PGCE Blog

ICT Portfolio 3 Task

2008-02-19T05:43:00.000-08:00

ICT Portfolio Task 3

The first article that I read was ‘Does ICT contribute to powerful learning environments in primary education?’ by Ed Smeets (2005). This article focuses on asking if computer educational software can: allow children to become active learners; ask high order questions of children; enhance group work and co-operative learning; be a tool of differentiation. Smeets (2005) identifies two types of educational software: skill based transmission software and open-ended constructivist software. I would have liked some examples of each of the types of software as I am unclear of the precise definitions for the categorisation.

Smeets (2005) considers past research that suggests, “Teacher’s skills with regard to ICT used play an important role.” (Smeets 2005, p. 345) Smeets (2005) also suggests that access to ICT resources, location of resources and teacher perspectives all have a role in the use of ICT in the classroom. Smeets (2005) suggests that in the ideal classroom, “pupil use of learning technologies is woven integrally into the patterns of teaching.” (p.345)
Smeets (2005) discusses the quantitative research study that he carried out to gain further insight to these issues. The study was located in Holland, asking a sample of 773 teachers of 11-12 year olds to complete a questionnaire, 331 responses were received. Interestingly 84% of the responses were from male teachers and 75% of the participants identified their use of computers as good or quite good. I think that this suggests that the majority of participants are those teachers who use ICT most in their teaching as they are confident to participate in the study and of their skills. I am concerned that the majority of the responses were from male teachers as I think that this suggests that there may be a gender issue with teaching ICT and confidence in ICT abilities, which if it is the case needs to be addressed through training and development of teachers. These findings cannot offer a real view of ICT in the classroom because the responses are not a realistic cross section of teaching staff and may all be working at well resourced schools in wealthy suburbs.

The results of the study show that the majority of the participants felt that ICT contributes to children’s active learning at least in some way. The majority also felt that ICT could adapt the curriculum to individual needs. However the majority also felt that ICT had only a slight or no contribution for co-operative learning, which I find slightly surprising. I think that ICT can be used as a tool for group work or paired work, especially non-computer ICT that can include a talking point or children scaffolding each other’s learning about how to use the technology. I find myself wondering exactly what ICT Smeets (2005) is researching; does he consider ICT to be purely computer based, or is he including other ICT in his questionnaire? The participant’s interpretation could have an impact on their responses.

Smeets (2005) found that teacher’s using open-ended software had more computers available to children, were more confident in their ICT skills and felt that ICT contributes to active and autonomous learning. Smeets’ (2005) study also found that female teachers were less likely to use open-ended software in their classrooms than their male counterparts. Smeets (2005) concludes with the argument that computers are used, “to complement rather than change existing pedagogical practice”. (p.353)

The second article I have read is ‘The Ambiguous Embrace: Twenty Years of IT (ICT) in UK Primary Schools,’ by John Robertson (2002). This article also considers the use of ICT in Primary Schools; however it discusses more specifically the reasons why ICT is not being used to its full potential. Robertson considers research that suggests that ICT is not currently being used well to support children’s learning or taught well by teachers, “revealed ICT to be the “least well taught” of National Curriculum subjects,”(p.404) according to Ofsted (1999).

As Robertson discusses there has been a considerable expenditure of ICT resources into schools in the last few decades. However, I still don’t think that there are enough ICT resources in Primary Schools and those that are in place are unmaintained due to a lack of staff training, or external support staff that means ICT is often made obsolete in schools, wasting the few resources that are currently available.

Robertson (2002) suggests that the software is not sufficient enough to complement creative, child centred learning, instead it replicates the old style of teaching and current software is similar to the instruction texts common to teaching in the 1960’s. Robertson does not specifically discuss the open-ended software that Smeets (2005) discusses in his article. With my limited experience of ICT software available in schools I think that Robertson is incorrect with this argument. I found that the software, if used well by the teacher could be very engaging and is child focused, but as Smeets (2005) would argue its use is dependent on the capability and confidence of the teacher.

