In this reflection, I specifically deal with the use of mobile phones in my classroom by me-the teacher and my students. This implies that any form of smart phone that the learner are capable of buying can be used in learning. 

I have learned that classroom management procedures when using cell phone need to be used appropriately and responsibly. Students should obey the following regulations:

Upon entry and departure of class please ensure cell phones are turned off and stored in your backpack. When cell phones are being used for learning please ensure they are set to silent.

Phones should only be used for learning purposes related to classwork.

When phones are not being used for learning, place them face down on the upper right side of your desk. And when seen in the class using their cell phone inappropriately, there should be provision for peers reminding each other of proper cell phone use etiquette. The teacher has authority to command a student to take and keep the phone in the bin in the front of the room with a post-it indicating your name and class when not appropriately being used. Alternatively, students may work under the guidance of the teacher to develop a policy concerning classroom management with a plan which they should be ready to abide by and enforce.

Let students get past their excitement of new devices so that they can eventually settle and concentrate. Ensure that the students stay engaged/ setting firm due dates of assessment and scaling the assignments of students who finished first. Walk around the classroom and look at what students are doing. The more active and mobile you are, the easier it will be for you to ensure that the students are doing what is expected of them.

Treat devices as learning tools so that the perception of the devices in classroom changes. Students begin recognizing the value of their devices for research and exploring. Using phone boxes to neatly store students' devices. This will make students know that they must put everything with a screen in the box during testing or doing any other activities. Connect students with educational applications only so as to cultivate technology fluency. Students learn how to leverage applications for learning.

I have not yet explored the use of mobile phones in my class but I hope to do so if my school rule and regulations are revised. The only challenge is that of having to convince the school management to allow students to bring their mobile phones to school. Once this hurdle is jumped I would encourage the students to bring mobile phones into my class. 

"How can I 'break down the walls of my classroom' without actually having to incur great expenses or construction costs?"

"How can I 'break down the walls of my classroom' without actually having to incur great expenses or construction costs?"

The answer is very simple

·         Today students are doing so much more with technology;

·         They are emailing, texting & tweeting; Facebook can be useful or detrimental but we can use it for research & for study purposes outside school hours.

·         Use of websites or WhatsApp can connect students from all around the world.It is quite evident that restricted classrooms confine limited parameters on students’ thinking and ways of doing things.

·         We need to redesign new educational spaces in order to release new ways of thinking about learning without necessarily tearing apart the walls of the classroom.

·         The main areas of concern here are:  Setting up learning studios, grouping up students into shared learning area to be able to provide spaces capable of supporting the learners individually, in small groups, as well a whole class and in larger groups.

·         Indeed classrooms should be maintained but still go beyond the classroom walls by creating virtual technology learning spaces as a way of integrating technology in teaching and learning.

·         In Uganda, there is a full ‘University’ of technology which shall remain unnamed here which runs without buildings. Basically the teachers and students spend all their time roaming in bushes and tree shades and on the streets of that town-side, interviewing people and communities to learn what they know and then codify their findings using computer technology, which later constitute their dissertations and thesis.

·        
So, overturning the 100 years of something in education is not easy but we need to open up the education system with technology so that the new generation may not see things like people of yesterday did in their olden days.

·         Old spaces do not consider the entire spectrum of student success. They do not prepare students for a global economy.

·         The proponents of creating new physical learning spaces argue that: it promotes real student engagement and encourages ingenuity since it accommodates the principles of constructivism.

·         For instance, with increased use of computer technology in schools and increased access to learning resources like cyber technology tools and information, students are drawn deeper into a topic than ever before.

·         They can even direct their own learning.

·         To me; this can be done without necessarily altering the physical set up of the classroom.

·          With the advent of the use of technologies in modern learning spaces, teachers use projectors, interactive whiteboards, and computers like desktops, laptops, tablets, or mobile devices, digital cameras, video conferencing, sound and video playback systems, voice enhancement, Wifi, Internet access, and others which need to be attuned to the activities in the learning space for learning to be most effective.

·         On the other hand, mobile technology which is fairly affordable compared to other technology Gadgets can be adopted and used in the classroom and the students would be able to do all the above. However, in the initial stages, emphasis on the virtual learning spaces would be the most affordable more especially mobile technology like Ipads or smart phones.

