WEEK FIVE-The Smart Classroom

During this week’s lecture and tutorial the Smart Classrooms Framework was unpacked further and Productive Pedagogies were explored.

Productive Pedagogies are teachers’ approaches and strategies of teaching and as a pre-service teacher, I feel that it is imperative to be familiar with the various strategies in relation to

-      What I am teaching

-      And the diverse learning styles of students in my classroom.

Teachers can use Productive Pedagogies to focus on instruction and improve student outcomes (Department of Education and Training, 2004).

Additionally, there a number of factors that teachers should take into account when using Productive Pedagogies:

-      consider and understand the backgrounds and preferred learning styles of their students

-      identify the repertoires of practice and operational fields to be targeted

-      evaluate their own array of teaching strategies and select and apply the appropriate ones

(Department of Education and Training, 2004).

The foundations of our knowledge of these pedagogical pedagogies must take into account current 21^st century technologies. Afterall, today’s 21^st century students in comparison with previous generations of students, learn and explore using a multiplicity of technological tools that have evidently shaped our learners of today.

This is where the Smart Classrooms Framework leaps in.

To meet the requirements of the framework, one must demonstrate an adequate level of capabilities using ICT in an appropriate context.

Professional Values: Professional Development sessions offer authentic resources that cater for students of various backgrounds. These resources can be used accordingly within a safe learning environment.

Professional Relationships: The use of blogging, e-newsletters, emails, online videos are just some ways that communication can be enhanced between students, parents and the wider community.

Professional Knowledge: Selected technological tools to embed within the classroom should be utilised to “benefit teaching and learning and not as an end itself” (Smart Classrooms Framework, 2011).

Professional Practice: The achievement of curriculum goals can prove successful when ICT are effectively incorporated within the classroom. The TPACK model can assist with integration of ICT’s by providing a framework that can assist the technological tool to enhance the focal content area using a suitable productive pedagogical strategy.

REFERENCES

Department of Education and Training. (2004). Productive Pedagogies. Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/corporate/newbasics/html/pedagogies/pedagog.html

Smart Classrooms Framework. (2011). Smart classrooms professional development framework: Queensland government. Retrieved from http://education.qld.gov.au/smartclassrooms/pdframework/ictc/indicators.html