Robertson (2005) argues that key factors that have affected the use of ICT in schools could be the practices of senior management, the effectiveness of staff development and of teacher training education in preparing new teachers to use ICT in the classroom. Robertson (2002) argues that despite conditions that were identified for successful implementation of ICT practices in the Primary classroom being adopted and maintained ICT is still not reaching its full potential. He argues that teachers are very fluid and adaptable in many other curricular areas and have been very successful with many new initiatives despite similar constraints to those that are seen with ICT, so he asks why it is that ICT cannot appear to reach its potential. This is one of the key points and I don’t think that we know the answer to this yet, but it is the question that needs to be investigated with earnest.

I agree with the argument that both of these articles make that ICT is not reaching its full potential in the classrooms and I suggest that there is not one clear cut reason for this, instead I think that the arguments made by these articles combine to give a starting point of reasons that need to be investigated further and even added to as well as being addressed and conquered.

Final Posting of this Blog

2008-02-07T11:42:00.000-08:00

I'm actually rather sad to say that this is the final post of this blog, I have rather enjoyed writing it and think that it is a really good way to communicate as it helps you be reflective and allows you to think about what you want to say as well as allowing you to revise it easily before posting it. I think that it would be really good as a system set up for paretn teacher communication, to allow teachers to tell the parents how life at the school and in the class is going in general and keep them up to date with any key dates or events.

I also think that this is good for children, but has limited uses. I still think that email is a better way to communicate specific details, such as home learning progress, or if a child is off sick. In the school I am in a lot of the children don't have access to a computer at home and if they do they don't use it for emailing. I do think it is good for the class to communicate with another school, possibly abroad though. It could be done as a whole class activity on the IWB and they could add pictures and links and learn a lot at the same time.

ICT software at school, well it's rather limited at the school I've been in, digital camera that you bring in yourself, digital microscope that doesn't work as well as a normal microscope, IWB, which I love, but I hate to write on it - even if it's only just been aligned it still doesn't write where it's supposed to!! Um...... actually that is pretty much it. The children use Textease all the time, as the school doesn't have a license for Office for the children to use, which I think should be compulsory for year 5 and 6 as they will be expected to use it for pretty much ever more.

I have also used some good software, mult-e-maths, knowledge box, internet sources galore on the IWB which enhances the children's learning, oh and I used BBC i-player for the first time ever last week when I played a tv show about explorers to the children that had been on tv a few nights earlier - what a fantastic new tool - 4OD is Ch 4's equivalent, they are really great! The worst thing about school technology though, apart from the lack of it and the lack of contact the children have with it was the fact that they have blocked U Tube on all the computers. The number of brilliant resources that I could have used for my lessons that I found on there that couldn't be accessed at school was very frustrating, ebay is fine though.....??!!

We had a class wedding this week in front of the whole school and we even had a photographer and let the children look at the photos afterwards, they loved this!!

Anway to sum up a rather jumbled blog I must say that I think that the more ICT in school the better. The children love it and they love any chance they get to use it. I know it is expensive, but it is easy to use and it's engaging and enhances both my teaching and the childrens learning and who can complain about that!!

PS. Keep this blog task in for next year, I've found it amazingly beneficial both as a practical activity to familiarise myself with this technology as well as a reflective tool, which has enhanced my skills.

Thanks, see you back at uni.....

School Week ending 25th January

2008-01-24T13:20:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this week I am seriously tired!! I taught all day on Wednesday and am really paying for it now!! It was the first time and I did mostly practical activities all day! We made bread in Maths/Science using measuring and micro-organisms units, it was just for the record, absolutely fantastic bread, which I even ate having ensured the children scrubbed theri hands and the tables first!! The children did it all themselves and did a fantastic job! Anyway, in English we did hotseating as Captain Cook and Decision Alley, which was a useful drama skill, that I will use again in a more developed method in the future. The children in my class are really inexperienced at thinking for themselves and making their own decisions. This kind of activity really benefits their skills development. I then did more Science with another experiment and then writing it up and then RE which is currently the topic of weddings and the children made their own Order fo Service. In Science I used the digital microscope for the first time, it was okay, but not as good at detail as I would have liked it to be, the children got a bit frustrated that it wasn't in more detail.

