BT course on ICT

It was interesting to go along to my BT course with Toni Twiss leading an ICT day.  I guess I had never really compared my own ICT growth against what other schools are doing apart from at clusters like Southwell where we are all obviously on some ICT journey. But going to the course today it was surprising to see the number of teachers who didn't have a classroom blog or wiki. It felt great to know that I am already using these valuable tools available through the support and guidance of my school. ICT is not only part of the curriculum but is important to motivate often reluctant students and to create life long learners with tools they will need for their future. It was amazing to hear what Korero Pt England School are up to with their blogs and using itunes to showcase their book reviews. Putting it on a place like itunes meant a wider audience and audience is often something we talk about but is sometimes hard to create an authentic situation with a variety of audiences, (not just the same old same old audience, which no doubt looses its impact over time). This school has become so widely viewed that when new books are published they receive a copy to review along with the likes of magazines and newspapers. (A great way to add to your school library!!!) I would like to try a smaller scale idea of this perhaps getting one interviewer and one child summarising the book they have just read using the flip. Going back to the idea of an audience, should we be connecting with other schools blogs to widen our audience? The kids love it when another teacher from within our school comments on their post. How excited would they be to know that other people at other schools were interested in their learning? Another example we were exposed to today was a teacher using flickr where she had a five frame story. She had photographed the kids doing something which could then be turned into a story. This could work for our procedural writing at the moment having the language experience with photos and then referring to the photographs to write. Perhaps it could be taken a step further to embed it using voice thread and with each picture the student reads out their step they have written??? Toni also told us about using define:(WORD) in a google search engine and it will bring up the definition of a word. I know that ICT needs to be incorporated throughout daily programmes not just saved for ICT time so perhaps this is a new tool for getting students to look at their vocab words occassionally??? The next step for my class in the short term is to set up individual blogs for my class. I started the year with a class blog as all of this blogging was new to me and my students. But the students are working well with the technology now and our class blog is becoming bombared with information. I also want to set up voice thread and have a go at using this to leave comments on the video footage I have from their speeches.

ICT Trial with Jo

The first session with Jo was very full on with a lengthy survey.  It was hard to gage for some of the statements where we would fit. But the second session was valuable to talk about it in more detail and with a clearer understanding of each statement. Bouncing ideas off the whole syndicate and with Jo allowed us to see that we are actually doing more than perhaps we first thought.  We are being reflective of our own practice with our individual blogs and do have great PD opportunities with the cluster meetings at Southwell. It is great to have tools such as class camera's, and flips to capture the moment to then share with the students, their families and the wider school community. It is hard with ICT time being limited but hopefully the netbooks we have got are just the start of students being able to access this technology more readily. It is an exciting time looking to what is ahead but it sounds like we are on track to offer our students the tools to become life long users of this technology.  One interesting thing to come out of our meeting was the school's vision towards ICT and the need to consolidate this so that everyone has a clear direction and reason for using these forms of technology.  I guess we know what were using our own class blogs for and the purpose of this but having a clear understanding of our school vision will continue to steer us in the right direction for future ICT growth.