Life in school....

I'm so exhausted and I've only spent three days in school!!! The kids in my class are brilliant and the school is very keen on their ICT work so I've had plenty of opportunities to see it in action.

The main use of ICT within the classroom is through the interactive whiteboard which is used in the majority of lessons. The children do a 'wake up, shake up' session every morning to prepare them for the day which is projected onto the IWB. Lesson activities are often prepared before the children arrive but the use of functions within the IWB programmes, allow last minute changes. I think its brilliant how you can save work so that you can revert back to spider diagrams etc in later lessons. If the teacher ever struggles to find a file, or is erasing rather than writing, the children all seem to know how to correct the mistake and love using the IWB themselves!

I have also had the opportunity to go to the library with the class, in which they are all comfortable with scanning in and out their books as if it were a 'proper' library! This kind of technology we had in my sixth form, but I never dreamt of seeing it in a junior school so I was very impressed.....especially as the children are able to use the technology themselves!

Although my class hasn't used them, I know the school uses digital cameras fairly frequently. The other yr 3 class took class pictures to add to their timeline of event and therefore added photos of themselves saying when they were born! This helped them to understand the concept of time! A new girl started in year 5 and was given a digital camera to walk around the school taking pictures in order to help orientate and familiarise herself with the school and the surroundings!

As you can tell....its been a busy week and I've basically just been observing - be interesting when we all start teaching for real in January!! Hopefully I'll be able to use a wide range of ICT resources in my lesson plans, with the existing ICT support from the school.

Lack of ICT use this week.....

I haven't had as much experience with new modes of ICT this week as I did in the previous week so haven't got too much to report back on!

I've been using the WIKI to look for resources and had a brief look at other peoples blogs - they all look really good - well done group B!!

In our subject lessons this week, we only had the chance to use the interactive whiteboard rather than any other modes of ICT. I also searched for SMART software and downloaded it onto my laptop so that I could practice making materials from home. I had a brief visit to my placement school on Friday and got the shock of them not using SMART IWB but Promethean so I'm a bit worried about that! The school seem very keen on using ICT in all lessons.....they have a wonderful ICT suite, and I saw examples of year 6 movies that they had been working on. This made me realise how children today are so much more advanced than we are, with regards to ICT!!!

With regards personal use of ICT....I've mainly been relying on my word processing skills, as well as using the internet to search for journal articles in preparation for my file checks and masters assignment work.

Hopefully more to report back on next week......!

This week....

Hi - I've had lots of experience with ICT this week in all subjects so thought I'd document it here! Firstly, in English we got the chance to use dictaphones and video cameras to record radio and TV adverts. This was the first time I had used a dictaphone and thought it was a really effective use of ICT that could easily be implemented into the primary classroom. It also gave us the chance to receive immediate feedback from both our peers and the classroom teacher.

Later in the week, we used ICT in a number of ways during our Science lessons. Firstly we passed the wireless keyboard around so that everyone could contribute to the question that had been placed by the classroom teacher. We were then given the opportunity to use the interactive whiteboard and various packages that could be used. We were also taught how we could turn our word processed documents into our own interactive packages that we could use in the classroom. I found this opportunity a real confidence booster and would feel more at ease, when using the IWB in the classroom on my placements.

Today in ICT we learnt how to use WIKIs - the resource we were shown should be very useful when finding suitable resources when on SBT's. The WIKI seemed very easy to use and I hope to use in more in the coming weeks.

First Post!

HELLO!!

Hi everyone.....I am new to this blogging thing but will be reflecting each week on the use of ICT in society. I must admit I am very confused by the whole blogging thing - especially uploading pictures!! Hopefully my blogging capabilities will improve with time!

As part of my blog I will reflect on the work I have undertaken in each of the ICT lessons, as well as any directive activities I have done. I will be able to examine relevant news articles that I have read or heard about with regards to the topic of ICT. I will also use the blog as an opportunity to reflect on my own ICT use and the experiences I have had with ICT.

With regards to today's first lesson in 'blogging' I thought the process would be fairly easy however I seem to have failed in completing the simple tasks of adding a picture! Thanks to Monty - I've managed to get it up now!!

Before today, I always thought I was pretty ICT literate having completed an a level in it, but now I realise I have lots to learn.....you'll be able to follow my ICT learning curve over the next few months......enjoy!!