One of the schools targets this term, actually their main target is thinking skills, so I've been doing a lot of work on this, including a good lesson today. I taught English after break and when the children came in I had all the curtains closed and the lights off and I was playing mysterious music through the computer and a PowerPoint continuous slideshow of Easter Island images. The children came in and sat silently as they ate their fruit snack looking at the images and then had to write at least 10 questions that they would like answered about the images. They came up with some fantastic ideas.

Tomorrow I am going to use Google Earth to show the children where Easter Island is and where some of the Moai are located and some of Australia too. This is a good tool to use to show the children what other environments look like.

Anyway, over and out!!

W/e 20/01/08

2008-01-24T13:03:00.000-08:00

Okay, so week 2 of the placement has gone well too! I have still been using IWB for most of my lessons, but pretty much the same as last week, Powerpoints, which is actually really good as I wasn't overly thrilled with them before. I have been teaching Maths all week, as well as Science for 2 hours and RE. In RE we watched a video of a wedding ceremony, which was a good use of ICT.

I have started to do my lesson plans on the computer too.

One of my favourite things that I did this week was create some questions for a Captain Cook comprehension, that was really fun and I felt like I had created a really valuable resource.

I find that I use the internet a lot in my research for resources and lesson topic ideas, but that I also waste a considerable about of time at the same time. It takes me ages to find things that I could use and then I end up most of the time still having to make them for myself anyway, so I've started to spend less time doing this as I am working until about 10-10.30 most nights as it is!!

On that note I'm tired and have to write another one of these and still look at the lesson I have planned for my observation!! Night!

1st Week of SBT1 Block Placement

2008-01-14T13:28:00.000-08:00

Well it is a day into the new week, but it slipped my mind at the weekend, so I'm a couple of days late, but I have lots to say!

It seems like ages since I last wrote. I've had a very relaxing Christmas and New Year in between, but by the time the 3rd January was here I was itching just to get on with it and by my first day on 7th January I was almost climbing walls!! So day 1 was an Inset day, which I must say was an experience!! I always used to think Inset days were great - a day off school - not anymore!!!

Day 2 was as my CTM put it a Baptism of Fire!!! The children were rather excitable and the hour and a half lesson after lunch on Science was a very sharp learning curve! Luckily I have a fantastic CTM, who was able to reasure me that it hadn't been a total disaster, that I could take positives from it and build on it the next day. Luckily the next day was a huge improvement and rebuilt my confidence nicely and I've kept on going up since then.

I've just had my observation today and my Link Tutor said she was impressed at my ICT useage in the classroom, which I thought you'd be happy with!! I've been creating my own PowerPoint's and Word documents to put on the IWB, as well as using it in almost every lesson I teach to demonstrate things to the children. I have also used a digital camera with them, which they found quite exciting and I am hoping to use the digital microscope in a Science lesson, but I need to still improve my behaviour management before I attempt that. I have also played some games and quizzes with them on the IWB, BBC Science Clips is very good.

We have also looked at photographs, of my wedding for an RE topic that I am teaching and my friends photos of Africa in a Geography lesson, the children were mesmerised by these and their behaviour was fantastic, which shows just how engaged ICT can make them with a topic.

My CMT took away his white board just before Christmas, so it has really helped me to use the IWB as a fantastic teaching tool. However the children only get 30 minutes a week in the ICT 'suite' which I think is too little in todays world, where they would be hugely benefited by having increased accessibility in the classroom. There have been some lessons that I would have loved to have a computer for each child so they could research something, or make a presentation to show the class. However the classroom does have 3 computers in it, which is more than most, so I shouldn't complain.... but I will, after all we want the best for these children, otherwise we wouldn't be here.

Over and out until next week!

The Use of Discussion Boards

2007-12-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

My graphs and comments are on the discussion board if you need them to be copied into the blog please could you let me know and I will do so. Thanks.

I'm sorry to say that I didn't find the discussion boards particularly helpful in this situation, especially since I see the person everyday and it is much easier to talk face to face and look at something they have produced with them there to explain what they have done and then ask questions with immediate answers than it is to use the discussion board. I also think that I prefer emails if you are having a one on one discussion with someone s it is much more private and personal.

