Reflection on using classroom 2.0

Using Web 2.0 technologies to research the effects of drugs

This lesson was for my GCE in applied ICT students. The session was tutorial and the subject was on ‘the effects of drugs’. This was my first lesson back after Christmas so I was eager to get started. For this session I had planned something new that had never been done before at the College or with my learners. This made me take the ‘lets see how it goes approach’ as I was unsure about what was going to happen, or how the students would respond. Normally my group of learners are reluctant to try anything new, but in this case they seemed really interested in what I had to say and what was going to be happening in the lesson.

The lesson began with an introduction where I explained to the students what they would be doing in the session. I explained they would be working in small groups collaboratively all using their own PCs, but working on the same document/video/podcast. This first caused some confusion with the students trying to work out how this would be possible. Before the lesson started I had prepared a list of 5 Web 2.0 websites and I asked a member from each group to pick one of the websites to use. I deliberately picked 5 websites that I thought the students would not know much about. When each group had picked their website I explained what each of the sites were and what I wanted each student to do. The first group of students were set the task to create a collaborative mind map using www.mindmeister.com on different types of drugs and the effects. I explained to the group that they would be working together and I wanted each member of the group to contribute to the mindmap collaboratively. I also explained to the group that they must communicate with each other and let one person work on the mind map at a time to save on confusion. The second group was set the task to record a podcast using www.podomatic.com on different types of drugs and the effects. Again I explained to the group that they would need to work together and I wanted everyone to contribute to the podcast. The third group was given the task of creating a collaborative presentation using googledocs on the different types of drugs and the effects. The fourth group was given the task to record a video of themselves speaking about the different classes of drugs and also the effects. The group needed to then upload the video to www.youtube.com. The last group was given the most important job which was to put everything together using a wiki. I had decided to use www.pbwiki.com. I explained to the group that it was their job to communicate with every other group and ask them to upload their activity to the wiki. By the end of the session the students had created a massive resource on one wiki, including videos, podcasts, Mind Map and presentation. The resource is totally interactive and available from anywhere where an internet connection is open. I would say that the lesson was a success with all learners engaged and actively learning. Since this session, my learners have been constantly contributing to a wiki setup for one of their units. This can be viewed at www.gceunit6.pbwiki.com

I have had mixed feelings about doing this kind of session as I know that with it been so new the learners might not respond as I would like. Most of my learners I used to doing the same thing all the time so in this session they would be doing something totally different and away from their comfort zone. I was feeling scared that maybe the session would not work as I planned and the learners would not understand the task I had set them. I was also worried about the learners working in groups and I was thinking maybe they would become distracted from the task in hand.

As with any new idea, there were good and bad points. I would say that the good points outweighed the bad points, although that does not mean to say the bad points don’t need looking at and reflecting on. Some of the bad points about the session were some of the websites not been accessible using a student account, for example, the podcasting website. To overcome this problem I let the students use my computer with my log on. I was unsure about doing this at first but with out this, the learners would not be able to complete the task. One of the good points about this session was i thought all learners were engaged and actively learning. I feel the session went well, but I think I made a lot of mistakes. Some of the mistakes I made were not checking that all websites worked correctly using a student account. The second mistake was not given each student a different task to research. Each group was pretty much talking about the same thing. This caused some limitation to the size of the finished wiki. I also thought that this kind of session would be maybe best split over two session rather than just using one as things were been rushed at the end.

To make the session run more smoothly I could have got the learners to register with the web 2.0 websites in another one of my lessons. This would have given the learners more time to work on the task rather than waste time registering with the sites. I would also like to give the students more guidance on using the web 2.0 sites. When I do this kind of session again I will make sure I have sorted out all the problems highlighted in this reflection. The more of these sessions I do with my learners the more they will get used to it and hopefully others in the college will start following my lead and start using this technology in their own teaching.