Within the classroom I have used the interactive wipeboard to display websites that are beneficial to the learning taking place for example the lesson plan I have included within this portfolio is entitled ‘Establishing a safe & healthy environment in a home-based setting’ which is for childminders looking after children at home. The lesson objective is for them to recognise and be alert to potential dangers within their homes so the website I displayed during the lesson was the ‘Royal Society for the prevention of accidents’. This site displays some of the frightening statistics regarding injuries that occur in the home environment. For the visual learners amongst the group this was a huge benefit to see it in such format rather than the alternative which was by me reading out the facts & figures. It also made the numbers more real as they seemed more hard hitting n this format.
Within the same lesson I took them to the library to use the computers, they had to share one between two of them. This meant that they also supported each other. The website they accessed was the ‘Child Accident Prevention Trust’. They had to navigate around the site to find the section that allowed them to risk assess the dangers of different rooms within a house – I gave them all different rooms so that we could feedback their experiences when we got back to the classroom and I could display the rooms that they had looked at. This worked well, for the learners that were used to computers; a few found it a little harder as they didn’t have the confidence to be able to navigate around the website. I had pre-planned the individual pairs as I had anticipated which learners’ may require more assistance so put those with the more confident, although the slight disadvantage was the situation of the computers within the library did not allow me to easily assess that all the learners where participating without going around to the individual terminals. There were seven computers and fourteen learners – I did manage to observe every pair and the other benefit I found was that they were much more animated and involved in the activity than on previous lessons where they have received a photocopy of a room.
During the lesson the students contributed a great deal more than on previous courses and I feel it was because they had the opportunity to learn the subjects in a different way – the power point presentation evoked more discussion as did seeing the statistics on the wipeboard. This session took place late in the afternoon and I usually expect the group to be subdued but as they were being moved around much more with the added visit to the library they remained alert and focused.
I did however have to be quite assertive at times as they did get carried away in the library; obviously it is very different from the setting of a classroom – The difficulty I had was the way the computers are set out in the library – they are a fair distance away from each other, so I found it harder to contain their high spirits. When they returned to the classroom they managed to settle back down to the activity although a little more vocal.
The mix of activities did work well with the group - they worked on an activity entitled ‘the level of required supervision’ they are given scenarios using a traditional paper based handout; my assessment of the activity was noted in my evaluation in that they appeared more focused and I felt that it was because of the different range of activities, so they are not all paper-based.
In order to ensure that the lesson takes into account the different learning styles the virtual learning environment has made this much easier as one can use audio, visual and kinaesthetic tools with one piece of equipment although it is important to remember to be as flexible in the classroom as possible and keep the traditional methods to enhance the learning process.
Differentiation can easily be included within the VLE as learners of different levels within the group can access different levels of the same activity – for example for the learners on this session if they finished the risk assessment fairly quickly then there is a link that takes them on to a quiz regarding potential hazards that could occur on an outing.
I have found the fact that learners can email me their assignments extremely useful as not only does it save the environment but they seem to be more likely to get them to me on time than the alternative of having to physically bring them into college.
The disadvantages of the VLE are in my experience that learners do not feel as much need to access the real classroom as they can gain access to the tutor notes and keep up to date through the learner BLOG’s. This could also be seen as an advantage, those learners that can genuinely not make the sessions do not miss out. For learners that do not have easy access to a computer off site could end up feeling excluded. Learners that are computer illiterate again this could have an affect on their self-confidence.
“A blended learning approach is flexible, using the most effective training delivery option (or combination of options) for each stage of learning. It is more effective than any single form of learning at creating the results you want: sustained behavioural change that increases the return on your training investment.” (Gray C. March, 2006)
Blended learning should remain as a batch of different resources and not take over to become purely distance learning. This in my view would be a travesty as when I have studied distance learning although it relies on autonomy it is clearly a faceless impersonal way of learning. The class environment for group discussions alone has an immense impact on the learning that takes place, learners can brainstorm ideas for assignments or to solve issues, after all how can you have a debate with a computer!!!
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References
- accessed on 4th May 2008
accessed on 4th May 2008
- accessed on 4th May 2008
