Monday 2 March 2009

Last Post

I have enjoyed keeping a blog about ICT. 

It has made me take more notice of the use of ICT within observed lessons and my own lessons, because I knew that I would be writing about it. This worked the other way too, because I had been writing about it I was also thinking about it.

 I think the ICT on the PGCE course has made me consider the wider use of ICT all around us, and I now notice more children using different technologies and how natural they are with them.

 One of my year 4 children brought in his memory stick with a PowerPoint presentation, of a maths thinking problem; he had made for the rest of the class. This was because I had giving them a problem a day on the IWB and he had found one he wanted to share. I like to think that I had inspired him, not that he thought he could do a better job!

 I have also found blogging a useful tool for sharing information I have found, although I have not used this very efficiently as I have not looked at anyone else’s blogs and doubt they have looked at mine. Therefore it is probably more useful as a personal reflective tool.

 I am not sure that I will keep blogging for personal reflection. However it is something I might consider using with my class.

Tuesday 17 February 2009

There is still nothing on there but the bare bones of a website, but i got our Ceramics Website address wrong! I think this will be a project for July when PGCE is finished!

ICT on SBT 1

 

The children have an ICT ‘skills’ lesson once a week. Whilst I was observing this included:

Dance Mat Typing

BBC Celts site – this is a great interactive site that they can explore, listen to stories, make forts and armour, play games and much more.

Revelations Natural Art – this is a fantastic arts package. It is lovely to use and comes in 3 versions Basic, junior, expert. It has different media they can chose from, the colours blend like real paint, it has stamp functions, clip art, symmetry lines and much more.

 

I also got the opportunity to observe the ICT subject leader teach. This was good, and reinforced what I had seen from my CT. A key feature was giving the children an opportunity to play with the software and find things for themselves.

 

The CT used the IWB frequently, most maths lessons were started with a PowerPoint to give the session context. He also used it to model (proof reading, writing), and set timers for the children to see.

 

The use of pictures from arts week and the school trip then being displayed on the IWB was a nice way of evaluating both experiences.

 

Music and story CDs were also used quite often.

 

My use of ICT

I used the ICT suite during an English session to research sea creatures so the children could make a fact file. This series of lessons also involved modelling on the IWB how to fill in their planning sheet, and a PowerPoint of sea creature pictures. I used the IWB to annotate an information text to show the key features. These were then put into a list which the children (in the plenary) had to write down on their wipe boards, I used the roller blind function to cover the list and to reveal slowly to check their answers. We also played guess the habitat and guess the animal using the spot light function, which a child was able to control. I used the IWB to create a task called Fact or Opinion, the children had to tell me if the statement was fact or opinion and then move the box to reveal the answer.

 

They really enjoy coming up and using the IWB, I think it makes them listen better as they want a go.

 

I also used PowerPoints for Maths.

 

In science the school have a programme called Science explorer (I think…) which has lots of online experiments to watch and quizzes and games to play. I used this in a lesson on teeth. It brushed a set of teeth for different amounts of times and put the information on a bar chart.

 

I was due to teach a lesson of ICT in the final week (and was having my link tutor observe) but the night before at about 8pm the CT phoned to say there was a virus and the network was down, so there would be no computers for my ICT lesson. I still taught the lesson which was about repeated patterns and pointillism but using felt tips, we reflected as a class how we would have used the computers if we had them.

 

I didn’t see them used, but the school are equipped with DigiBlue cameras. I asked about these as they can be great fun but the response was they didn’t work very well and most of them were broken. This was a bit of a shame….

 

The use of ICT in the school was good, all teachers were positive and enthusiastic. One staff meeting I attended was about writing the school mission statement for ICT. This was really interesting and it was clear that all understood the importance of ICT in the new generation, and the issues about not all children having access at home. They talked about having time where the parents and children could use the schools computers. The ICT subject coordinator also has set up some ‘silver surfer’ sessions for the community.

 

Overall a positive experience of ICT use.

I have finished my on line course for promethean, it was useful, I recommend it! Level 1 - Foundation Skills course is free