Reflections on Session Ten

Time passes very fast. Tonight is the last lesson of this course. For this reason, I would like to write something about my reflections on what changes in my thinking and my knowledge in this module.

Before this course, I was a dummy for using the software of Flash MX and Photo Story 3. In the period of this course, I spent a lot of energy and time to learn these types of knowledge. After studying hard, I learnt the basic concept of the above-mentioned software. However, I believe that it will be useful for my future study and my work. The following content will be mentioned about what changes in my thinking and my knowledge in this module.

On October 7, 1997, the Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR announced “The Five Year IT Education Strategy of Hong Kong”. At that moment, I realized “Information Technology” can be used to enhance teaching and learning across the curriculum. Simultaneously, I understood the role of teacher would be changed from fact teller to collaborator (Sandholtz, 1997). For strengthening teaching skills and techniques in the classroom, I learnt PowerPoint at once after reading the document of “The Five Year IT Education Strategy of Hong Kong”.

At the beginning of this course, I thought PowerPoint would effectively contribute to teaching and learning. When Daniel asked us to design a visual story about ourselves in one PowerPoint slide, I felt it was an easy task. In fact, this concept was not right. In the Session Two, as Daniel explained to us how to express information more effectively to our audience, he showed me it was a difficult job. In the past, I used PowerPoint as a Teleprompter. I always wrote many words on each slide and then read my slides word for word in my class. After that lesson, I changed my idea. For teaching shape our students' future in the 21st Century, I should use the PowerPoint slides as a visual communication aid (CUHK, 1997).

After reading the articles of Tufte and Lester, I learnt “Visuals can communicate complex ideas with clarity, precision, efficiency and convey the most knowledge in the shortest time in the small space” and “Visuals are instruments that help people to reason information” (Tufte, 1983). I believe that “Visual Language” is very important for communicating with our audience. For enabling my audience to remember what I am going to tell them in my presentation, I must improve my visual language. According to Lester (2000), he said, “Analyzing image makes you take long careful look. First image becomes part of your general knowledge. The more you know the more you see”. For enhancing analysis and creation of my own vision, I have to learn how to visualize new visual language in this century. According to Daniel’s handout, we shall be able to insert photorealistic images, paintings, drawings, caricatures, cartoons, abstract art, maps of territories, symbols, icons, diagrams, charts, mindmaps and 3-dimensions to our PowerPoint. The above-mentioned technology tools are very useful for me to improve my teaching job.

After Session Three, I understood PowerPoint is a powerful tool to develop visual objects for teachers, but there are some excellent professional tools which can be used to design better interactive visual representation. Especially, as Daniel demonstrated different kinds of interesting visual displays in the class, such as Minard's Map, Flash slideshow and so on. After that, I made sure that it is an effective strategy for using interactive and visual representations in contexts of teaching and learning. Why did I say that? On 8th April, 2007, I made one interactive visual display with Flash. After Easter Holiday, I offered the following visual display to my lower-class students for learning three colors. The website is http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1374/users/pmcheung2/Colour.html .
When my students were playing this visual object, I observed that they liked playing this game and could identify these three colors very fast. After that, I understood“ People can learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone”(Mayer, 2005). Especially, it is very important to my students with mentally-handicapped.

After Session Three, I tried to design a falling raindrop by using Flash. But, the effect of that product was very bad in comparison with my classmates. I remembered that I was annoyed at the beginning of learning Flash. For learning this knowledge, I spent the whole Easter Holiday to read books for learning how to use the software of Flash. When I practised to use it, I met many difficult problems in designing interactive representation. For solving my problems, I asked my classmates to give me suggestions to improve my products. After that holiday, I launched to familiar with Flash. Really, I felt very happy at that moment.

After teaching some uses of Flash, Daniel started to introduce us how to design a digital photostory by using the software of Photo Story 3. This software is very user-friendly; we just need to spend around 15 minutes that we shall be able to complete an interesting learning object. Besides, the software has many functions to make the effect of visual display better. Finally, I want to talk about the functions of “Blog”, which is a kind of reflective journal and platform for sharing ideas and information with other people. I think that it is an effective way for assisting learners in building up the ability of “Learning to Learn”. The ability of “Learning to Learn” is very vital in this century for future study and work, even for survival in this world.

In conclusion, I learnt a lot of information technology knowledge in this module. I make sure that this knowledge will be very useful for promoting my future study and my work. The above-mentioned professional tools can be used to design interactive and visual representation for affording uses in different educational contexts. These representations as aids can assist learners not only in constructing knowledge; they also help them attain higher achievement at the last. Finally, I think that the most important thing is to offer an active learning environment to the learners for their self-study new information.

Bibliography:
1. CUHK (1997). Internet Basics for Teaching and Learning in the Chinese Context: An Introduction. Retrieved 5th May, 2007 from http://www.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/~cmc/ms.html

2. Education and Manpower Bureau (1998). Information technology for learning in a new era: Five-year strategy 1998/99 – 2002/03. Hong Kong: Government Printing Office.

3. Lester, P. M. (2000). Visual Communication. Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning.

4. Mayer, R.E. (2005). The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

5. Sandholtz, J.H., Ringstaff, C. and Dwyer, D.C. (1997). Teaching with technology: Creating student-centered classrooms. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University.

6. Tufte, E. R. (1983). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press.

7. Tufte, E.R. (1990). Envisioning Information. Cheshire, Connecticut: Graphics Press.