Culminating Statement

Education is the key process of achieving sustainable development. However, in order for formal education to contribute to sustainability, traditional systems and methodologies need to be re-orientated, that is our teaching pedagogies need to be re-orientated to service the students of today’s world (Paas 2008). Students can not be expected to learn in today’s world with yesterdays skills.
We as educators of the 21st Century need to provide a new means of interactivity and simulation, therefore offering opportunities to improve learning and making new ways of understanding possible.

As eduactors, we feel the unequivocal urge to educate and inspire our students. Whether it is to inspire them, motivate them to learn, or work harder. Our ultimate objective is to engage students in the learning process and demonstrate the endless possibilites in the learning process. Now here lies within the question, how do we engage these students both within and outside the classroom?

Having completed this subject and my practicum, I have come to realise much about today’s students. They have a strong desire to be connected, engaged and communicating with each other. Thus, it made me consider, how am I as a teacher going to establish this connection, this necessity to use technology whilst engaging these students in their learning within the classroom? The answer after much research is this – Mind Mapping/Concept Mapping through the use of Inspiration and Blogging to engage the students, whilst ensuring higher order thinking and a deeper understanding of the subject content.

I found the following literature (Gebhardt 2001, Williams & Jacobs 2002) to be extremely relevant in broadening my understanding of mind mapping and blogging. The literature is highly informative with practical advice to ensure e-, learning in education. The literature demonstrates ways in which to incoporate these teaching pedagogies within the classroom.


As I am a PD/H/PE Teacher I have realised the importance of utilising technology within classes, particularly for revision and preparation for examinations. I feel that both mind mapping and blogging would be particularly useful to Year 12 students revising for the HSC. Both mind mapping and blogging of the subject content would challenge students, engage them into higher order thinking, deeper understanding of the subject content and broaden their use of metalanguage. Furthermore, the nature of blogging allows for the creation of legitimate warehousing of captured knowledge, and archieval for later retrieval (Baush, Haughey & Hourihan 2002).

Kennedy (2003) demonstrated that blogging assisted with students literacy levels as they become more aware of both their writing and audience.
Blogging has several advantages to students; some of these include students having the capacity to engage in a collaborative activity where knowledge can be shared and where an opportunity for reflection and debate can be established (Donaghy 2008). The use of technology within the classroom also contributes to student’s ability to become self-regulated learners.

Finally, technology is a tool to enhance teaching if used appropriately. It is integral when utilizing technology within the classroom that it is used to facilitate students learning, as noted in Takeaway Teaching and from the literature by Tufte (2003). It is essential that all teachers facilitate technology within their KLA’s. That is, students are engaged in the content and being challenged to think independently to create meaningfulness within the lesson. Technology needs to facilitate student’s literacy development whilst encouraging higher order thinking of the subject area.

In conclusion, I have come to realize that I need to embrace technology within the classroom and utilize to it’s full capacity to create meaningful learning and enable students to transfer what they have learnt at school to other aspects of their lives.


References

Baush. P, Haughey. J., & Hourihan, T(2002) The educated Blogger: Using blogs in the classroom to improve literacy. AACE Journal, 13(2), 91-98.

Donaghy. P. (2008). 10 ways to use your edublog to teach. Edublogs

Gebhardt A., & Harrell, P (2001). Inspiring Creations. High Plains Regional Technology in Education Consortium

Kennedy. A. (2003). Weblogs to learn. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. 10 (2), 115-125

Paas, B. (2008). Sustainable teaching for a sustainable world. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 2 (3)

Tufte, E. (2003). PowerPoint is evil. Wired. Issue 11 (9)

Williams J.B, Jacobs.J.(2004). Exploring the use of blogs as learning spaces in the higher
education sector. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology. 20(2), 232-247.