Information & Communication Technologies for Rural Education. ICT4RED – A South African innovation (Policy Brief)

EDUCATION OF CHOICE? Using mobile technologies to empower teachers in South Africa (Research Brief)

Report back storify from our Field trip and gallery walk

Module 8 Virtual gallery walk Activity 3 (Phase 3)

You have experienced a physical gallery walk where you set up exhibits against the wall and use stickies to comment on the various scenarios that you were presented with. Sometimes we are not in the same physical location but needs to work together and share ideas. A virtual gallery walk is just the thing!

Another advantage is that we can build a great professional and personal learning network by collaborating and sharing within a virtual environment. In the next exercise you will summarize your thoughts for every exhibit and share it using blog comments.

Instructions:
Let every member of your group choose an exhibit and go and participate in the online exhibit discussion by leaving comments on that specific exhibit blog e.g.
Member 1: Exhibit 1: Digital identities
Member 2: Exhibit 2: Phishing
Member 3: Exhibit 3: PLNs pr PLCs
Member 4: Exhibit 4: Online safety

You can consult your notes/wall stickies from your physical walk for ideas. Feel free to go and comment on the other exhibits as well if you have time left during the session. You can also carry on the discussion whenever you have internet access at home or at school.

Wonderful experiences

Learning never stops, it can be fun,interesting,creates friendships,creativity,critical thinking encourages connectivity,communication and collaboration.The ict4red has enhancsed my talents through technology.How I wish we can go further with the skills that we have acquired throughout.

Visit by a researcher

This was a fun day at school when we had a researchers who cam from London. He wanted to see how do we intergrate the tablets with the curriculum. He also interviewed teachers to hear their stories. I was using the jigsaw strategy in Grade 9 English lesson term 1 , week 3-4 day 3. The lesson was on letter writting that Writting and Presentation. They used their tablets to check on how to write a letter, different types of letters, how to edit it.They worked as a team applaying the 21st Century Skills which are :collaboration, connectivity, critical thinking, communication.

They even gave reports on the tasks when we were doing consolidation.

The learner consolidating                           

Learners giving reports in their home groups

Learners doing consolidation

Learners busy in their task groups

 The visitor observing            

Learners answering questions

Educator handing out the tasks

Harmonious working environment

Character and personalty traits of individuals have a positive influence in a work place!!!

Working towards the finishing line

The training of facilitators went well at Get Ahead College in Queenstown. We wish to thank the Principal of the school and his team for their support and making their facilities available to us!

The winning team at the Train the trainer session

During our  Field trip preparation, which I facilitated, we had to go through the activity sheet to see if all the items in the scavenger hunt activity sheet work out well. All our activities have a gamification element to it, we had to do peer assessment among all the teams to establish a "winner". It turned out to be an extremely lively discussion with some heated arguments. Who said peer assessment has to be boring?

A tweet from the session which shows that we can use peer assessment to unpack concepts.

#ict4red #fieldtrip this is what assessment looks like!! Jaribaaaa pic.twitter.com/xTLRoow7nG
— Maggie Verster (@maggiev) February 7, 2015

This is the winning "rat" team celebrating their success!

Great to facilaitate

This was a day full of fun. I enjoyed it as I was facilitating the field trip module. The facilitators had fun. They went out to look fir the QR codes and do the stuff. This time they had to do the practical part. I enjoyed moving up and down checking if they are not cheating. But at times I had to advise and assist. It was worse with the scoring there indifferences and I had to intervene. Time was waisted on the arguments. But at the end we had the winning team.

Was facilitating

Was facilitating

Winnig team

Busy with the field trip

A fantastic training day- I can blog!!

This day  has been fantastic because I  can now blog! As we are using blogs during our Gallery walk, we had to learn how to use the blogging app on our mobile devices. After an initial struggle to set it up using our google accounts, it turned out to be a breeze!!

I also enjoyed the module on how to create a field trip for your learners! Two great learner centred strategies to use in the classroom.

Preparing for Modules 8 and 9

During our Train the Trainer session we prepared for the facilitation of the Gallery walk and Field trip teaching strategies.  The field trip (scavenger hunt), is a hands on way for learners to experience learning. The Gallery walk forces learners to interact with information (exhibits) and to discuss thinking around given topics. 

Here is a moment from our field trip!

Module 8 Virtual gallery walk Activity 3

You have experienced a physical gallery walk where you set up exhibits against the wall and use stickies to comment on the various scenarios that you were presented with. Sometimes we are not in the same physical location but needs to work together and share ideas. A virtual gallery walk is just the thing!

Another advantage is that we can build a great professional and personal learning network by collaborating and sharing within a virtual environment. In the next exercise you will summarize your thoughts for every exhibit and share it using blog comments.

Instructions:
Let every member of your group choose an exhibit and go and participate in the exhibit discussion by leaving comments on that specific exhibit blog e.g.
Member 1: Exhibit 1: Digital identities
Member 2: Exhibit 2: Phishing
Member 3: Exhibit 3: PLNs pr PLCs
Member 4: Exhibit 4: Online safety

You can consult your notes/wall stickies from your physical walk for ideas. Feel free to go and comment on the other exhibits as well if you have time left during the session. You can also carry on the discussion whenever you have internet access at home or at school.