Presenting

The presented assignment was a very daunting blot on the horizon throughout the autumn term. I was worried that I would find the interactive whiteboard technology a struggle to use and I would have an embarrassing experience. However, as I finally managed to get the Smart Notebook software on my Mac, the task of putting together the slides was surprisingly easy. I was not confident enough to produce a multi sensory presentation, though I think that now I have used the technology in front of my colleagues and subsequently in school on day link visits, I am getting more comfortable with exploring the resources it has to offer.

I chose to do my presentation on the Geography of London around the Thames. I loved being able to drag and drop pictures onto the screen and move them around for best advantage. The fact that everything can be moved around on the screen unless locked in place, makes for good opportunities for matching-up activities. It was oddly liberating to be able to move some of the most famous landmarks around a map of London and put them wherever I wanted!

The presentations were peer-assessed, this meant that no one had to stand up in front of the class to show their work. The class was divided into groups of three, and we took turns to show and assess. In my group, it was nice to find that we had all chosen a different foundation subject to present on, and we had a good variety of work to look at. This was my first experience of peer-assessment, and it struck me as good activity to do with children in the future.

Overall, I found the course to be an eye-opener on the future! School has changed so significantly since I was a pupil, and it is interactive technology that has made this transformation possible. I think I will try and utilise these resources, especially in subjects like science and maths. Digital Blue has provided every school in the country with a digital microscope for example, and I am really looking forward to working this into a lesson with the interactive whiteboard! I was quite sceptical about my ability to absorb all the new information at the start of the course, but the practical aspect of the lessons, meant that everyone was able to try things out and this is the best way to get to grips with something new.

Merry Christmas!

Getting them Creative

"In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes." - Andy Warhol.

Children are often mesmerised by the idea of being famous and the internet has sadly been used to exploit this in sometimes very sinister ways. In an ICT session, we looked at ways in which children can broadcast  their learning and upload things they have made to the internet. We also looked at talking postcards, photo albums and recording pods as ways in which children can preserve their voices for others to access.

One way in which children can broadcast themselves is through podcasting. This is a nice way for schools to link up globally and share work with others. Some of these podcasts can sound very polished and give a professional element to the children's work. We looked at examples of children's own poetry which had been put into podcasts on the site I have linked below.

http://www.radioanywhere.co.uk/

Schools can sign up to sites that provide platforms for podcasting. Another such site is Podium:

http://www.podiumpodcasting.com/

Podium is aimed at both Key Stage 1 and 2 level children and is suited to broadcasting among other things, children's musical achievements. We all had a chance to make mini podcasts in the ICT suite. I can see the idea appealing to the showing-off streak possessed by so many children; people made mock-up radio shows and interviewed each other.

Digital Blue is a company specialising in providing schools with innovative ICT technology. The previous week we looked at programmable robotic devices and digital microscopes, this time we worked with Digital Blue's digital video cameras to make very short stop motion animations. The very idea of being able to make any kind of animation in the classroom is highly impressive, and with the help of plasticine and some dead leaves, three of us put together the following:

The sense of pride in our work was palpable, even for three grown-ups, and the fact that children can now make and upload such creative endeavours, gives them a degree of ownership over their work, as well as the feeling that they are in some way getting themselves "out there."

MLEs and VLEs and why the dog can't eat your homework anymore...

Managed Learning Environments and Virtual Learning Environments.
One thing I know for certain in this world; there will never be a shortage of acronyms.

Our former government stipulated that by 2008, all British school pupils should have a personal online learning space. This has been widely though not fully realised, and the implications on children's' learning and information access are deep.

I was unaware that I was actually rather more familiar with the concept of these online learning resources than I thought. Having worked in universities for the last eight years, and now studying at one, I was a daily user of intranets such as our very own UniHub. These types of online community lend themselves perfectly to schools and universities as they can be accessed by the learners and teachers only, and provide a platform for knowledge and learning as well as the administration side of education establishments. When I enrolled on my PGCE course for example, I was able to do it online. Back in 1998, enrolling on my BA, I believe I spent about a week in different queues, carrying bits of paper from office to office and generally getting very fed-up!

MLEs and VLEs can deliver education outside the walls of the school and can provide each child with an E-Portfolio; a kind of continuous folder they can keep adding to, throughout their schooling. Homework can be submitted online, making all the age-old excuses, instantly a thing of the past. Parents too can get involved; letters from school can be received through the school's online community and not on a crumpled piece of paper that often ends up between a wet swimming-kit and a half-eaten packed lunch! Teachers can vary the tasks set for each child according to their academic ability or learning group.

In London, the London MLE currently has 1716 subscribing schools, and is run by Fronter. Schools are no longer separate entities but are linked to a wider community of learning. This benefits teachers as suddenly there is an infinite supply of good resources to share, which obviously impacts on planning. A lot of these resources are very attractive and of excellent quality. I was personally most impressed by the videos available for science subjects.

Potential problems for individual schools and children are mostly in the area of funding. MLAs and VLAs are not cheap things to set up and run and they rely on children and parents having access to the internet. While many schools now have laptop loan possibilities, this still doesn't help if the parents have no computer skills or internet connection.

Finally, harking back to an earlier blog on child safety in relation to the internet, parents and teachers can be reassured that MLAs and VLAs are probably the safest online environments for children available, as they can only be accessed by the school communities they serve.


http://webfronter.com/mlewebsite/mle/

No more nails...

Teacher: Where's your grammar?
Boy: She's in an old people's home.


Sorry, I couldn't help myself this morning with the awful jokes, having emerged blinking and rubbing my eyes from a grammar task that almost put me off my breakfast.