·         Learning should be limitless. If the ideas around global learning are adopted, every individual on the planet can contribute towards teaching and inspire the next generation.

·          I see a future where there is a mix of educators, students, and professionals in areas of study that can easily be part of a free and open global learning environment – regardless of economic or geographical barriers. Technology enables all of this.

·         Remember; even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a step.

·          Be one in a million to initiate this technology integration move in your teaching.

END

A Reflection of lesson 7.3.4

I am in support of the use of computers in school however access to computers is not yet universal Uganda and in my school. We still use low density labs. Access to computers remains low and it is tailored to computer labs in some of our schools, although this may change as some parents can afford to buy laptops for their children.

There is a general inadequacy of awareness among my fellow teachers about the positive educational value that computer technology can add to our teaching and it is accompanied by various objections in some cases; the use of computers by my learners at school, also serves as an inhibiting factor.

Use of computers and use of modern technology in learning has not yet been institutionalized or mainstreamed within the Ugandan national teacher development systems apart from making it a unit for study as a subject. At the University level, computers and use of social media are not well integrated into teacher education programs offered by teacher-training institutions. So teachers take it as a gimmick in the school society.

However, technology is changing the way in we view learning spaces and the personal learning environment of our students because students surf the Internet, Tweet, use Facebook and come up with lots of learning material that a teacher may fail to find single handed for his learners.

I am adapting to the new ways of technology integration through the use of curation sites and use of the Internet by giving assignments to my students so that I widen their understanding of a given topic under study. 

A wiki is one the technology tools used in collaboration as members of a given group articulate topical  issues. Every member gets a chance to observe what others have contributed and he or she builds from such and an angle to understand better and internalize the concept at hand.

It some times becomes funny while collaborating because some members are too committed to the collaboration forum keep updating the wiki whereas other can choose to become quasi collaborators who virtually contribute nothing apart from editing one or two statements and then save.

In some cases, some members think that collaboration requires when all members are logged in to the internet at the same time and then use it as if it was a Watsapp chat or Facebook messenger. No! its not the case. However any body can log in any time of his convenience and then contribute his issues to a pool of issues from the majority collaborators. 

I can improve the process of collaboration with my design group in the following ways: 

Because the collaborative design is a bit complex and challenging task, and that not all members are committed, I can create a watsapp group since majority today use Android mobile phone so that issues are first written about on a different platform and then later transfer such sieved ideas to the wiki.

I can as well create a rapport by pausing simple questions and then create smaller groups, each assigned a given broken down task that is as well simple so that they get encouraged to actively involve in the collaborative exercise and with useful arguments.    

I have gained a lot from this lesson because all the generated ideas on the group wiki so far from my colleagues were educative and I could not easily come up with all of them given the task alone.

In the mean time I don't think I have anything to change from the collaboration procedure that we are following currently because it is yielding good results-contributing to my understanding of lesson 7 of 'Managing Warmware'  

The design of learning spaces is most vital in today's teaching: teachers today use all sorts of teaching techniques and tools. However, with the increased use of computers and the Internet, Teachers and their learners have been blindfolded and limited to the use of computer Desktop research in classroom or at home but not in the field or visiting the community.

The community in the above respect has been ignored-which has made learning non-beneficial to some stakeholders or the community and rote learning then comes in.

The main question however which remains hanging is that: Can this design of learning spaces permit all subjects taught to reach out to the community?! Examples can be drawn from those Arts subjects like Literature, History or the teaching of languages. 
Even though one may try to reach out to the community by "Breaking the walls", he may not adequately solve both the learners' and or community problems. 

6.9.4 Final Specific Personal Observations About Learning Through Project Based Lessons

What I have learned from lesson 6 I have learned about a project based lesson and I have found out that the most vital aspect in it is the  empowerment of the learner to do all his/her discovery work almost alone. In this respect, the teacher only unfolds the the lesson idea which is in line with the national curriculum and then guides the learners through giving them feedback. In the process of empowering the learners, it becomes clear that critical thinking is applied. On the other side, a constructionist approach to teaching becomes very easy to apply.
I have also learned that project based learning links the learners to the community in order to solve a given problem at hand. In this case, learners become vital to their community since they learn not to theoretically study and live every thing in books without applying it in the daily life. In fact even after school, the same skills obtained by the learner at school can easily be transfered to the field while at work. Project based lessons in my observation can completely wipe out the job seeking problem and instead puts in place job creators. However such a lesson requires a lot of creativity on the side of the teacher in order to wet-up the learners' appetite to research more about an unfolded topic under study by the teacher.

