Week 3

It's late on Tuesday afternoon and I'm exhausted after a day of intense reading. Yet here I am still working...

We didn't have an ICT tutorial this week as we had lectures about our Masters Research project instead. However I have done quite a lot of reading today about the use of ICT. I have read about current educational software, for which there is differing opinion regarding its educational benefit, virtual texts in particular. I haven't seen them in practice myself so I am looking forward to going into school next week and seeing if I can see for myself, it's difficult to make a connection withour any experience. I don't like to just take other's word as truth, I'd much rather find out for myself.

I have been using new technology in the home this week. I have learnt how to connect my laptop to my tv, so that I can view photos enlarged! The problem is that you have to turn off the tv and the computer before plugging in the lead, then you have to turn it all on, and then.. it doesn't recognise the pc input!!! So we have to do it all over again several times and then, miraculously it just works? !! Maybe one day I'll figure it out!

Ooh another thing that I remember reading about was the fact that some children really hate their handwriting, maybe they missed the week that joined up writing was taught, and using a word processor gives them much more confidence. Also helpful for children with dyslexia who struggle with spellings as the spell checker, dictionary and thesaurus can all be used as a guidance tool, although they may need help identifing the first letter sometimes, this also gives them more confidence and helps them focus on the learning, rather than worrying they can't do it.

I have been searching the web for journal articles for my Masters assignment and can't believe how many resources are out there!!! One that I found really good, and went and found it in the journal section in the library is 'Junior' magazine by Scholastic, brilliant resources in a magazine for KS2, there is a KS1 equivalent too.

I am going to download the smartboard software onto my computer this week, so that I can start to use it in schools when I start teaching myself. I hope my school has a smart board, the schools I've been in on teaching practice either didn't have them or didn't use them and I think they can be so beneficial bothe to the learning of the children and to make my lessons more fun, interactive and engaging to the children. I really want to help them become more interactive with their own learning.

Anyway, must be off, dinner is cooking and I need the energy!!!

See you all next week with some exciting news from school I hope!

Week 2 of ICT Blog

Hi! This is week 2 of my blog history! I am currently at home wondering where all this work has come from. I was up to date at the weekend and suddenly there's so much I don't know how I'm going to get it all done!!! I am also having a very unproductive day, so I decided now was a good time to do the blog, I can tick something off my long list of To Do's then!!!

I am quite comfortable with the blog now. It all seems like old school already! This week we learnt about Wiki's which were interesting and we have the most fantastic resource all under one roof, so to speak! Thanks very much for that!!! It will be invaluable for studying and lesson planning ideas! I think that Wiki's are rather valuable, although I'd never heard of them before yesterday. They have a multitude of uses, especially at school.

I particularly like the idea of using them for brainstorming, or for collecting information of research projects. The children can log in and add the information they have found out for homework, and we have lots of things all compiled quickly. Even better several schools are involved and can put everything they find out on a topic and then share it altogether. Brilliant! It also allows children to do work without feeling like it's a chore as they play on their computers for fun.

We must be careful though to know what % of the class has a computer at home as we don't want to exclude any children from the fun and shared learning experience - must be thought of when planning such tasks!!

Well I don't have much else to say about this week's lesson, other than I look forward to using the Wiki!

See you all next week!

This is my first attempt at a blog, and I'm not really sure what I'm doing!!! It's part of my ICT PGCE course and it's all feeling a bit overwhelming at the moment, but hopefully in another month or so it will all be making sense!! This is the only picture I have on this computer, so I hope you like it!! I have no idea where it is!

Back to this blogging stuff...It's all set-up like word so that helps, I know how to work that after working in an office for a year! I can use the toolbars without any problems. I have no idea what it looks like when I publish it though!!

Since this is the ICT blog I should probably say how I'm finding it... I thought ICT was something I knew quite a lot about, but we had to fill in an audit and it turns out I don't know much of the technical stuff - compressing files, Logo? So I now have to go and find out about this stuff, so I can pass my QTS Skills Test.

Time to go, as I want to see what it looks like published, so speak to you next week!!!