Reflections on ICT in SBT1

SBT1 is over now (boohoo) and I am back at uni. I have had a very enjoyable time at school in the Year 1 class and it is time to bring together my thoughts on the use of ICT. This post continues on from what I observed during my serial days in school.

One initial point - I have been used to having Internet access readily available where I live for many years. My placement was on the Isle of Wight and I was staying in a holiday flat which did not have Internet access. I thought this would be highly problematic as when I had planned lessons before I could search the Internet for hours looking for ideas. In some ways, not having the Internet was probably quite a time saver. I did go to the local library on a couple of occasions at the weekend to search for maths resources. I could use the Internet in the ICT suite at school if needed and time allowed. It will be interesting to see how my planning changes for my next placement back on the mainland.


Having had some discussions with other PGCE students, I feel that overall the use of ICT at this school was not as high as at others. All lessons were not focused around the IWB (left) and as much use was made of the 'ordinary' white board (right!).








Maths games on IWB

My most frequent use of the IWB was probably in maths lessons - usually as a mental starter, for example in a doubling lesson. I did find that different maths games had different sensitivities to finger dragging across the board. It became problematic when one child kept 'dropping' the rosette and the computer let out a loud failure noise. On some occasions I would offer to drag simultaneously with the child which seemed to work. One teacher had also given her children the trick of using the back of their finger nail to move objects.

IWB Dice

I had one interesting IWB consideration in a maths lesson when I was wanting to use dice. I had been scouring the school looking for suitable dice when another PGCE student told me that there was a dice tool on the Smartboard. Brilliant, I thought. A great opportunity to use the IWB and the next morning I found this software and the different ways to use it. I thought it would be useful to use in the introduction for the whole class to be able to see at once. But then I considered it further and realised that surely a real dice would be better to use. I had found approx. 15cm square coloured foam dice and thought the children would get a better understanding of the work they were going to do if I used this to start with. I felt it would have been using the IWB for technologies sake and I was pleased with the outcome of the lesson after the reality check.

Meg and Mog


I was wanting to do some shared reading with the children with focused work on the text. I am not sure if this was the most effective method, but I took photos of the pages of the book and then put them up on a powerpoint. It worked well and we were able to write our improvements on the 'book'. I also made storyboards using cropped pictures from the book in a similar manner which some of the other teachers commented on as being a good idea. Still feel there would probably have been something more efficient to do and if I was teaching full time I may not have thought the time was worth it.

Worksheets on IWB

Generally whenever I had made a worksheet on the computer for the children to work through, I would have it up on the IWB as I was explaining it through to the children. I felt it helped to show it on a big scale and I would write on the board as I would want them to use it.

2simple

Throughout the school I saw a fair bit of the 2Simple Education Software. In particular I saw 2Simulate where the children had to discuss as a group how to solve various problems as astronauts travelled to the planet Elpmis (took me a while to discover that was Simple backwards!); and I used the science simulation as part of a lesson based on growing plants. I used the simulation with a group of about 10 children each day. We started the lesson by watching the plant growing cartoon and then sequencing the pictures whilst discussing the changes seen. We also used the plant labelling activity, before going out into the school gardens to see the changes in their own vegetable patches. It happened to be the week it snowed while I was teaching this topic and so some days it was not possible to go out into the gardens. Fortunately the programme had enough other activities that I could use during the additional time. One of the activities was about what to wear during different weather conditions so it fitted in well with the day (though not so sure what it had to do with growing plants!).

Boogie Beebies

This was one occasion when I realised how much lessons had changed since I was a pupil. For half of one PE lesson, the tables and chairs were pushed to the side of the classroom and a boogie beebies DVD was put on the IWB for the children to follow along to. They all loved it and meant this class could still do PE even when there was snow outside and the parallel class were using the hall.

Register

As I had seen during serial week, the register is done electronically when the school system is logged onto. This became one thing I would try to set-up most mornings. I wrote down the various steps needed and which things you had to log on to first as initially it seemed a rather complicated procedure to me! I always had to start with realigning the board up - I never understood how it could get misaligned each day! I was impressed to see that the whole class would sit silently on the carpet and get up in turn to tick their presence on the register on the IWB. I wondered if it was maybe not a very efficient use of time, but I liked that they had the time to all sit quietly and were actively indicating their attendance in school.