I have learned that the Internet is very vital in lessons which are project based. Even though the scenario to be researched about is a real problem out there in the community, learners can explore the Internet to learn more about cases like that one unfolded by the teacher. The Internet becomes a virtual laboratory where almost every thing can be found.

How what I have learned in this course might influence what I do in the classroom:
Since I have learned that a project based lesson eases my work and that it engages my learners, I will mostly use project based lessons. However from my observation, it requires a lot of time for some topics to be taught since the there are more than one step in the implementation of a project based lesson. Specifically on the side of science subjects which require a lot of observation, it goes to the whole day or more than one day to implement the lesson or to tickle the learners brain to accurately think and come up with sound solutions to a given problem at hand in the community.

The Plans that I have for implementing a project-based approach for a section of work in my curriculum.
I have a plan of lobbying my administrators at my school to fully install in our school Internet connection so that I design my lesson plans in line with the Project approach. I am planing to more often take my learners to the field so that all that is in the curriculum of Uganda is translated into what affects the community and then make my learners solve that very problem in my community.
I have plans of making my fellow teachers at my school adapt the project based approach to teaching. Although some aspects of such teaching are observed at our school in some subject and by some other teachers other than me, it is some times by accident and not by design. If they adapt to the same, I guess I will not find big resistance in its implementation.
  
  

1. I have learned that the project-based evaluation can effectively evaluate the entire learning experience of my student while following objective per objective. 
2.  I have learned that the content comprehension upon the project-based lesson by my students can easily be observed through the rubric results.  Through their presentation of the field findings in their respective groups for example, can depict that they learn how to Peer-assess themselves and make adjustments and improvements in their learning. 
3.  I have learned that the use of technology tools like Zunal at Zunal.com can help to create a Web-Quest and it guides me on how to write an introduction and lesson objectives, the learning strategy in form of a task, but the process gives chance to my students to select Web resource and materials which in turn helps them to work in line with the expectations from the designed assessment sheet/rubric.
4.  Also I have learned that project-based learning is never ending; therefore discrepancies in the whole process are inevitable. But if there are discrepancies in the WebQuest between what I intend and what actually happens during the lesson, it helps me to make appropriate revisions before the end of the lesson and what I include in here is an assessment tool/rubric so  that I get to know whether my students have achieved the learning objectives of the lesson or not. The assessment/rubric has elements for assessing each learning objective. 
5. I actually do not feel that summative assessment like a class test is still necessary once a project is complete because the level and rate of understanding and comprehension is checked both with in the WebQuest and during the study exercise since each stage of the lesson is observed as an independent component of the lesson-this even helps me and my students on how follow constructivist approach of teaching and learning through group work. 

END

The Processing Phase 6.7.4

Project based teaching is one of the most interesting ways through which effective teaching and learning can take place. I have gained an insight into supporting the learning process when I learned that:
A project helps to bring reality to what is being taught. It helps to link to the community or brings the students' imagination that without them, the world would feel a pinch since no body would solve a given disturbing situation to the society. At first, students used not to have any say or could not add any voice to what was being taught and lessons turned or turn out to be boring to the learners. Projects based learning also improves constructivism through collaborative groups and promotes the 21st Century skill. It helps to fully integrate technology in teaching and best swings to the notion that 'If they can not learn the way we teach them, let us teach them the way they can learn'. Therefore all digital tools can be used when teaching or learning by both the teacher and the learners.

To be honest, I have not been using a project based method of teaching. How ever there are some elements of it which I have been using either by coincidence or by error. In this CCTI module I have experienced the Zunal.com website which helps to simplify the teaching work. It is how ever taxing when one is still learning it but after mastering it, it is one of the best ways of designing a project based lesson. The gathering phase more specifically helps to curate sites for students-just like as a parent initiates a toddler  child into the real walking exercise, when he walks then can run-it is exactly the same case that students are then advised to look for more URLS or links to explore more of a topic under study. 

