Thirteenth Week....

The presentation of the Final

Project

(and sadly the last day of class)

This are the description of our group educational site of

Saving mother Earth.(credit to Rafidah)

26th Oct 2010. The presentation of the final project starts with our group. This is our site and this is the Homepage where users are at first landed before they attempt to explore more.

We included picasa web slideshow to make the homepage more welcoming for children and some comic strips are integrated in the slides to give the ideas for the kids when the first landed at the page. Thus, images and comic strips assist a lot in explaining the ideas of global warming to children. I thought this is very effective and this works out best in teaching of science, especially something that relates a lot in concepts and current issues.

These are some of other pages from the site:

Twelfth Week!

Developing the site

As our site is still under constructions, i would like to Thanks to Prof for the whole 3 hours provided for us to design the website. We really need the time as we have many last projects to accomplish for other courses too. The 3 hours we have used browse the net, searching for the best materials to be included in our site, the suitable and workable links, designing a layout, choosing images and designing an appealing homepage.

Next, we have devided the task for each of us to complete.

1. Hafizuddin (Kids Actvity)

2. Nizam (All about Global Warming)

3. Mar (About the Teacher and the search box or dictionary)

4. Nazrul (Videos and animation)

5. Rafidah (Share Your Thoughts and Explore more )

After all have completed designing, we will then finalise and justify everything. This includes the report which we have to write according to the learning problems of the students that we are trying to focus.This is a real major project. Thus, we need a lot of planning and discussion to fulfill the requirement of the task.

Eleventh Week...

This week, we come to our second phase of developing our instructional material which is the educational site.

Our group have decided to use GOOGLE SITES (WIKIS) to design our new site. The title of our site is 'SAVING MOTHER EARTH'. We are in the second phase of ADDIE modal which is the DESIGN phase. We have to come out with a plan of the site and construct a storyboard. Our group member make a proper planning in order to have a better product and result by the end of the day.

After the group discussion , we decided to come out with a simple storyboard below. Students must log in as they are only allowed to leave comments if they logged in first

From the storyboard, there are 7 main items in the menu. But, we made some changes and it turns out to be 8 as we make one for video and another one for animation. In this way, the site looks more organised.

From the experience in constructing the storyboard, we were able to identify the organized way of the our under develop site would be after completing. This have give us the way to construct and organize the content that would be presented in our site. Even though creating this story board is not easy, we can benefit by having and organized steps in developing our projects.

Next week, we will begin designing our own site based on the storyboard designed.

Tenth Week....

ADDIE MODAL

This Week, we learned about ADDIE MODAL.

So what is ADDIE?

ADDIE is the acronym for the five phase in the modal.

1) Analysis phase

During this phase, the learning problem is identified, the goals and objectives of the lesson is predetermined, the delivery options and the timeline for the project are decided.

2) Design Phase
This is the phase where storyboard is designed for the entire website.

3) Development Phase
The actual product and the designed tool.

4) Implementation Phase
This phase is the phase where the tool is tested. Thus, in this phase the effectiveness of the tool will be evaluated and the weaknesses and strengths are discovered.

5) Evaluation Phase

This is the phase where feedback is gained for further improvements and modification.

Based on this modal, we are to develop our new project which is to develop the Instructional Material for Teaching Science.

Topic : Global Warming

Domain : Knowledge

Target Audience : Year 6 pupils

As we have chosen the topic, we have to identify the problems and issues that the students experiencing about the topic 'Global Warming'. We have to search for literature review to support the evidence of learning problems and misconception of students about the topic.

We start off by constructing a concept map of the topic 'Global warming'

Based on this concept map, we will designed the educational site content accordingly. However, we will delete, simplify and modify the subtopic that are too sophisticated for the target audiences.

In conclusion, the ADDIE model helps me to designed the educational sites accordingly.

We will follow the ADDIE model in developing this new project.

Ninth Week

Today is the day of the group presentations on the educational websites.

Yes, our group had designing and constructing a new educational sites for Primary School Year 6 Science subject through Wikis. We have chosen the Google Sites as our platform for the YEAR 6 topic which in LIVING THINGS.

