ICT improves literacy learning

I have come to the conclusion that literacy is supported by ICTs in primary school classrooms. Over the past week I have been writing my EDX3270 assignment and have found some pretty cool ways to use Interactive white boards and iPads in class. One article I was looking at discussed how students engagement and excitement when using the IWB increased dramatically! This teacher got students iPads and linked them to the IWB so they their answers would be displayed on the screen. I thought that was a good way to show everyone’s opinions and how they are different.

I also found this Website that shows you all the different apps you can use in a literacy class. Some of them are really cool. I recommend you check them out.

Lesson Plan for Assignment One

Please find my lesson plan that I will do my AES evaluation on here -> Pre-service lesson plan ICT. I created this lesson plan in 2015 for my a grade 2 Technologies/English class. I have modified this lesson plan for grade 3 as the workload is suited to them more. This lesson plan requires students to create a poster for their schools up an coming musical of Peter Pan. This poster is to be created using Microsoft Word. The students are required to include the following elements on their poster:border, title, picture, coloured background, date of the play and you are to include a 4-6 line poem about the musical. They must then use their ICT skills to email the teacher their poster.

 

ICT Assignment One

11 days until the assignment is due! I don’t know if I am reading the assignment criteria right, but it seems fairly easy… From what I understand we have to locate a lesson plan that utilises ICTs throughout it and then complete an AES evaluation form about the lesson. What I think will be hard is locating a lesson that is free from copyright. This whole copyright thing confuses me. Out of all my course so far in uni I have not come across this. Monique  and Holly talked about in their blog posts the rules on Copyright. After reading their posts it kind of makes more sense .

Does ICT support literacy?

…and that is the big question. For EDX3270 (Literacies Education) we are required to write a 2000 word critical analytical essay on a topic that was given to us. I have chosen to critically analyse ‘how can ICT support literacies in primary school classrooms?‘. So far I have read 19 contemporary journal articles that argued ICT is a key component of a literacy classroom, which surprised me. I found it really interesting because when I first started researching I also read a lot of non usable articles (due to the date of publication) from 1998-2004 and they were all raving on about how ICT SHOULD be used in schools. Even before iPads and interactive whiteboards etc. were introduced, the research showed the progress in terms of students literacy success, teachers were finding in the classroom.

This progress and ever evolving technology based society we have, led to educational documents being designed  for teachers to implement in the classroom. One of these documents is the Melbourne Declaration. Holly talks about in one of her blog posts Justification for the use of ICT in schools  how the Melbourne Dec. requires Australian students to be: creative and productive users of technology, especially ICT, as a foundation for success in all learning areas (MCEETYA, 2008).

This EDX3170 essay so far has shown me how important ICT is for a literacy classroom !

Google for kids!

So I was looking through a blog called ‘Mr Clancy’ and found a blog post that I thought was really cool. It talks about Google for kids! Basically it is a search engine for kids called Kiddle. The editors of Kiddle have designed the search engine to only allow children friendly sources and sites.  Many people get confused with kiddle and think it is run by google, however it is not.  I think that this site is really good to use in a school setting as it promotes cyber safety. It would give the teacher peace of mind knowing that their students will not stumble across any items that will be inappropriate or harmful to them.

References:

Kiddle. (2016). Kiddle search engine. Retrieved from http://www.kiddle.co/

Reasons to Use ICT

Today marks week two of EDC3100. The learning path this week requires us to create a concept map around the topic of ‘why use ICT?’. I personally believe there is to many ways you could answer that question. My concept map only briefly looks some reasons why I believe ICTs should be utilised in schools. I agree with Kirschner and Wopereis (2003) framework ‘ the big three’ which proposes three factors to explain the rise in interest around ICT and Pedagogy:

1. Preparing the next generation for the workforce;
2. Making schools more efficient and productive; and,
3. Enhancing and transforming learning and teaching.

I think this framework raises good points on why it is important to include ICTs in the classroom.

I have kind of based my concept map on this framework. I created my concept map on https://bubbl.us/mindmap. Its a website dedicated to allowing you to brainstorm.

 

References:

Kirschner, P., & Wopereis, I. G. J. H. (2003). Mindtools for teacher communities: a European perspective. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 12(1), 105–124. doi:10.1080/14759390300200148

ICT in Mathematics

In my experience whilst on prac and what we have been taught at Uni, the main subject that is talked about in relation to ICT is English. The great debate is how much should ICT be utilised in the classroom to create a balanced approach. There are countless reports and studies that show the benefits for using ICT in English (see here for one example of this http://www.englishteacher.com.au/AboutUs/OfficialStatements/ICTsinEnglish.aspx.

So I was excited when I found out that we are required in EDX3280, Mathematics Curriculum and Pedagogy, to create an interactive eportfolio that could be used to teach  a mathematics lesson on two concepts. The purpose of the assignment is for us preservice teachers to discover a different instructional teaching method via using ICT.

It looks really cool to make. I went through the sample assignments and searched google to find previous examples. On their pages they use interavtice games and videos to get the students involved and engaged. Whilst I was having a stalk  I stumbled across a really cool avatar that can be used to assist in teaching the hypothetical lesson. It is called ‘Voki’. Basically you create an avatar and type what you want it to stay and embed it to your page. Below is what the designing page looks like.  From here I need to get creative with my ICT skills so that my hypothetical lesson is engaging and interactive and perhaps if it is good enough, maybe I could use it on prac?

What is 21st Century Education?

This week at uni it has all been about introductions to the course, what content and what assessment items we will have. In EDX3270, which is a literacy course, we were shown a video called ‘What is 21st century education?’ which REALLY highlighted to me how fast and how important technology is. I highly recommend watching the video below!

After watching this video it showed me how important as educators it is to be educated and fluent in the area of ICT. As we need to prepare our students for the 21st Century, we need to develop these new ICT skills in order for them to face real world problems by building their ability to handle  changes and to make changes.

Is it holidays yet?

Wow. Lots to do and not a lot of time. Feeling a lil stressed as I have just had my wisdom teeth out (see the lovely picture below) and multiple assignments due within a few weeks. Anyway this course actually looks pretty decent ! They have provided us with heaps of references and readings which will be really helpful for assignments and Prac. Our first class was dedicated to setting up our blog and working through the course material which I thought was a really good idea. Hopefully as the semester progresses we will be able to use this time to work on our assignments, so we can get help from the tutor if need be. It was interesting to see everyones different levels of abilities of ICT.

It will be interesting to see what this semester presents!

Current feeling towards this semester!