While the ICT suite in my placement school is not huge, the walls are covered with examples of the work children have been doing in various years. Work includes podcasting using audacity and garage band, Scratch animation programming, E-Safety modules and Beebot programming. I think displaying children's work across years is extremely important as it gives younger pupils something exciting to aspire to in their learning. I was also particularly impressed to see instruction around each of the monitors with regards to fundamental computer skills (e.g. how to copy and paste, how to type in capitals, how to load up the internet), especially since (in my experience) these are the types of practical skills children often seem to be lacking in. The school's HLTA coordinates the majority of the ICT teaching which is reflected in the organisation, amount and variety of modules the children obviously get to cover. In reflection, it was particularly gratifying to see all of the skills I have developed through the creation of this website, applied in the classroom context.
During my EYFS placement, I have observed ICT being used in several areas of continuous provision. Firstly, the children have access to a shared computer that is set up with educational programs, ready to use. It is always a busy area during free play with a small crowd gathered round to get involved as can be seen in the first picture. The pupil playing the game used the keys to control a bouncing ball around a course while the other pupils watched and offered advice. The game develops the user's fine motor skills and the group's problem solving and team work skills. However, while this teaches important lessons about sharing, it would be more useful if there were more computers to meet the needs and obvious interest of the children. Secondly, the children have supervised access to the interactive whiteboard. The children lined up to answer a question each using a phonics program, identifying whether a word was real or not. Interestingly, the vast majority of pupils that play with the ICT facilities are boys (which can be seen in the pictures too). While a few girls have shown some interest, joining the group watching the computer user, I have yet to see a girl actually use it herself. This could reflect the children's interests at home following direct or indirect encouragement from siblings and parents, or suggest that girls are more interested in other areas. Whatever the reason, it perhaps shows the importance of avoiding enforcing gender roles and stereotypes onto children, particularly at such a young age. If young girls only see groups of boys around the computer throughout the day, it might send the message that it is a "boys activity". Therefore, to avoid this, I believe extra effort and provision should be made to encourage girls to use the ICT facilities more. It was interesting to observe 2 Year 5 ICT lessons this week, looking at the composition, selection, editing and arrangement of photographs. Children created their own photo albums on the I-Pads and then went out in the first lesson to take pictures of nature around school. Most returned with pictures of trees, plants, the sky, mud, fungi etc. The following lesson, the teacher talked the children through the initial editing process (i.e. getting your photo collection of 100 down to 20). He then taught the children how to crop and add special effects (i.e black & white, sepia). Next lesson the children would be looking at selecting a few of their best to arrange in a display project.
I really liked this idea as a project because it can be directly applied to real life as taking and editing good photos is an everyday skill. The organisation of the photos required an understanding of file management and the editing process required them to be analytical and evaluative. Using the I-Pads gave the control to the children to be creative while still learning vital, applicable skills. Having done a practical lesson investigating pitch, the class teacher took the children into the computer suite to use an interactive science program which allowed them to "test" various instruments for themselves. By changing certain factors (e.g. tightness of skins and strings, lengths of instruments etc) pupils could see for themselves how pitch changed. The children obviously loved being on the computers and worked well together. it also gave them the opportunity to test a wide variety of instruments that were not available for the real life testing. However, I felt that the session should have been a little more directed. From an assessment point of view, it is difficult to measure what each child came away with. While some were quite engaged with testing the instruments, some also seemed in danger of just playing to pass the time. I feel the LO should have been clearer and that children should have had some sort of quiz sheet to work from. Interestingly, the computer skills of the Year 5s seemed much more advanced than those of the Year 4s. Perhaps this is mostly down to developmental factors and amount of practise. However, it could also be pointed out that the class teacher was very enthusiastic about using ICT, running an "App club" during Golden Time and including a Digital Photography unit within the art curriculum. Seeing that the ICT suite was free on the second to last day of term and wanting to do a fun, Christmassy activity with the children, I booked Year 4 in for the afternoon to "Elf" themselves! This involves visiting www.elfyourself.com where you can import a picture of a face onto the body of an elf which then performs a choreographed dance with other elves depending on how many friends' faces you want to involve! During the morning craft lesson, I took a portrait photograph of each pupil using a digital camera. During lunch, I loaded the photographs onto the "shared" drive so that the pupils could access their pictures when they logged on in the afternoon. I also created two dummy email accounts using Hushmail which allowed the children to register (unavoidable) and then to send their creations to "my" account. This enabled me to log in and put the pupils' creations on the big screen back in the classroom. This was a great end-of-term ICT activity that produced much hilarity, especially when some comedian copied and pasted the teaching staff of year 4's heads onto disco dancing elves! It gave the children practice in selecting and importing photos and emailing. With the right class, I would definitely use this activity again