I do however think they could be useful for a class debate in the summer holidays, as a 'staffroom' forum, so that staff can discuss school issues if it is difficult to always get people together and there isn't time in the staff meetings, or as a consultation with other trainees/teachers from the local LEA who don't necessarily know eachother but are looking for some guidance or advice and want several opinions.

I think that for pupils it could be used to put homework on it so that the teacher can mark it, comment on it and then the child look again, but I think this is not the most effective way with children of this age. They may have difficulties reading the comments, using the discussion board, having access to the internet at home and the comments wouldn't be confidential. It allows for copying as children can see what others have done. I don't think that the children would actually look at the comments, they tend to have short-term memories with work and I'm not even sure they look in their books at comments. We were having this discussion in Teaching and Learning yesterday. I also think that sometimes it is better for the teacher to tell the child the feedback personally.

So how could you use discussion boards in Primary Schools for pupils.... ooh!!! Ihave it, the school council could use it to find out what people think about school life and school issues for pupils - a pupils voice, I could see this working well for the older children, but again I don't really think that discussion boards are suitable for KS1 who may find it very difficult to read and use the software.

So in conclusion I think that discussion boards can certainly have their place in schools, but they have to be carefully considered and sometimes other methods are simply more accessible to children.

Such Fun!!!

2007-12-03T09:43:00.000-08:00

I loved today's lesson! It was so much fun!!! I found using the new software really informative and could see a great use for it's application in the classroom. I enjoyed Textease as it was so versatile and free. It allows users to create more imaginative and exciting work and has the added benefit of being able to connect to the internet at the same time so that you can research resources or images to add to your work.

I particularly enjoyed using the tutle tool, which would be excellent for KS1 for directions. Although I couldn't get it to play on it's own, which was a little frustrating. My favourite aspect of Textease was the branching database function, which I feel is hugely beneficial. In a Science SATs practice paper my SBT1 class were doing recently they had one of these, where they had to identify what a leaf was by looking at its features. They all found this really difficult and confusing, so this function would be fantastic to help them practice and get used to them. I particularly enjoyed replacing the name of the animal with a photo of the animal from google images as I think this presents better, helps children who don't know what something looks like for example my partner didn't know what a wombat looked like and adds a even more fun to the task.

I also really loved the applications on Inspire 8. I found the idea of using a mind map on the computer fascinating and for those who like a little more order (like myself) there is always the tree format. I used it to represent some of the places that I have travelled too and places in those countries that I went to. I then used images from the software to represent my memory of the place. This would be a helpful revision tool for those that are visual learners, as they could associate the picture with the word. As said in class these are also very good for children with Dyslexia as it helps them to get their thoughts down on paper and organise them so that they can then write about them. Good for story planning. Also could to record what has been learnt about a subject.

The final application we didn't get to finish looking at, but another useful tool, a survey/test program that presents the results for you to interpret and analyse - a wonderful tool to save time, which is seriously lacking in our profession! Definately one to remember!

Thanks for a great lesson!

Tara for now!

ICT Resources in Schools

2007-12-01T04:12:00.000-08:00

Good afternoon!

This week in ICT we were unfortunate not to have a computer room, so we went through some ways of using spreadsheets in the classroom for maths investigations, which the children would really enjoy, but there are not the resources in many schools to actually allow for this to really be developed. In my SBT1 class they go to ICT for 45 minutes once a week. By the time they get to the room, log in and fuss around for 5 minutes, log off and go back upstairs they only actually have 30 minutes of a lesson, which is not even taught by the class teacher, which would have helped as the input and plenary could be done in the classroom before and after the lesson, so that time on the computer is maximised. You could start the task, but by the time they have all understood and got into it it would be time to pack up, by the next week they will have forgotten what they did and it all has to be reiterated. Having said this I don't think it should put us off trying to show them how to use computers for maths investigations, I just think that it is ridiculous how little time the children get to use the computers each week!

There are only 13 classes in the school from reception to year 6. Each class is split in half to use the computers so that is only 19.5 hours a week for all children to use the computers for 45 mins a week, that leaves us 6 hours a week where the computers are not in use surely this time could be divided so that some classes get an hour one week and 45 minutes the next, or if more computers were brought then there would be a lot more time. I know that money and space are tight, but I think that in this day and age children should have a lot more than 45 minutes a week on the computer in a structured lesson. If the teacher wants to use ICT as a cross-curricular subject they can't, its very frustrating!!!!!

