More Flickr Stuff

The role that images have in this blog are to usually form part of an hyperlink to a corresponding website or to portray a person that I am writing about.  As yet, with this blog, I do not know if they have any impact on interactivity as no one has posted any comments to this blog. The blog (including video and images) that I have created for a class of year 13 students, has created interactivty between them and me thus, has become it's own little isolated community. The impact so far has resulted in some parents following it, though not posting comments, and other teachers beginning to create their own.

Having seen what Flickr can do/provides, it makes sense for students to have access to this site.  That said, the chance of getting the block removed so that students at Tong High have access is slim, however, it would be possible to set up my own Flickr- like site in a wiki.  A wiki is easy to use and really does encourage interaction and online community given the correct guidance.

For the Portfolio!

Feuerstein's interactivity methods resulted in his students not only being able to teach themselves but also teach themselves to become more intelligent! Fuerestein uses metacognition in his curriculum in a four step strategy.  The dictionary describes metacognition as knowledge of your own thoughts and the factors that influence your thinking which Muirhead and Juwah (2004) describe as being critical in meaning making and construction of new knowledge. Feuerstein's four step strategy comprised of setting real tasks, reflecting on the completion of these tasks, establishing learning points and bridging.

Yaccis content learning output described in the Instructional Interactivity part of his interactive feedback loops describes that when new information enters the cognitive system, it is either placed into existing schema or the schema are slightly modified, or else an entirely new schema is created. This is very much what Feurestein wants the student to think about during the learning process. Asking a student to reflect on how successfulness or unsuccessfulness a real task (schema) had been, asking a student what kind of strategies they used and how they think these strategies can be used in other areas, has been proven to lead to higher attainment levels.

The video below shows Will Richardson describing how students of today need to be taught how to become knowledge able (watch the video to find out what he means by this).  In becoming knowledge able they would surely have to employ Feuerstein’s methods which apparently require special training to teach them! but wouldn’t you agree that most of Feuerstein’s methods are part and parcel of online collaboration and communication?