Welcome

Welcome!

The fact that you made it to this page means your students are headed in the right direction. Simply by a teacher exploring the idea of “ICT in my classroom” is setting the students up to become 21^st century learners. The reality is, students now are “digital natives” it will always come more naturally to them, than it does us. We do, however, need to keep up. This requires a little more exploration on our behalf and extra time sourcing new resources, because new and better resources are becoming available every day.

Why I am here, having this discussion:
I feel that far too often I see ICT being misused. Schools create “digital portfolios” but then it’s full of videos of the students doing non-digital work. Is this really a digital portfolio? Working in Cambodia, I watched the students (also digital natives) navigate an IPhone quicker than me. That really made me think how far the world is developing. Students that are in schools with no resources and parents with bare minimum income, if not lower, still have iPhones. They still have access to the big wide web. This is just a reminder at the direction the world is heading, and we need to make every effort to keep up.

Here I will provide you with updated information and tips in relation to ICT. ICT is always changing and new products are always becoming available, so I will continually keep you updated.

What is ICT?

What do we do when we want to find out something we are not sure of? We Google it! So what is ICT? Well, I asked Google, and what was the very top link? Wikipedia!

Wikapedia states that ICT is : Information and communications technology (ICT) is often used as an extended synonym for information technology (IT), It is a more expansive term (i.e. more broad in scope) that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), computers as well as necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage, and audio-visual systems, which enable users to access, store, transmit, and manipulate information

In my eyes, ICT is the future, it is how we buy a bus ticket, it is how we book our holidays, it is how we speak to our insurance companies, and it is how we see our money. Children need to have these skills to succeed in life. Right now, it’s all about tablets and smartphones, iPads/Tablets, Netbooks, Computers, TV’s, mobile phones and Smartboards.

Benefits of ICT

ICT in the classroom has many benefits. It can benefit schools, classroom teacher, and the students and parents. Below is an outline of the positives aspects of ICT for each stakeholder.

General benefits

·      Greater efficiency throughout the school.

·      Communication channels are increased through email, discussion groups and chat rooms

·      Regular use of ICT across different curriculum subjects can have a motivational influence on students’ learning.

Benefits for schools:

·      Websites can keep the larger community updated

·      Application for the school. Some schools have created apps to keep parents in the loop, it notifies parents of important information such as events happening, important forms that are due and general school information. They can tell the school through the app that there child will be absent and download important forms.

Benefits for teachers

·      ICT facilitates can assist with sharing of resources

·      Teachers can seek professional readings

·      It allows for greater flexibility where tasks can be carried out

·      Gains in ICT literacy skills, confidence and enthusiasm

·      It can make for easier planning and preparation of lessons.

·      Access to up-to-date pupil and school data, any time and anywhere

·      Students are generally more engaged and express more positive feelings when they use computers than when they are given other tasks to do

·      Computer use during lessons motivated students to continue using learning outside school hours

(Mohanty, 2011)

Benefits for students

·      High quality lessons through greater opportunities to collaborate

·      Teaching can be more focused and tailored to students’ strengths and weaknesses, through better analysis of attainment assessment data

·      Improved administration and behavior management through better tracking of students

·      Gain in understanding and analytical skills, including improvements in reading

·      Encouragement of independent and active learning, and self-responsibility for learning.

·      Flexibility of ‘anytime, anywhere’ access (Jacobsen and Kremer ,2000)

·      Students who used educational technology in school felt more successful in school, were more motivated to learn and have increased self- confidence and self-esteem

·      Students for learning in a technology-enhanced setting are more stimulating and student-centred than in a traditional classroom

·      Opportunities to address their work to an external audience

·      Opportunities to collaborate on assignments with people outside or inside school

(Mohanty, 2011)

Benefits for parents

·      Easier communication with teachers

·      Higher quality student reports – more legible, more detailed, better presented

·      Greater access to more accurate attendance and attainment information

·      Increased involvement in education for parents and, in some cases, improved self-esteem

·      Increased knowledge of children’s learning and capabilities, owing to increase in learning activity being situated in the home

·      Parents are more likely to be engaged in the school community

·      You will see that ICT can have a positive impact across a very wide range of aspects of school life. (Mohanty, 2011)

ICT is not only great for your students, but it can make your life so much easier. Sure, there will be a time that you my struggle while you’re learning, but it’s worth it.

Why ICT is important in your classroom

The integration of ICT into the classroom prepares your students to become life long learners. The use of ICT better prepares the current generation of students for there future workplace where ICT, particularly computers, the Internet and related technologies, are becoming widely used. Not to mention basic ICT skills are typically required in everyday tasks such as, to self check out at the super market & buy a train ticket. Technological literacy, or the ability to use ICT effectively and efficiently, is therefor seen as a competitive edge in an increasingly globalising job market. There was criticism in the work force when Gen Y entered. It was evident that they had become lazy with their literary skills and work places were wasting there time teaching the basics. Who is to blame? Maybe it was due to the fact that Gen Y grew up with MSN being the first instant social media being used by adolescents where abbreviations and acronyms were used.  As Gen Y entered the workforce all of a sudden it was obvious that there were consequences of growing up with ICT, yet not being taught about it.  We need to teach students that ICT is a great learning tool, provided you know how to use it.