ICT lessons - touch typing
I got to see some of the ICT lessons in action this time. As mentioned in the Serial Days post, the school has a dedicated ICT teacher who takes each class for 2 hours a week while the class teacher has their PPA time. There are 19 computers in the suite and so about half the class would have to share. There is carpet space in front of the IWB where the children sit to see the teacher work through what they'll be doing in the lesson. All aspects were explicitly talked through, such as clicking start with the left hand button on the mouse. Each lesson starts with 10 minutes of touch typing. My class (Year 1) have been focusing on the home row keys. They demonstrated during the input that they knew which fingers to use for which key, but watching them in practice it was not always consistent. The programme they use (2Simple) keeps a score of the number of keys they get right. They set the timing for 5 minutes and see if they can beat their score on the second time through. The first scores are recorded on post-its and stuck on their screens. I like the personal challenge of this and that they have something to work towards - much better than just typing for 10 minutes straight. When they had done their two sets of 5 minutes, they could play the touch typing game of falling letters until everyone was ready for the main part of the lesson. The ICT teacher joined our year group for their planning meetings so that the ICT lessons would complement the weekly theme.

Other computers in the classroom.

I mentioned during the Serial Days post that I had seen a computer in the classroom and one out in the wet area but had not seen them used. Well, the wet area computer was 'given away' to other years as it was apparently never used and the teachers would rather have the space. The children generally seemed keen to use the classroom one, but I only saw it in use during wet play times.

Digital camera - photos and videos

One of the biggest and most successful uses I made of ICT during my lessons was with the digital camera and video. One thing I learnt was that it was most meaningful when the photos or video was shown back to the children at the soonest opportunity. In one poetry lesson, we studies the poem and made up actions to it. The performance was then recorded and we watched it straight back on the IWB. The children were very excited about this but did tend to go very quiet in front of the camera. I think it would have been interesting to repeat and see if having watched one performance, their behaviour in front of camera changed.
Using digital photos as a means of recording the children's use of observation in the science lesson on growing plants.

Visualiser

Whilst trying to plug in various cables to sort the laptop and IWB out, I discovered that there was a visualiser in the classroom. I don't think I had come across these before and it took a while for it to click with me what it was for as my teacher tried to explain. The teacher said she didn't really use it though she thought she should, and indeed I never saw it in use in the classroom. But at the end of my placement when I was doing a subject specialist observation lesson in another classroom, I saw the visualiser used in full force. The teacher used it while she was describing the sheets they would be able to make use of during the lesson. As she was explaining them, the children were able to see them clearly up on the IWB. She also demonstrated the use of a calculator by operating it under the visualiser. At the end of the lesson when they were discussing the work they'd done, the teacher held one of the children's pieces of work under the visualiser for all to see. I think a visualiser is a really useful piece of equipment for the classroom and I feel I would have made a lot of use of it if it had been ore available for use in my classroom. Could have been a good solution for my Meg and Mog problem. I wonder how common these are in schools now. One thing I did note, was that it seemed odd that while the teacher was talking and explaining, the children were not looking at her but at the IWB as they were not quite adjacent. I wonder if this makes listening and understanding any harder?

CD player

Another frequent use of ICT was through the CD player to play music, or sometimes played through the computer. The class had a tidy up song (Cosmic Girl, Jamiroquai) that was very effective and something I will definitely take into my own practice. One problem I encountered was when I tried to use some CDs I had burnt myself for the Scottish Country Dancing lessons. The CD player in the classroom would not recognise them, and although I found this out in the morning when I tested them, I did not find an opportunity to find an alternative before the lesson in the afternoon. We initially tried taking the laptop down but it was nearly loud enough to be heard in the hall. Fortunately the TA managed to procure another player from another class which did recognise the CDs and the lesson turned out quite successful.

Reports and Virus - The evils and frustrations of computers!!

On my last day at placement, the day before half-term, the classes reports were due to be handed in to the Headteacher. The class teacher took her laptop home the night before to finish off writing the reports. When she turned the laptop on (her only form of computer), she discovered a virus and was therefore unable to complete the reports. What a nightmare and just the time you want to kick the computer and run screaming round the room!!

- Annoying and perplexing point - why is what I see when I click the preview button not the same as when I then publish the post?? Also, is there any easy way to move photos to relevant parts of the post. I seem to spend half my time gradually moving them down from the top where they arrive when added.