We also looked at some of the IWB software available for smartboard. I think IWB's are brilliant, I know they have problems, but doesn't everything!! I think that we should use them for their advantages which are huge and stop moaning about why they are problematic. At least we actually have this resource in the classroom available to us and the children love to use it in my experience. I was making a bit of a mess of it, I kept forgetting to put the pen down when I was trying to move something, or rub something out and the children were ever so helpful, telling me what to do. Anything that I can find to help me in the classroom this year I am going to embrace as it helps to make this very hectic and stressful year that little bit easier!

Okay, rant over for now! See you next week!

Fractions

2007-11-25T06:10:00.000-08:00

Hello!

This week has been in school Mon, Tues and Thurs for Serial Placement 2.

On Monday I taught an English lesson to the whole class on the Box of Delights, which is the book they are reading. We spent half the lesson watching episode 2 of the BBC Series DVD, so I discovered that they use the IWB as a TV too and play the DVD through the computer, this is rather handy as you don't have the health and safety of moving a tv around the school and having the time constrainsts of booking it out to use, or having to move the classroom around to fit the whole year in at once to maximise the time.

On Tuesday I taught a whole class lesson of Maths, which was I thought a bit of a disaster that was totally my fault! I had spent 5 hours planning, researching and preparing my lesson on Monday night and had a really good lesson, all I had to do was photocopy cards that I wanted to play a game with, cut them up and sort them so that they were ready for the children to match equivalent fractions.... this all sounded so easy that I wasn't prepared for the mild panic that ensued. When I had photocopied 15, one between two, I realised just how many now needed to be cut, the school's guillotine was awful, and hacked at the paper as I tried to get as many sheets through as possible, I had to cut the individual cards with scissors, in chunks, which still took ages and then I realised that they were all mixed up and had to be sorted!! Luckily I have a very good TA in my class and while the children were in Carol Practice he sorted them for me while I set-up the rest of the lesson, but by this stage I was all flustered and had lost my thread. Thankfully when the children came back I was ready and the TA was continuing to sort the cards. The lesson started with an activity on the IWB using a maths programme that I have forgotten the name of, but it allows you to make shapes then divide them up and colour in certain sections. I had the children coming up to the front to first of all pull the shapes apart to see what fraction of the shape was shaded in red, then moving the partitions onto another shape to see equivalent fractions. It was really helpful. I did realise that much more practice is needed on IWB though, as I kept holding the pen when the children were trying to drag and ended up with finger mark smears all over the place!! The children were great though and kept telling me how to use it, I think they found it quite amusing!
I also used Knowledge Box to play a maths mansion video on fractions, which is a very good resource for maths as well as other subjects. The card game was actually okay, until I realised that the cards were still all in the wrong combinations. I certainly learnt that next time I need to think about how to organise them better!!!

See you next week....

Swomped!!

2007-11-17T05:14:00.000-08:00

Hello! I have been so busy this week with assignment one and preparation for going into school next week that I almost forgot to write my blog!!! Can't have that though, so here we go...

I was sick last weekend and beginning of the week, so unfortunatly I missed the ICT session this week. I have had a quick read of what I have missed, but will have to go through it properly when I have a spare minute - Christmas maybe!! Looks like I missed Spreadsheets, which isn't too bad for me as I used them a lot in my last job, but I need to check that there wasn't anything specific that I don't yet know.

This week has been manic as always... the deadline for assignment one is getting closer so I've been using ICT in my final researching - webcat, online journals and search engines and hyperlinks from online articles. I'm also using it to start writing, which so far is my plan, which is on 2 pages, so it's quite detailed now. I am really confident in using Word 2000, I even have a proficiency formal exam in it from my last job, however my nice new laptop came with Office 2007 and stupidly I thought this was a good thing!! It is horribly different from Word 2000 and takes me 15 minutes to find anything! I am still searching for Wordcount, a vital tool for my essay, but nowhere in sight, why couldn't they have left it alone, haven't they heard the saying, 'don't fix what ain't broken'!!!

