the nativity

In the seminar before Christmas we had the challenge of presenting the nativity story using different media. In our small groups we had the lesson to create what we had been given, in my case i worked with Cath and we had to do a sonnet on the nativity. At first we found a poem on the internet and rehearsed it using posh and dramatic voices. We looked on YouTube for some guidance on how to present it and based it on a Shakespeare sonnet that we found. Afterwards we changed our minds and decided to create our own sonnet using our own imaginations and old language to tell the story of the nativity. When presenting it to the class it went ok, and it was really good and enjoyable to see what everyone else had created. Especially when Laura and cara asked me to read the nativity story into a microphone for them and they changed the voice around and i ended up sounding like a chipmunk. When everything had been completed we put our nativity work on our wiki.

creating our wiki

Last lesson we had to create a wiki page which was called 'Education of the past 10 years'. We then split that group into four sections, mine was to find out 'what did classrooms look like' I found it straight forward as i wrote about what i could remember about primary.

Assignment

Last lesson we were given our assignment which was to:
'manage a visual presentation supported by research material that demonstrates your ability and willingness to develop your own personal visual language through exploration and experimentation in the theory and practice of ICT and non ICT Visual Communications'.
I have chosen to do mine on Swansea's beaches because they have been voted some of the best in britian for natural beauty and i personally show an interest as i love the scenery.

reflective bubbl.com

Reflective learning

Last lesson we were asked to read two documents on reflective learning. The first article I read was 'Blogs as a Reflective Learning Tool'.  This summarised why reflective learning is important, and by doing a blog after each lesson it would help us to reflect on what we are doing and what we have already done. There were two theories in the document, Kolb and Gibbs. Kolb says that you have to go through certain experiences for you to be able to learn. These are, experiencing, reflection, conceptualization and planning. Gibbs took emotion and feelings into account, and identified six steps in order for us to reflect. These are, Description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan.  
The second document talks about the importance of reflective learning, ways in which we can improve when reflecting and that everyone uses reflection techniques in order for them to learn. Being able to reflect is very important because it helps you to look back on what you have learnt, and the different strategies you use to learn. Individuals can then keep a record of what they have learnt and can improve on this by setting targets and using a range of learning strategies.   

defining reflective learning and other blogs

In today's session we learnt more about reflective learning and about what we are going to be doing on our blogs and how we can alter them. As a class we gave our own views on what we thought was reflective learning and created a mindmap on the board. We then had to find an educational blog and the one i chose is called Just a little muchier muchness, which i found on 'about.com'. I chose blog as it is updated regulary and it is about a girl who has downsyndrome.

evaluating our presentation

I felt that our presentation was too brief as we should have given more information on the advantages and disadvantages. We did manage to answer all of the questions given to us in more detail and felt we worked well as a team.

my first blog

I am currently in my first year in Swansea Metropolitan University studying Educational Studies. In the future i hope to work with children who have additional needs. I chose this career path because i enjoy working with children and find it very rewarding. This digree will hopefully open many doors for me