END

Pros and Cons of Pre-researching Resources For Learners 6.6.4

The pros and cons of pre-researching resources for learners are that:On the side of the Pros; there is critical thinking, creativity, sharing collaboration and communication not only from the teacher to his students but also from and among students themselves and among teachers as colleagues working on the project lesson. But it is almost a must to be ethical, to stay safe and manage risks in the digital world, and as well use technology to participate in educational, cultural and economic activities.

Whereas the Cons include; the fact that risk management in the digital world is quite big- as students are advised to look for more sites, they may open hoax URLS or misuse the web in for opening unbecoming media sources which leave digital footprints. Also if the students are too lazy, they may only utilize what the teacher gave them and do not look for more sources of information on the web

The advice I would you give to my learners when implementing a WebQuest if I require them to do additional research is that they should get information that is:

a)    Current with accessible URLS from the web,

b)    Credible information,

c)    Accurate/relevant information and it should be in line with the findings from the field or meet community needs.

What I have discovered is that technology simplifies teaching, helps to exchange ideas and provides more information beyond what the teacher would have had if he used analogue ways of teaching.

END

6.5.4 Role play as a form of learner engagement

I have learned that role play as a form of learner engagement increases the students' level of eagerness and keenness to participate through observation. It also produces empirical evidence of a change in learner behavior since each individual at least throws a building block to knowledge through a notion of 'think as you apply'. Leaner engagement through role play requires a checklist and once it is tightly followed or revised where need be, systematic results are expected at the end of the lesson.

Role play helps to prepare quality of questions from the teacher in the task phase or at least students may pose out quality questions. This does not only help them to discover new phenomena but also replenishes the teachers' knowledge since every situation is a learning situation.

For sure I have ever engaged my learners into role play but using 'try and error' and some times doing it ineffectively due to the exorbitant number of students we teach in our class rooms. And some times the topics under study my prove to be difficult in posing the 'role play' technique when engaging learners. It can be done by simply unfolding the task and then assign each individual or small groups of individuals roles which at the end tailor as a group and come up with a new creation to the body of knowledge. 

Challenge Phase 6.4.4

There is no project without a challenge and therefore the challenge phase forms the core of the project-based learning. Learners understand most if they are challenged, more especially if they can add a voice to what is being taught to them. in this case, a teacher has to be more creative in order to meet the learners' reasoning and experience/mental processes.

The introduction phase unfolds every thing that the lesson will be about but most importantly, even if the introduction is captivating and meets the learners' level of interest and understanding, they may give out wrong answers or wrong findings in case the task set by the teacher in the challenge phase was not clear to them.
It actually feels good when you capture your students' attention, imagination and interest towards your lesson or project. It then means that you the teacher together with your students have not only contributed to the existing body of knowledge, but have also solved and existing problem which was facing the community. 

6.3.4 Awebquest in relation to the 21st Century thinking skills,

Initially I never had any idea about what a webquest was and how it looked like. However after reading in this CCTI course and through the Internet exploration, I found out that a web quest has 6 core elements of which if well followed, the learner and the reader can get to comprehend the learned content and be able to get a permanent change in his or her way of understanding and articulating issues.

Such steps include: the introduction which must be captivating to the learners, the task, and the the process/ procedure to be followed. In some cases, the process is usually put in the teacher/ instructor's page in case one is using www.zunal.com to prepare the webquest. The resources form part of the webquest but some times they may either be extracted from the Internet or from the books that were consulted in the process of the webquest formation.

The evaluation follows and it is advisable to develop a rubric in order to guide the learneroabout what is expected from him or her. then the conclusion sums it up.

I used http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=325229 to prepare one webquest and I found out that several 21st Century skills are embedded in the process of creating a webquest. They included all the items of the research methodology right from the constuctivism, up to the creative higher order thinking skills. These would come in in the part of collaboration and communication,as the learners use computers and the Internet to embrace technology in their learning.

MY PROBLEM-SOLVING PROJECT IDEA: A REFLECTION OF 6.2.4

My initial project idea has the title: CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF LANDSLIDES ON COMMUNITIES IN KYOKYEZO.