as an end-of-term ICT treat! Today's history lesson finding out about Tutankhamen was extremely successful! We started off by making a mind-map on the board of the things we knew about Tutankhamen already. The children then copied this into their books and set to work using the I-Pads to find out more facts about the life and death of the most famous pharaoh. This would all lead to a whole-class quiz: Who Wants to be an Ancient Egyptian Millionaire (Pharaoh Edition) with a prize for the winner. Those who could find out the most facts stood a better chance of winning. I was extremely impressed with how well the children worked together. Learning was definitely collaborative, as alliances formed to find, record and exchange facts. Pupils were very proficient using the I-Pads which stood out in comparison with their work using the desktop computers in the suite. The fact that the I-Pads are ready to go the minute you open the cover is a huge bonus and saves valuable learning time (as opposed to having to wait to "log on"). The final quiz was also a huge success. I used an online "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" Powerpoint template and added in my Tutankhamen questions, making them gradually harder as the quiz went on. I displayed the quiz on the IWB and each child started standing up with a small whiteboard. As the questions came up, the children had to write their answer A, B, C or D on their whiteboard and hold it up. Those who got the question wrong sat down, while those who got it right remained standing. This was a great way of assessing how much the children had taken in from their research and it was amazing to see the effect of competition and a prize on their motivation to learn! The class teacher (who had not been present) even commented the following lesson on how much the children had remembered. I felt that the I-Pads added fun and efficiency to what had the potential to be a dull, fact-finding session, and the whole class Powerpoint quiz gave it some glamour. I was eager to get into the computer suite with my year 4 Literacy class to assess what level their ICT skills were at and to gauge how I can use ICT to enhance their leaning experience. Their learning objective was to use the internet to research facts about Egypt to create an informative text page. The results were quite varied. Most children understood the basics in Microsoft Word (typing, inserting WordArt, underlining, deleting, copy & paste) however many became quickly frustrated when they did not know how to do something, for example, sending a picture behind the text in order to be able to move it around the page with the mouse. The majority of the class showed signs of struggling to control the mouse when using Microsoft Word, but this is probably to be expected considering their age, experience and ongoing development of fine motor skills. Whereas internet links provide a bigger target to click, Word requires more mouse accuracy due to the many options and buttons it has. This lesson led me to reflect on how children's increased usage of touch-screen technology such as tablets, laptops and phones may lead to such difficulties in using a mouse and keyboard as described above. I will be interested to see how proficient the children are at using the school I-Pads in future lessons. Despite the children gaining valuable experience of working with Microsoft Word, their skill level was perhaps too low (and possibly success criteria not clear enough) for ICT to particularly enhance their learning experience in this lesson. Children became quite caught up in presentational aspects (adding borders, colours to titles, pictures) and neglected the key objective of using the internet to research facts about Egypt to type up an information page in Word. Next time I will think about giving children key questions to research and answer, emphasising that pictures, borders etc. are to be done last. Having discussed the school's medium term plans with my AT during task and observation week, it appears that my class are booked in to use the ICT suite and the I-Pads regularly throughout the half-term for literacy, history, geography and of course, ICT. I have downloaded and familiarised myself with the school's E-safety policy which was available on the school's website and have found KidSmart leaflets available for staff and pupils in the ICT suite. There was also a display on internet safety which encouraged children to keep personal details about themselves private and to report things that made them uncomfortable online.
I have also discussed E-safety with my AT, in particular ensuring that safety mode is set up for Youtube preventing inappropriate videos and adverts popping up unexpectedly. She also pointed out that luckily, there have been very few instances of cyber-bullying and trouble with social networking sites, which my AT believes is down to their young age - it would appear most of the children do not own mobile phones or have Facebook accounts yet. Having researched E-safety in some depth, I feel very confident about modelling the use of ICT in class and teaching children how to protect themselves while using the internet. On reflection, it is important not to avoid using the internet through fear of the risks involved for children. By teaching confidence, awareness and responsibility while online, we are preparing them for the modern world. After sampling various free website providers including Moonfruit, Ucoz and Wix, I have selected Weebly. It seems the easiest to use which is important in terms of learning new skills needed to create this showcase website for my PGCE course, and also considering that at some point, I will want to guide children in creating their own websites. I have been experimenting with numerous templates and have set up the overall layout of the site, ready to be populated with evidence of my developing ICT skills and placement experiences. It has taken some time to familiarize myself with how to use Weebly, but I am now confident in my knowledge of both what the site is and is not capable of. I can insert pictures, videos and links and am beginning to feel that I could take a class through the basics. I feel this area would be more appropriate for an upper Key Stage 2 class that already has a relatively firm grasp of typing, selecting information, importing pictures etc. Difficulties with these things could quickly overwhelm a lesson originally focused on web design. |
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