Tutorial 7...

I am glad that I was not the only person who turned up for tutorial today, however,  I definitely need to listen more at the end of the lectures in order to acknowledge key points such as, "There's no tutorial next week."

During a very small tutorial today my group discussed the resources that we had found, which were related to our teaching area, and how technology might be used for teaching and learning in the classroom. One group member was having difficulty finding a video resource and was assisted by another group member who suggested she used different key words in her search. This was great advice because she found a relevant resource straight away. It's amazing how someone else can look at a problem from a different perspective in order to find the solution.

We also talked about EndNote and I mentioned the referencing tool that I have decided to use Zotero. It was interesting to hear how other students were finding EndNote and also comparing different referencing types. I am glad that as a group we are using various referencing tools because when it comes to completing our peer reviews we will all learn something new.

I find that interacting and communicating with others helps me learn new ways to approach problems, (like the situation of using different key words in a search), and I do not feel that I am the only one who struggles at times because we all share our concerns and thoughts.


The next part of Task 2 involves creating a 5 minute online narrated screencast to explain to my peers how to use Zotero to create an APA style citation for my selected resource type, (a book).

I decided to research screencasting on google and found this amazing website that related entirely to Task 1 and 2 because it is a teachers professional portfolio. Within this portfolio there is a demonstration of how the teacher uses screencasting in her classroom to explain to her students how to set up their own blogs while she is away from school. The teacher explains that by using a screencast the children are able to replay and rewind the visual and audio directions whilst they are setting up their blogs and work at their own pace.

I thought that this was a brilliant way of giving clear and precise instructions and can be used in a variety of contexts either by the student or teacher. As demonstrated above the teacher can create a screencast to deliver instructions and students can create a screencast to demonstrate their understanding of specific concepts. As a future teacher screencasting is a technology tool that I will implement within a classroom to promote authentic and meaningful learning.