 

Reasons ICT in your classroom may not be efficient and effective

Time wasted in class

The amount of time, I’ve seen a line of students with iPads with a teacher frantically trying to fix the same problem on every device. Far too often teachers are trying to fix avoidable situations that could have been avoided with a little preparation.

Unmonitored content

Students will naturally take the easy option if they can. We might have a great activity in mind students to do and it’s fantastic because it has a range of different levels, and we think “YES! All the kids can use this app at a challenging level”. This NEEDS to be monitored.  If it’s not monitored, this fantastic app is suddenly not challenging our students and therefore no longer an effective teaching tool.

Your own time 
Yes, learning to use the ICT in your classroom can be time consuming and teachers are not rolling in spare time. My opinion of this, It is important make time to do your research, make time to research new and exciting ways to use ICT (this is your first step)

Funding 
ICT can be expensive and typically have a few years of good function and then need to be replaced. Considering that ICT needs to be taught, PD’s need to occur to educate teachers, ICT can be easily broken and typically full time staff members that focus on the maintenance of ICT it can be a costly process.

Classroom tips for a more effective use of ICT

ICT experts

We all know students thrive off responsibility and we know that there are students in your class that know ICT better than us. Allow students in your classroom that know technology to be the first point of call for any ICT needs, before you. This frees you from a line of student’s as well as

Prepare:

The same way that you would set up any other learning environment set up the ICT environment, by opening the app or plugging in headphones anything that means your students can start their learning right away.

Teach the aspects ICT:

Encourage students use ICT as a learning tool. Teach them about emailing, teach them to research, and teach them that there are apps available. Don’t just introduce them to a program, learn it yourself and teach them how to use the program. There is no point creating an Imovie, if the students are not learning about and using different tools. Be specific in criteria; ensure they use different components of the ICT if they are using it.

Learn on ICT:

As much as we are teaching the students about ICT and how to use it, there are fantastic tools available in the App store and great websites that are engaging that can be done as “activities”. I think there are two sides of ICT in the classroom, one is learning about it and the other is utilising what you’ve got and doing activities on them, purely because it is engaging for the students.

To clarify, I believe opening up “reading eggs” and doing activities on the iPad is NOT teaching the kids about ICT, is it an activity. It is however a fantastic literacy resource provided students are working at the correct levels and challenging themselves. This needs to be monitored by you.

Google it

Let’s be honest, if a child asked me a question and I didn't know the answer, I’d Google it! It is the 21^st century and our reality is the Internet so you need to teach your students how to use it effectively. This obviously can’t be our only source, but sometimes we can get very hypocritical.

Safety first

In schools almost everything on the Internet is blocked but when they get home and turn on their iPad, the safety net is no longer there. Safety should continually be reinforced when using these tools.

Fix it, teach it and pass it on

Those horrid lines of students cued up for some teacher assistance when the same thing goes wrong with every computer or every iPad in the classroom. Instead of frantically grabbing it, fixing it and yelling next. Fix the problem, whilst showing the student how to fix the problem, that way the two you can be fixing the problem for someone else, then suddenly there is 4 in the room that can fix the problem.

Find a happy Medium

As classroom teachers we need to find the happy between not enough technology and too much technology. The reluctant ones, still need to learn as their future will be a lot more “ICT” than it is now and they need to know there way around it. Even though some kids would chose to create a “digital” version of something, they still need to put pen to paper.

Resources

Wikispaces is a social writing platform for education. It is a website used to make a classroom workspace where students and teachers can communicate and work together on writing projects independently or collaboratively. This is a rich assessment tool that gives teachers the ability to measure contributions form each student.

        

Blogs

Student friendly Blogs- Starting a classroom blog is a great way to keep parents updated. Students can feel a sense of accomplishment by and a sense of community through the creation of a blog. It makes students feel like 21^st century authors.

Applications (Apps)

Apps to create with

·    Explain everything

·    Keynote

·    Imovie 

·    Pages

·    Story creator

Apps and websites to assist teachers

·      Idoceo

·      Running Record Checker

·      Evernote

·      Pinterest – is a great way to share resources 

·      Twitter – follow educators to help keep up with current teaching philosophy’s/debates and information.

·      Showbie

·      Ted talks

·      Autism Apps

·      Esmart

Digital portfolios

Are great ways to showcase all the ICT activities that the students have done throughout the term/year.

YouTube­:

You can watch almost anything on YouTube and it can bring a topic to life! So use it.
 

Most museums and educational facilities that schools might visit often have websites with extra resources that are relevant to curriculum content and to any visits that you may been on.

Interactive stories

·      Cinderella the Nosy Cow

·      The fantastic flying books of Mr Morris Lessmore