88 students studying La Trobe’s Graduate Diploma of Education (Middle Years) have received an iPod touch as a new development in digital learning at La Trobe’s Shepparton campus.

Transcript

Narration:

88 students studying La Trobe’s Graduate Diploma of Education (Middle Years) have received an iPod touch as a new development in digital learning at La Trobe’s Shepparton campus.

Narration:

The $55,000 initiative is one example of how the University is embracing new technology in its teaching and learning curriculum.  This pilot program could provide insights into the future of education, especially in distance learning courses like the Middle Years program.

Caroline:

Its key focus is to establish a collaborative environment for learning, for students to learn in, while they're not necessarily on campus.  The students are only here for 5 weeks, the rest of the time they come from a range of places all over Australia.

Narration:

The ipods will help students’ access and listen to course material using virtual classroom software called Elluminate, they’re also able to share their learning experiences with other students whatever the distance.

Mal:

If I’ve got lessons downloaded on my iPod I can still be driving the tractor around or chasing sheep with my dogs and I can still be taking notice of what’s going on.

Howard:

They offer the possibility for connection, so that our students are able to reflect on their experiences and share on their experiences with other people in different places, while retaining the freshness of the experience.

Narration:

And it’s the future possibilities of this technology that has both staff and students excited.

Howard:

The potential is enormous because what they do is they place of lot of the momentum for learning with the learner, and they equip the learner to ask questions and go to multiple sources of information, and to compare those, to ask questions about them and to work with other people.

Narration:

For the students, it’s a step into classroom of the future.

Caroline:

The best way to be brave about thinking, how can I make this work for me in teaching? Is to say, well I’ve actually played with this already; I know what it can do.  If you don’t know what a tool is capable of you can’t actually even think about how to use it to enable you to improve teaching and learning opportunities for teachers and children.

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