I recently explained the concept of the interactive whiteboard to my elderly mother. I could just as well have been talking about taking a school trip to the moon, so amazed was she. After thinking awhile about the possibility of showing a plant grow from seed to flower and seed again as a speeded up film or animation in front of a class of children, she added:


"How wonderful, now there won't be that horrible scratching noise in the classroom anymore."


My first encounter with an interactive whiteboard took place when I attended my first placement before applying to do PGCE. I was initially struck by how completely at ease the children were with this wonderful mine of possibilities in front of their totally un-astonished faces, and the horror of my own total ineptitude at all things computer-related. Suddenly the comfort of the blackboard, the thing I remember most from my school days, was a thing of the past. No more scratching it to give each other goose-pimples and no more writing naughty words on the back and waiting for the teacher to roll it down and reveal them. 

I actually grew to rather like the interactive whiteboard in my ten days at the school. The children appeared to know how to use it just as well as the teacher and loved any opportunity to get up and demonstrate this. It was tinted to help dyslexic members of the class and when it went out of sync, the pupils took turns to realign it for the teacher; a task of great pride! I was particularly impressed with the way it could be used as graph-paper where needed, a storyboard or a widescreen tv.


Recently I visited a school to observe a phonics lesson, and the interactive whiteboard came into its own again. This time the letters were movable and the children could form words with them, before they were confident at writing them out themselves. The IWB displayed high quality pictures at the same time, absolving the teacher from the embarrassing task of drawing the objects used to demonstrate the phonemes, or messing around with scrappy bits of paper and card.


There are so many different functions of an interactive whiteboard available for the teacher to use. The question for the teacher though, is how interactive does she or he want it to be exactly? This of course depends a lot on the confidence of the teacher with ICT skills and the time he or she wishes to devote to preparing interactive lessons on the IWB. I will try and "mess around" with as many functions as I can personally work out and see if I can produce anything remotely resembling an interactive tool for education. Ultimately it is the children who will benefit from this resource, and their patience with staring at a screen may be better than mine... Hang on, isn't the idea of it being interactive; not just staring at screens? Maybe the advent of interactive technology has finally enabled children to in a sense create their own learning and not just sit and wait for it to come to them. It surely heralds the beginning of a much more inclusive and democratic age in the classroom.


...and finally, something for my old mum who has never used the internet:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HYuO0EP5sU

Children and the Internet

I'm not even middle-aged, but I went to school before the internet as we know it, existed. This statement in itself shows how the interactive world has changed completely in the last twenty years. Teachers and parents used to warn us about strangers in the park and lecture us about bullying in the playground and after school. Children today still have these warnings and messages drilled into them, and a child who wouldn't dream of divulging personal information to an adult he has only just met, may not think twice about chatting to all sorts of people online. Similarly a parent may be blissfully unaware that their child is, alone and in her room, making another child's life a misery through cyber-bullying or vicious text messages. Any person who is embarking on a career with children and vulnerable young people needs to be aware of the virtual worlds most children inhabit, in and outside of the classroom.

Web2 has revolutionised the way we communicate. It has also changed the way we learn, and process new knowledge. Children can keep in touch with friends and family all over the world, classrooms in London can interact with classrooms in Lagos. Pupils can access and submit their homework online and in a format that may look to the average adult, more like a computer game than boring old study! There is no denying the fact that children love the internet and what it has to offer them; and why not? Increasing fears over safety have kept many of today's youngsters reclusive in their rooms after school; the internet has come to represent for many, a way to play with others and engage socially. 

Unfortunately, predatory adults and playground bullies have also taken just as easily to the internet as the children who use it to communicate and do their homework. Terminology such as "online-grooming" and "cyber-bullying" have recently entered our vocabulary. A child may appear physically safe but could be subject to sexual exploitation or vicious harassment while sitting in his or her room. 

It may be difficult as a teacher, to police what children do online at home. However the school must promote e-safety and insure that what they do in school is safe. Schools can set up secure networks, accessible only by pupils and teachers and to some extent parents. Children also need to be educated as part of their PSHE about the potential dangers online. Teachers also need to be aware of the way some children might themselves be using the internet for unsavoury purposes such as bullying or accessing content that is unsuitable for them and making it available to others. Violent video-clips are an example of this. Some schools even have set up initiatives across entire boroughs or counties to promote safe use of the internet here is an example of what is going on in Kent:

http://www.kenttrustweb.org.uk/Children/safeguards_esafety.cfm


While the above link is aimed at adults working in the sector, nationwide bodies such as CEOP have introduced colourful and fun campaigns for children. The video clip below tells children how to conduct themselves safely online and empowers young children in their virtual world. 


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unIo2QVfO0w&feature=player_embedded

Finally, we as adults have to be responsible for our own online presence too. We know how curious children are about us and how easy it is for them to find things like our Twitter feeds or Facebook profiles. What sort of behaviour are we modelling for our students on these pages? 

Introductory Blog Post.

Hello!

It's been several years since I kept a blog. I used to write about music, literature, food and my daily observations. Today I am studying for a PGCE and I hope to be a primary school teacher this time next year. When I first blogged I was not particularly interested in who my readership were, or about how I portrayed myself to the world. As a teacher there are so many implications surrounding my use of web 2. 

The children I will be teaching have grown up with the internet as a totally natural part of their lives and will be completely at home using it. I on the other hand became a regular internet user as an adult and am still rather shaky around certain aspects of the interactive virtual world we are all part of. Not only do I have to consider my own online profile from now on, I must also acquaint myself with the ways in which children will be presenting and behaving themselves online, and learn how to harness the educating power of the internet to my classroom.


I am a somewhat reluctant ICT user and I feel that in many ways, the children may actually be able to teach me to appreciate this resource. In this way I feel that this may be the start of a two-way learning journey!