Some of my initial ideas about how I will engage my learners in this project:

•         Me-the teacher, together with my colleagues in the Geography department (fellow teachers) and my students of Senior 5 will visit the Kyokyezo community area in Kabale District which is prone to landslides first.
•     We will take pictures using digital cameras or smart phones since phone are allowed to students by our school while outside school in for field work.
•        They will explore the area, measure the landslide scars in order to come up with the temporal and spatial dynamics of landslides by the use of a GPS machine and a tape measure. I will guide my students on how to use DNR GPS MINNESOTA, a GIS computer program which is freely provided on the Internet, to generate the Kyokyezo area shape files, together with Arc Map version 1.0.1.
•       They will interview the community members to get the first hand information about the causes and effects of landslides. Then they will generate mitigating measures to the problem together with some community members.
•       My students will create simple photo grids and also capture small videos from the field and then share them via watsapp, Facebook, or any other social media. ‘If they cannot learn the way we teach them, let us teach them in the way they can learn’.
•    The area is prone to landslides and its immediate assumed causes are mostly the reckless human activities.
•         My class of Senior 5 will study various causes of landslides and the associated effects and then come up with possible solutions together with the Kyokyezo residents in order to help them out of the landslide problem.

What the project is about:

•   In order to understand landslide generating processes by my students, there is a need to characterize factors that underpin landslide hazards in Kabale district.
•   This can also provide an understanding and easy approach for the planners to design policies and strategies needed for landslide risk reduction options that can minimize the social, economic and environmental losses and property destruction due to landslide occurrences on communities in the district. 
•   Our study will produce a landslide vulnerability map and clusters out hotspot areas that are prone to landslide hazards.
•   This is expected to give an opportunity to the Planners to come up with a professional cost effective way of zoning areas prone to landslide hazards.
•   The recommendations of this study are expected to concentrate on providing control and mitigation measures which are needed for designing and formulation of policies and strategies for proper addressing of landslide hazard reduction in Kyokyezo-Kabale district.

The selected curriculum objectives include:
By the end of the lesson, students should be able to;

• Understand and describe the concept of landslides correctly.
• Measure, quantify and explain the types of landslides at Kyokyezo.
• Characterize the causes of landslides on the slopes of Kyokyezo ridges.
• Evaluate the damages from landslides to the community.
• Find out the coping mechanisms for the effects of landslides in Kyokyezo area.

The Specific 21st Century skills and higher-order skills are. 

•          Students will be given brain teasing critical thinking questions to solve the problems at hand.
•           Communicate in order to understand and spread ideas.
•          Students will collaborate through working with others
•          Students will create high quality work at the end of the project and then present a report.

The study will involve a field tour to the area-South Western Uganda
and it will follow the ethos of the revised ASSURE lesson plan.

END

6.1.4 ESSENCE OF PROJECTS

The Seven Essentials for Project-Based Learning

Every project-based learning has basically seven essential pillars which make the learning meaningful not only to the learners but also the general public; since the students are supposed to serve the community when they complete school time. The seven essentials are as discussed below:

1. A need to know;

  Teachers can powerfully activate students' need to know content and actually make real world products by launching a project with a doable entity that engages interest and initiates questioning. A doable entity can be almost anything:  a field trip, a video or a lively discussion. In contrast, announcing a project by distributing a packet of papers is likely to turn students off; it looks like a setting for some busywork to come.

Many students find schoolwork meaningless because they don't perceive a need to know what they're being taught. They are unmotivated by a teacher's suggestion that they should learn something because they'll need it later in life, for the next course, or simply because it's likely to be on the coming exams. With a compelling student project, the reason for learning relevant material becomes clear. the student develops a feeling that;'I need to know this to meet the challenge I've accepted'.

2. A driving question or challenge;

  A good driving question captures the nucleus of the project in clear, compelling language, which gives students a sense of purpose and challenge. The question should be provocative, open-ended, complex, and linked to the core of what you want students to learn.

A project without a driving question is like research work without a problem statement. Without a problem statement, a reader may fail to pick out the main point a writer is trying to make; but with a problem statement, the main point is unmistakable. Without a driving question, students may not understand why they are undertaking a given project. 

3. Students' voice and choice;

A project-based learning is important in many ways but mostly, in terms of making a project feel meaningful to students, the more voice and choice, the better. 

