Diana Ghazali's Reflection of Session 3

What I already KNOW:
a) There are five dimensions to meaningful learning:
- The use of real worls context
- Tapping on to students' prior knowledge
- Learning - by - doing
- Self directed learning
- Collaborative learning

b) The importance of meaningful learning


What I WANT to learn:
a) How do we incorporate meaningful learning into our lessons?
b) How do we encourage our students to be self-directed learners?
c) What is the difference between cooperative and collaborative learning? And how do we encourage our students to collaborate with each other? (Especially in ART class)

What I LEARNED today:

(A)We viewed three videos today in class:
1)SOUR '日々の音色 (Hibi no neiro)'
A Japanese music video collaborated by 25-30 people.
This video gave me a basic idea of collaboration.

2) http://www.edutopia.org/east-technology-lab-video
EAST -- A Way Forward: Tech Inspires Self-Directed Learning
A video of students in the Environmental and Spatial Technology program where they use technology to connect with nature and serve their community.
This video showed me how self-directed learning can be accomplished (also with the use of ICT) through the projects the students have done. The students took a closer and deeper look into the environment and society. From there they focussed on the issues they could find and designed projects to solve the issues. They themselves took the initiatives to contact the right authorities to establish/ make their projects real and all the planning & skills has allowed them to be self-directed learners and become more involved with the real-world.

3) http://www.futurelab.org.uk/resources/multimedia/video/Video279
Description of video from the site: "The Space Mission: Ice Moon project puts pupils in the roles of scientific experts in an Emergency Response Team after a disaster in space. Working in teams in the classroom, up to 30 pupils use video-conferencing facilities and interactive materials to help resolve the disaster. They must use and develop all their skills as scientists, mathematicians, planetary geographers and communicators."

This activity has clearly established meaningful learning through all five dimensions and we were told to explain it in detail on our personal WIKI page.

(B) After watching the 2nd video, I feel that we can encourage students to be self-directed learners if we introduce activities/subjects- probably based on our syllabuses, and relate them to the real world context; OR to encourage them to learn certain techniques on their own. As a teacher, I could guide them by giving a topic/ or theme (e.g: the environment, or based on a Principle of Design e.g.: depth/ harmony etc.), and then they could find ways of doing it on their own. For example, I could take them outside/ allow them to do their own research on issues concerning the world/ environment. Then, they could look through Youtube for effective instructional videos where they can see and choose their preffered techniques to work on, before working hands-on on their own work.

The advantages of YouTube Instructional videos:
- they can replay the clip repeatedly until they have absorbed and understand the information completely
- they are able to stop the clip at advantageous places taking all the time it needs to copy and to experiment with information learned
- examples are shown so they can understand what and how the strokes/techniques look like up close
- students can revise and practice at home (if they have computers at home or in the library)
- they can experiment and explore a variety of different techniques at one time based on their own pace of understanding

After acquiring the techniques on their own, they can then teach it to the rest of the class.
It does seem to be true that "you never really know something until you have taught it." [Anon] By sharing information gathered from YouTube.com in this way, the class will benefit from a wealth of knowledge gained during the investigative process.

An example of an instructional video:

Resource: http://www.suite101.com/content/selfdirected-learning-for-art-students-a73802


(C) From the third video, I feel that students will be able to achieve meaningful learning through collaboration. But before I think through how we can achieve collaborative learning in an Art class, I have to understand what is the difference between COLLABORATIVE and COOPERATIVE learning?

Cooperative learning is when it is defined by a set of processes in which teamates intereact with each other to accomplish a specific goal or develop an end product that is content based. It is also closely controlled by a teacher based on co-operating skills.

Collaborative learning however, is beyond a classroom technique; beyond just reaching for the end product. It suggests a way of dealing with people which respects and highlights individual group members' abilities and contributions. There is a sharing of authority and acceptance of responsibility among group members for the groups actions.

Now, how do we create collaborative learning among our students? Perhaps in my Art class?

There has been many collaborative works in the history of Art. But what sort of activity can I do to allow this? I am still unsure how feasible it is for my classes, but I feel that this is highly probably for perhaps say, my Art club(CCA)? One such activity that I can think of is perhaps my students in class can create ceramic tiles and then the art club members would put them together and paint them. They will have to plan and work the whole idea out among themselves. Would that be considered collaborative work? Hmm.

Resource: http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/deliberations/collaborative-learning/panitz-paper.cfm

Here is an example of a collaborated artwork:

What QUESTIONS do I have?
How can I apply ICT in my Art lessons to encourage collaborative learning? I will think more about this.