Teaching and learning had gone through a lot of changes in the past few decades. This is mainly due to the development of new technologies and availability of new teaching methods. Now a day’s, in schools, they are also teaching how to think. Some of the skills improvement methodologies and web based technologies used in teaching and learning are DeBono’s Thinking Hats, Wikis, Blogs, Weebly, Flicker, Podcasts, Moviemaker, Prezi, Google Docs, Google Earth, Dipty and Museum Box. The following essay discusses Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT analysis) of the technologies mentioned above. It also discusses whether or not these technologies should be used by teachers in class rooms.
In the past students has to go to schools or collages directly, sit in the class, listen to lectures, go to library and do many thing, which consume a lot of time. But now, with the globalisation and computerisation, students and learn whatever they want whenever they want and where ever they want. All they need is a computer connected to the Internet. This is all because of the development in technology. More and more schools and colleges are adapting to new technologies daily.
WikisWikis are websites where people can create and share collaborative knowledge. A group of people can add and edit ideas, thoughts, information and knowledge. Now a day’s Wikis are being used in many sectors (SWSI Wikis, 2011).
Some of its strengths are that, it allows in creating collaborative knowledge, many people can share their ideas, thought and information and people can correct other peoples work (edit) if anything is wrong in it. Weaknesses are that, anyone can edit or delete things from Wikis. Anyone can edit the information provided by other. Editing can only be done by one person at a time.
It provides very good opportunities for teaching in schools and universities. Collaborative creative skill can be developed by using Wikis in teaching. The main threat in using Wikis is that anyone can edit or delete our work. The information provided in Wikis will not be trust worthy if proper referencing is not used.
I strongly recommend using Wikis in teaching. If I am a teacher, I will give students a new topic and tell them to contribute to that topic in a Wiki. So, that everyone can read others ideas and can respond to them or make new ideas. (http://s0167710.blogspot.com)
BlogsBlogs can be defines as a type of websites in which the content will be changing or updated frequently. People can choose a topic and write about it and get responses from other on the topic (SlideShare, 2011).
Blogs are user friendly and easy to create and maintain. Not much technical knowledge is needed. Anyone can create a blog and publish it. They can get responses from viewers in the form of comments. They can be edited only by the blogger who created them. But a lot of time must be spent on creating and editing Blogs. And the blogger must acquire a set of writing skill to impress the viewers. Creating and maintaining a blog will be a good experience for students to improve and share their knowledge. It also improves communication between students (bloggers) through responses. The problem with Blogging is that sometimes people copy others work and say it is their work. And some people give unnecessary comments in the blogs. (http://s0167710.blogspot.com)
WeeblyIt is the perfect free website for creating classrooms websites, e-portfolios, and websites for small projects. Students from all age groups can use this. It has many easy tools like drag and drop editors for creating websites and Blogs. As it has excellent privacy setting, teachers can create websites and keep restrictions on who can see it, who cant seen it, which students can edit it and they can also manage student’s accounts like, adding a new student or deleting old students and so on.
Some of the problems with Weebly are that, there are many tools and this may confuse students. They may spend a lot of time editing thing then learning new things. It also asks for payment when more students are added. Apart from this websites can be created and managed in Weebly by teachers for students easily. Pictures, videos, texts and many things can be simply dragged and dropped to create websites. This gives flexibility to teachers on what they want to teach students. (http://s0167710.blogspot.com)
FlickerFlicker is a free online website for hosting pictures. It is mainly used for photo sharing. People who want to share photos with their friends and family can upload photos to flicker and share the links with them. Flicker allows people to comment on their friends photos. It also allows to link photos from Flicker social networking websites.
In can be used in teaching where there are a lot of photos to be used in class. This photos can be uploaded into Flicker and students can see and use them, where needed. This will be mainly useful for arts and photography students to store and share their work online. Art works from others can also be used in classroom to teach students.
Podcasts are a series of audio or video files which can be downloaded from internet. These can be downloads to smart mobile devices. These can be used by teachers to provide students with their lectures which can be heard or seen whenever they want. As soon as the teacher releases the next lecture, students can get it on their mobile device.
This will be good for students who are studying advanced education or in research or medicine related education. As they can get updates on latest study material in the form of audios or videos. This allows students to perform multi-tasking at the same time they are listening to the lecture like working on the concepts they are hearing. As all the students will be committed to their work in advanced studies this will make their work easy and reduces unnecessary time travelling to collage, which they can use for something else. It also helps teachers to bring their lectures to all students where ever they are.
The problem with this is that, it is not same as teaching in the class for the teachers. They don’t know who is listening, who is not listening and how much students understand what they are teaching. The traditional teacher student interaction won’t be there with podcasts. So, it is better if podcasts can be used for providing extra material for students than actual course contents. (http://s0167710.blogspot.com)
Google Docs and Google Earth
Both these are services products of Google. Now a day’s everyone has a Google account and knows how to navigate through it. This makes it easy to work through these services. Google Docs allows people to create and share documents online. These documents include word documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and so on (Google apps, 2011). This feature allows students to open their documents when ever and where ever they want. They can even edit Microsoft word documents online without using Microsoft word. There are a wide range of services provided along with Google Docs. It is fastest, easiest and good way of storing and sharing documents. If I am a teacher I recommend all my students to have their important documents or assessment documents in Google Docs as they can be safe there and students can used then when ever and where ever they want them.
Using Google Earth, all the places on earth can be seen in bird eye view and many cities in street view (Google Earth). It can be accessed by downloading and installing it on to our pc. There will be photos and videos linked to places on Google Earth by many users. Teachers can show the pictures of any place and explain thing about them to their students. It will be funny and exciting experience for students to see places without going there. (http://s0167710.blogspot.com)
Like every service Google Docs and Google Earth also has their strengths and weaknesses. When using Google Docs the quality of the documents will change and sometimes the format also changes. It will be difficult to navigate and find proper setting while editing and saving documents. In Google earth the quality of the images at some places will be very poor and most of them are very old photos. The common problem with both is that we need internet connection for accessing them. (http://s0167710.blogspot.com)
Teachers can use Google Docs for storing and sharing documents to students. And students can save copies of their work in Docs, so that they won’t loose data and can access them whenever they want.
There are also other technologies which teachers can be used in classrooms for teaching like:
- MovieMaker, to create their own short movies from pictures and videos for students.
- Dipity, to organise pictures, videos or any web contents based on timeline.
- Museum Box, to collect and organise any type of files for researches, discussions or when arguing about any topics.
In conclusion, I recommend teachers to use technologies in classrooms. Technologies make classes more interesting for students and helps then in improving their creative collaborative thinking skills.
References:
Abdullah, 2011, URL: http://s0167710.blogspot.com
Google Apps 2011, URL: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en-au/business/docs.html#utm_campaign=en-au&utm_source=en-ha-apac-au-bk-google&utm_medium=ha&utm_term=google%20docs
Google Earth, URL: http://www.google.com/earth/index.html
SlideShare, 2011, URL: http://www.slideshare.net/enterprisezweinull/swot-analysis-of-blogs-an-enterprise-perspective
SWSI Wikis, 2011, URL: http://socialnetworking.swsi.wikispaces.net/Wikis#Anchor3
Weebly, 2011, URL: http://education.weebly.com/ed-features.php
WikiSWOT, 2011, URL: http://www.wikiswot.com/SWOT/4_/flickr.html
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