Designing Digital Magazine Using Joomag for Final Assignment of ICT

For final assignment of ICT class, I am supposed to design a digital magazine using Joomag. And this is the link of my magazine:

https://www.joomag.com/magazine/java-traveller/0216378001466694462?short

My Thought of Instructions with Technologies for Middle School Classrooms

As mobile devices have become more accessible to middle school students, so has their potential to be resources in the classroom.  Mobile devices are small, portable computing devices that usually contain WI-FI, Bluetooth technology, and GPS capabilities.  They can be cell phones, smartphones, portable game consoles, tablets, or small computers. All of the technologies have applications in a middle school classroom.  However, it is not the technological tool that is important, but the instructional approach. However, a change in instructional techniques must change as our students change.  If properly used by excellent teachers, these technologies offer new ways to motivate and fully engage middle school students for life-long learning applied across the curriculum. Another goal for many schools across the curriculum is to become paperless.  Using gadgets, students can use cloud computing to store and turn in work to create a paperless learning environment.  Cloud computing also allows students to continue working at home with an Internet connection without lost papers or forgotten work.  Digital textbooks also help schools become paperless and can be augmented by digital portfolios. In addition, students can take more interactive, annotated notes in class using mobile apps while interactive whiteboards facilitate classwork to be posted online as pdf’s.  Although some applications of these technologies can be for almost any teacher, some benefits of these technologies are content specific.

My Thought Of Online Social Media Applications for Language Teaching & Learning

I think teaching using the internet or computers is a great thing. It's about engaging with people using a medium or platform in which they relate with. I remember reading a while ago about a company that was creating a game modeled around historical events. Students would learn by playing a character in the story. They could be Napoleon, a British soldier or the Queen. This level of interaction is fantastic! I wish I had this type of learning when I was at school. I also think though that the internet is now much more than an information source, it is a vast social network of people communicating and collaborating, so what better place could there be to learn, practice and use language. There are even some dedicated networks set up so that language students can share and exchange both their culture and their language and enjoy communicating with each other.

Blended Learning

Blended courses (also known as hybrid or mixed-mode courses) are classes where a portion of the traditional face-to-face instruction is replaced by web-based online learning. Blended learning as a course where 30%-70% of the instruction is delivered online. While this is a useful guideline, it may not be sufficient to cover every blended learning configuration. Blended learning is also used in professional development and training settings, as it can be used to translate knowledge into a particular skill that is useful and practical for a specific job^. A lack of consensus on a definition of blended learning has led to difficulties in research about its effectiveness in the classroom^.

Blended learning can generally be classified into six models:

• Face-to-face driver – where the teacher drives the instruction and augments with digital tools.
• Rotation – students cycle through a schedule of independent online study and face-to-face classroom time.
• Flex – Most of the curriculum is delivered via a digital platform and teachers are available for face-to-face consultation and support.
• Labs – All of the curriculum is delivered via a digital platform but in a consistent physical location. Students usually take traditional classes in this model as well.
• Self-blend – Students choose to augment their traditional learning with online course work.
• Online driver – Students complete an entire course through an online platform with possible teacher check-ins. All curriculum and teaching is delivered via a digital platform and face-to-face meetings are scheduled or made available if necessary.

Global Education Network

The Global Education Network is a collaboration of premier post-secondary education institutions providing students with an international learning experience for employment in a global economy. The GEN association is dedicated to enhancing innovative global learning and collaborative opportunities for member institutions. Emphasis is on globally linking faculty, staff and students through semester, short-term and electronic exchanges among the member institutions. For high school students, several "cyber-schools" provide educational opportunities for students that transcend American soil. CyberSchools.NET is a global network that exists to fulfill the two-fold mission of strengthening school and global communities while developing real life experiences that teach children vital technological skills (CyberSchools NET, 1998). Students in a 5^th grade classroom in Ulan Bataar, Mongolia, for example, are participating in the CyberSchools network. Several universities worldwide offer distance learning courses to high school students. Students of many different nationalities at the International School in Schenzen, PRC have no access to high school courses after the ninth grade because that is the terminal grade at the school. Previously, their parents would transfer their employment within a company to another region when a son or daughter was to enter the 10^th grade or send the student to the US to live with relatives while the parent remained. Now, these students can choose to continue their high school careers "cybernetically" by accessing various distance education courses.

There are practical implications for school administrators in developing countries. The existence of instant communication is now a practical reality rather than just a theoretical possibility. Practicing administrators all over the globe possess the means to improve educational delivery systems. The implications represent a new found power, particularly potent in developing countries where gains in education can provide substantial economic gains and where access to educational opportunities provides more significant benefits than the incremental improvements in industrialized countries. Assuming that incentives do exist to integrate current technology into a developing country's educational system, there are several practical applications available to the practicing school administrator. Access to education information and best practice research is plentiful. Educators in developing countries face several challenges in access to staff development. Long distance/high cost travel, visa acquisition, and prohibitive professional journal costs present insurmountable difficulties. Technology allows these barriers to be overcome, however.