record the work you are displaying, as well as your voice, so that the entire lesson can be made available for revision, or for those learners who could not attend class.
At times you may want learners to see a real item – not a picture. This can be a challenge if the item is very small, particularly if you’re teaching natural science or biology and you want learners to observe details that can’t be detected with the naked eye. Some visualizers have a microscopic function … just imagine how useful that would be in a class. Learners can remain at their seats while you zoom in on detail; it is no longer necessary for them to queue up to get a turn looking through a microscope.
Have you ever done a science experiment while forty learners are crowding around you to see what’s happening? Doing the experiment on the display surface of a visualizer allows learners to view the experiment in real time from their individual desks. Snapshots at certain stages of the experiment can be taken and then incorporated in later discussions, future lessons or revision sessions.
Whereas a scanner limits you to displaying two dimensional images, a visualizer allows you to display two or three dimensional items. When you rotate or move objects, learners can see the details of the object from different angles.
With a document camera in the class, any object can be viewed as the opportunity presents itself – in this way spontaneity is added to your classroom … and isn’t this what interactivity is all about.
Why the fuss about tablets?
Tablets are taking the world by storm. You see them wherever you go: on airplanes and trains even elderly people use them to read novels and magazines; in coffee shops men in suits are glued to the small screens while sipping their latés; house wives watch movies on them; and children use them to play games.
Tablet hype is gripping the world. Some claim that this technology innovation will be the one that will revolutionize education. Others are less enthusiastic about the possibility that tablets will enhance education and point to previous technologies, such as laptops and interactive whiteboards, which have failed to bring about radical changes in teaching and learning.
Regardless of how we may view tablets, we can’t deny the fact that they are here. And that is what the fuss is about … tablets are here by popular demand.
Production and sales of tablets are outstripping that of PCs and laptops. Tablets are becoming more affordable, while their capacity and functionality are increasing with each new model appearing on the market. The number of tablet owners and users is growing at a staggering speed.
It is impossible to ignore a ubiquitous device. We may not like what car emissions are doing to the environment, but we can’t ignore cars when we want to cross a road; likewise, we can’t ignore the ever-growing presence of tablets on the planet.
Technology fascinates people, particularly younger ones. Since tablets will fall into their hands at one or other time, we may just as well explore how to use them for educational purposes. Cell phones and computers have already been found useful as teaching and learning tools; a tablet lies somewhere in between and should therefore be useful too.
Look past the hype factor and see tablets as potential education tools. Discover the ways in which they can help to transform dull school rooms into exciting learning centres.
For more information about tablets click here.