Based on the experience in constructing and developing thsi websites, I have learnt so much as a future teacher. I have learnt that we must put a lot of effort to make sure that this educational websites is effective for the intended audience. I have also realized that we have to make a plan in order to construct this educational site accordingly. That are many aspect that we have to take into consideration for example the students needs, the content, the presentation of the content, the pedagogical and the psychological view and e.c.t.

As we have constructed the site, we tried to picture ourselves as the target audience and have the tried out to see whether the site are effective and give a lot of input as well as the usability.

As picture tells a thousand words, let me present our first educational sites -->

Eight Week ....

Based on last week's topic, we were introduced to the World Wide Web. We also introduced to several learning platform which are blog, wiki, social network and video sharing. Teachers, educators or even students can use this platform as an educational sites.

This week , Dr. Rohaida discuss with the class about the software evaluation rubric.

To create an educational website that is used as a teaching and learning purpose, we need take into consideration many aspects.An evaluation rubric works better in helping the one who uses the platform for an educational purpose. A rubric works more as a checklist and reminders for certain aspects that one might not be thinking of when designing a website.

Some aspects that should be considered while designing an educational website are:

1) usability criteria : purpose, homepage, navigation, design, enjoyment, readability

2) content criteria : authority, accuracy, relevance, sufficiency, appropriateness

3) educational value criteria : learning activities, activity plan, resources, communication, feedback, rubric and help tools.

4) vividness criteria : links and updating

Why we need rubrics to evaluate an educational website?

I believe that, we need rubrics to evaluate educational websites for several reasons.

1) we need to know the effectiveness of the educational sites whether it is appropirate or not for the intended audiences. Yes, some people tend to put as much information in the educational websites irregardless of the who their target audience is. So, this site may appear inappropriate where it does not cater the need of the reader.

2) As there are many platform that can be use as an educational sites, rubrics helps educators to designed a user friendly, usable, serviceable sites for the users. This can help them make an effective educational sites as the have the guidelines to follow in constructing their sites.A poorly designed website will not retain visitors long enough to pursue content.

3) Using rubrics, we can determine the alignment of our content or the information to cater user's need. In other words, educator can identify how effective his content and informations that he would portray and presents in his educational websites in terms of the way he present it. For example, if the educator wants to give informaion about global warming, does he illustrates the process accurately, or is there any evidence to show the process of Global Warming. This shows that rubrics can help the educators to evaluate themselves in the presentation of their content.

Seventh week..

Well, who knew that the WWW that we have been using for this past few years have its own definition and history. Yes, probably,I was lucky to be born in this century, having this technology ready for me.

In this week class, we learned about WORLD WIDE WEB (the internet that always use..duhhh) which is WEB 1.0 as well as WEB 2.0.

But What is WEB 1.0 and WEB 2.0

Web 1.0 (1991-2003) is a retronym that refers to the state of the World Wide Web. Web 1.0 began with the release of the WWW to the public in 1991, and is the general term that has been created to describe the Web.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site gives its users the free choice to interact or collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumer) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumer) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social-networking sites, blogs, wikis, video-sharing sites, hosted services and web applications.

Since WEB 1.0 had long perished from the internet world, the emerge of the powerful WEB 2.0 creates and setting up a new perspective of the world without borders.

We were introduced to some platforms that can be used for teaching and learning science. They are:

1) wikis

2) blog

3) social networking

4) media sharing

We can use these platform to share knowledge and ideas. Based on each group presentations of each platforms, I can identify that there are differences between the application and the functions that provided by the platforms. However, some clear similarity that can be seen between all the platforms are we are able to post comments and communicate through chat box.

Our group we asked to search more about the platform WIKIS .For my surprise, i have using wikis this whole time and i just came to realize that the sites that I have been using is actually a WIKI. One of the wikis that i've been using is googlesites.

Wikis has more flexibility, application and we can control navigation and add anything that we like. We may also chat by adding chatbox and it is more organised compared to blogs that are only represented by entries that are posted. Wikis allows us to change page template and post things like a blog in 'announcement' (one of the template for creating a page)