Learning, Teaching and ICT

This week I delivered training on Internet Safety and wasn’t sure how to make it interesting! While playing around on Twitter, however, I noticed an entry by Neil Winton linking to this great resource.

Thanks Neil

I also caught site of Tom Barratt’s link to a slideshare presentation that gave (what I think anyway) a powerful message:

The quote by Will Richardson on slide 16 led me to talk about the importance of giving primary school age children their own online space in the form of a blog or wiki so that they can learn how to ‘act and present themselves’ in an safe manner when they ‘branch out’ and create their own personal space on bebo, Facebook etc. Early years teachers can begin by allowing them to post on a class blog.

….But what about direct benefits to learning and teaching? Writing this post led me to reflect on a section of the findings of my Chartered Teacher dissertation. I wrote:

“ Taking part in this case study has given me an opportunity to reflect on my own teaching. Some of the findings from the research were unexpected. I set out to investigate if the strategies I had put in place would lead to the creation of an online learning community. I was not prepared for the effect this would have on the offline environment of the classroom and for the changes to the content and delivery of the curriculum. Giving the children the freedom to use their online spaces as they wished allowed a deeper insight to their persona. An online community did develop, but that was on the periphery. The sharing of thoughts, opinions, ideas and personal likes and dislikes began as online blog posts. These were then developed in the offline classroom setting, giving rise to opportunities to increase motivation by modifying the programme of study to one that was more ‘child led’.”

GLOW and Twitter 

This week, I met up with Katie Barrowman, Jaye Richards and Sinclair McKenzie on GLOW messenger because of incidental comments left on Twitter. This impromptu meeting also led to me taking part in my first GLOW video conference session, and I have to admit that it was good fun and Katie was able to talk me through some of the applications available (saved me reading through the instructions!) We even tried out GLOW chat – and it worked well, too. On GLOW so far I’ve embedded a voki, uploaded a document and an mp3 file … I’ve even set up my own GLOW group! I’m beginning to see the potential

I wonder what tips I’ll pick up from Twitter this week       

I’ve been given the Key to GLOW

Thanks to Katie for the helpful e-mail attachment …… and to Con for the homework

I’ll do my best!

Thanks also to Jaye and Ollie who promised that I could pay a visit to their schools to see the good work they’re doing - can’t back down now that I’ve made the invitation public

Thank you also to John and to Robert for allowing me to use their good practice in my ‘Active Math’ CPD presentation today …. the teachers who attended were suitably impresssed

John provided ideas for using ComicLife to help P6 stage pupils understand ‘shape properties’ and was very impressed by the motivational aspect of giving them a camera and a new resource.

 Robert used Go!Animate and wrote on his blog:

The pupils are enjoying learning how to make animations. Enjoyment is sometimes a bit thin on the ground in maths for some of these students, despite my efforts to jolly things up, so I’m delighted to see them turning up early to the computer lessons, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

AND!!