Literature Review Reflection

I have just completed my literature review and all I can truly say is what a mission. My overarching question was, how can personalised e-learning programmes affect student achievement in numeracy and literacy for primary school students? 

This had to be one of the most frustrating and rewarding projects I have ever done. I doubt I will get a great grade for the assignment. Seriously I just hope I pass. I truly didn't have much of a clue how to write a literature review or how to get all my thoughts down succinctly and I know I didn't reference properly. Yet I learnt heaps. I learnt so much around personalising learning, 21st-century teaching and e-learning, that in itself was very rewarding and certainly has changed me as an educator. 

I was overwhelmed by the amount of work that the New Zealand Ministry of Education has already put into developing e-learning in New Zealand (n.d. Ministry of Education). I appreciated the time that the literature review "made" me learn more about what e-learning looks like in other schools around New Zealand.

I have become convinced that teachers must recognise that students in the classrooms today are very much different learners to when I was at school, or even when my children were at school (Prensky 2001). I believe we are doing an injustice to the children in our classes if we continue to teach them or try to teach them in a way we were taught.

To be honest I haven't actually worked out what the best method to teach these 21st-century learners is. This is an area I need to continue to explore within my collaborative community of practices (Wenger 2000). This I feel confident will begin to happen as I plan my teacher inquiry research. 

However, what I am sure of is that we (teachers) are wasting our time if we continue to use the traditional methods of learning with this new generation of students. Rather we need to use e-learning to help guide students personalise their own learning journeys. It excites me about the prospects e-learning can have to help children achieve in core subjects like math and literacy to use as foundation skills to inquire into project-based or problem-based activities that they are interested in.. 

REFERENCES

• Wenger, E.(2000). Communities of practice and social learning systems. Organization,7(2),225-246.

• Prensky. Marc., (2001). Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part 1., On the Horizon., Vol. 9 Issue: 5, pp.1-6, 

• Ministry of Education (n.d)., retrieved from  http://elearning.tki.org.nz/