However, teachers should design projects with an element of student choice that fits their own style and students.

 learners can as well select what topic to study within a general driving question or choose how to design, create, and present products. As a core to the project, teachers might provide a limited menu of options for creative products to prevent students from becoming overwhelmed by choices. However, students can also decide what products they will create, what resources they will use, and how they will structure their time. Students could even choose a project's topic and driving question and the teachers remain as typical guides to the students.

4. The 21st century skills;

Projects give students opportunities to build such 21st century skills as collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and the use of technology, which will serve them well in the workplace and life. This exposure to authentic skills meets the second criterion for meaningful work. A teacher in a project-based learning environment explicitly teaches and assesses these skills and provides frequent opportunities for students to assess themselves.

5. Inquiry and innovation;

Students find project work more meaningful if they conduct real inquiry, which does not mean finding information in books or websites and pasting it onto a poster.

 In real inquiry, students follow a trail that begins with their own questions, leads to a search for resources and the discovery of answers, and often ultimately leads to generating new questions, testing ideas, and drawing their own conclusions. 

Real inquiry comes innovation where a new answer to a driving question, a new product, or an individually generated solution to a problem. The teacher does not ask students to simply reproduce teacher or textbook provided information in a pretty format.

To guide students in real inquiry, teachers refer students to the list of questions they generated after the doable entity. A teachers should guide them to add to this list as they discover new insights. The classroom culture should value questioning, hypothesizing, and openness to new ideas and perspectives.

6. Feedback and revision;

Formalizing a process for feedback and revision during a project makes learning meaningful because it emphasizes that creating high-quality products and performances is an important purpose of the endeavor. 

Students need to learn that most people's first attempts don't result in high quality and that revision is a frequent feature of real-world work.

In addition to providing direct feedback, the teacher should guide students in using rubrics or other sets of criteria to critique one another's work. 

7. A publicly presented product;

Schoolwork is more meaningful when it's not done only for the teacher or the test. When students present their work to a real audience, they care more about its quality. 

Once again, it's "the more, the better" when it comes to authenticity. Students might replicate the kinds of tasks done by professionals—but even better, they might create real products that people outside school use.

 I sincerely acknowledge with special thanks, the works of John Larmer and John R. Mergendoller

END

A reflection for 5.8.4 Semayobe Sulaiman_ Podcast about instructions to learners of Geography in High School

5.7.4 Reflection about the Game-Based teaching and Learning

·         Games are so interesting to both teachers and students. Learners get excited over games and it helps them to retain the content that they had previously learned-learners just synchronize the content with the icons or symbols of the game on the computer screen.

·         A computer game-based learning unit consist of both beginner level and more robust or advanced level. A game can be played either individually or collaboratively in groups but it is better for teachers to tailor their lessons to beginner levels of computer based games in learning.

·         The teacher sets his lesson plans based on a computer game play in class where he challenges students to complete tasks that will prepare them to master the learnt content.

·         Learners may be trying to figure out where and how to create their own game or how to play the existing one set by the teacher.

·         Apart from Kahoot, Facebook has more games like investigating a crime scene and many others. For example students may be given a task of calculating times from interviews that suspects gave in order to see which suspect is most likely to have committed the crime. These are engaging, game activities to have students learn and/or practice using content.

·         These standards for the computer games usually cut across one-two disciplines, or just in a single discipline. So the teacher should make sure that he delineates only the Objectives that suit his subject under study at that time. This keeps kids engaged in different purposes for learning and makes the lesson lively.

·         Instead of pre-teaching, the teacher teaches the material or facilitates the learning of material as students are engaged in the computer game activities. The overall theme and mission is presented to the students, along with the computer game in order to create engagement to learners and then accomplish the lesson. During this computer game based lesson, revision or addition skills may also need to be taught, but again, there is a need to learn those skills and content.

·         Games pose many challenges to both teachers and students but the main challenge however is a combination of pride and panic on the side of a given teacher who has no strong mastery of the Game.

It is quite challenging that some teachers fail to create or set the computer game; but if not so, then the Internet is intermittent with some computer games like Kahoot.

·         It is also challenging to work upon each student in a class when not all computers are not connected to the Internet. But the end result is that Game based teaching and learning would be the best way to go in this Century for any teacher.

·         Computer Game-Based Learning demands a mastery of the content/ subject matter. In order to complete the game, students will need to learn content and skills to do play it.

Feel free to drop a comment.