I did rather excitingly download an audio and visual codec, I've never heard of the things before and am not entirely sure what they are, but I still managed to download them and was rather proud of myself for doing it!!

Well I am now back to finish the plan for my assignment and hopefully find out that I can start writing it now, I like to wait until I have pretty much all my research usually, but I'm a bit swomped with research and need to sort it so it is relevant and sensical before I see if I have any gaps. The problem with this one is you could go on researching forever.... Tara!

Quiet Weekout

2007-11-10T10:10:00.000-08:00

Hello, I'm having a dull ICT week this week, no new or exciting technology to use!!

We had PE lecture this week, which was really good, but something I had previously thought rather limited for using ICT. Not anymore... in the lecture we talked about playing a video of a match, or the Olympics, for example to show children what they are working towards. I have also thought about using a camcorder to film children, so they can eatch themselves back to self evaluate and see how they can improve stance and technique, I also thought about using some sort of IT programme to show them how their body is moving when they, for example are throwing a javelin. I'm not sure that schools have this sort of technology mind... it's probably rather expensive... would be good if they did though!!! We also talked about the adventure side of sports, usually covered by going to an adventure centre for a week. I thought they could learn to use GPS as part of their orienteering training. I'm sure there are more possibilities out there along this line of thought, but I'm not sure I know them... ooh, I've thought of another, they could use photography to record other pupils playing sports, or use it to record their adventures.

We used photography in Geography too. Looking at images to learn about another culture. Children could take photographs of their local area/community activities and then email them to schools in a very different settlement, such as a village in Nepal, or a school in a mountain village in the Alps. The children in the other locality could email photos of their own settlement. The classes could see what they think they learnt about the other school and it's surroundings and then email their thoughts back to see how accurate they are. This gives them an opportunity to practice so many skills, but is fun and motivating too! They could do blogs, email, word-processing, Powerpoint, newsletters, photography, visual interpretation....

ICT has so many endless opportunities as a cross curricular subject!!!

See you next week! :-)

School Life

2007-11-03T05:10:00.000-07:00

Good morning! We'll what a week I have had at school, learnt so much in such a short space of time. The class I am in has a digital microscope, which I didn't use this week, but I have used one in our science lesson a few weeks ago, so i will know how to use it when I am teaching if it is appropriate for the lesson. There is also an Interactive White Board, a Smart Board version, so now I am going to download the software so that I can prepare lessons at home to use at school.

There was a spare classroom at the school that I was given for some lessons to teach a small group, so I was able to use the smartboard in my lessons. The first lesson I used it in was a lesson about using onomatopoeia's when writing firework poems. I searched on google and found a great powerpoint presentation with good sound on it, so I used this with the children and they loved it. They were able to really contribute to the lesson and were really engaged. I had them reading the Guy Fawkes rhyme altogether and a line of the poem each as we went through it. When they then wrote their own fireworks poems they worked really well were well focused and worked well as a team, helping eachother with spellings and deciding if a word was an omomatopieia. The second lesson I used it for was a program about using apostophes, it was supposed to be an interactive program, but when I asked the children to move the words around on the screen to fit into the correct boxes it didn't work. I still need more practice and to develop a better understanding of how the interactive bit of the board works, but the children were really keen and enjoyed seeing things on the board as opposed to just being read to, it helped them to connect to what they were learning.

I taught the whole class for literacy on Friday and the teacher observed me. One of the comments he said was that I wasn't talking when I was writing on the board, which could allow the children to start messing around, or start chatting. He said that I could have used the smart board and allowed the children to write on their words themselves. I had forgotten that they could do that, so agreed with the teacher that we would have a closer look at the IWB on the serial days in November, so that I am much clearer of it's functions.

It's going to be very strange going back to uni next week, I wish we were staying in schools, the children have just started listening to me and coming to me and feeling happy with my presence and I leave again! I hope that when I go back in November I don't have to start all over again with them and that the groundwork I've put in this week hasn't gone to waste! We'll just have to wait and see... Bye for now!

Week 3

2007-10-23T09:15:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-16T05:34:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-10-08T03:38:00.000-07:00

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!!!