Distance Education (Week 10)

Greetings to all my friends. I am feeling so happy and relieved as we are in our final week of reflection. The topic that we going to discuss for this final week is Distance Education. Most of us really hate distance education as we tend to miss our family, friends, teachers and also the facilities that we are used to it. Personally, I feel it's a very bad idea to go on a distance education. Well, let's move on to our topic in detail.

Today, I have learnt that distance education is the delivery of instruction to students who are separated from their teachers by time and location. The only key for distance education is technology. Without technology, none of the students who are in distance education can gain anything. Technology is the only key to bridge time and location.

Distance education affects teachers by offering flexible licensing renewal as well as professionla development. It also cause them to rethink of the nature of instruction and provide them an environment where teaching and learning no longer bound by traditional classroom walls.

Distance education also affected education by changing courses available in higher education especially college or university level. Other than that, it also encourages the creation of statewide virtual high school programs, supporting district-wide courses in virtual classrooms. Distance education enabling courses to be offered that might not due to low enrollments.

In addition, I have learnt that there are two distance education support technologies:

a) Synchronous Support Technology - occurs at the same time but different location
b) Asynchronous Support Technology - support time-shifted instruction but at the same or different                                                                      location

Types of Synchronous Support Technology:

- Telephone technologies

- Video conferencing

- Internet chats

- Internet classroom

Types of Asynchronous Support Technology:

- Phone technologies

- Email

- Electronic discussions / forums

- Online classroom

Finally, our lecturer explained to us about the issues in distance education such as:

- Learning Management Systems
- Teacher and Student Readiness
- Preparation and Classroom Management Time

- Technical support

- Instructional support

- Copyright Critical Issues for Teachers
- Reinventing the Classroom

As a closure let me tell you about my experience doing this assignment which is to create a blog and write about minimum of 5 weekly reflections on what we have learnt in the class. It was not as easy as I thought earlier. Though it is hard yet I managed to do it and learnt something better about Technology and Math Education in detail. Thanks to my lecturer, course leader and also my friends for supporting me and gave me the opportunity to do this assignment. 

Audiovisual Technology For Mathematics Learning (Week 9)

Hello everyone. Today we have learnt about the Audiovisual Technology For Mathematics Learning.

Okay, let's get started with the topic. Firstly, our lecturer explained us about the Visual Design Basis as well as the Nonprojected Visuals as a starter pack. For visual design basis, we have visual, text and affective elements. As for the nonprojected visuals, we have bulletin boards, flip charts and chalk or whiteboards. 

There are many types of sources of visual communication, such as:

a) Real objects

b) Models

c) Exhibits

d) Print materials

e) Graphics and photographs

Our lecturer also taught us the Tips for Creating Successful Videos which is:

1) Use the potential of the medium - capture motion to bring instruction to life

2) Use video to control time - Be sure video images allow enough to review

3) Add special effects and text - Add effects to emphasize the message

We also aware of the steps to implement video in our teaching and learning process in classroom. The steps are as shown below:
1) Use video's strengths to make compelling video
2) Preview video in test setting
3) Prepare for showing by checking the equipment as well as the environment such as the lighting, sound and seating for viewing
4) Engage the learners by:
      - Review concepts and discuss objectives      
      - Prepare and use video study guide      
      - Pause video for questions/discussions      
      - Structure discussions at key points or at the end, give an assignment to reinforce content      
      - Be prepared to respond to student reactions to emotional content (Emotional Content)

Well as for my assignment progress, I start to find some difficulties to publish the weekly reflections on time due to some internet connection problem. That moment I realized that internet makes our life miserable sometimes when you really need them. That's all for today's reflection. Thank you for your time reading this post. Hope to see you soon in my last week of reflection. 

Due 

Using The Web For Teaching and Learning Mathematics (Week 8)

Hi everyone. It’s me again. I’m so excited to share with you all about what I have learnt today in my class. As for this week class, I have learnt about using web for teaching and learning Mathematics in classroom. Without any delay let me get into the topic. 

Firstly, we learnt about the Educational Web Resources as well as the advantages of using the web for teaching and learning Mathematics. There are few educational web resources that have been stressed by our lecturer which are:

a) Online publications

b) Professional organizations

c) Weblogs (Blogs)

d) Wikis

e) Governmental sites

f) Educational portals

g) Favorite links

h) Classroom management tools

i) Academic tools and resources

We also learnt about the Web-Enhanced Instruction such as:

a) Web 2.0

b) Bridges to parents and community

c) Enhancing classroom communication

d) Linking students to their world

Other than that, I have also learnt on how to create a class web site:

1) Design a web site

2) Make an easy authoring

3) Develop a web software

4) Upload our web site

After a short break, we continue to learnt about the internet issues, such as:

a) Acceptable use where district have an acceptable use policy (AUP), of which parents asked to confirm their understanding.

b) Privacy where school need to adhere to district policy and parents' permission

c) Filtering where schools work to limit access to inappropriate content such as game web sites.

In addition, our lecturer have taught us to focus more on the Academic Website Evaluation. He did asked us to focus on this table shown below:

That's all we have learnt so far for this week. Hope that the informations are simple and precise for you to understand it much better. Thank you for spending your time reading this post. Have a great day ahead.