The final week of our ICT course was our chance to showcase our skills of using SMART Notebook within the context of creating a multimedia classroom resource, and to reflect on our attainment and participation in the module on the whole. As such, this blog will be considerably shorter than the others.
The Presentation:
To observe the multimedia aspects on offer in the presentations of the other students in the group was a fantastic insight, not only did it give me the chance to observe how they would appear in the classroom, it was also fantastic to become aware of other uses of the software and ideas for lessons.
On a personal note, I do believe that my presentation went well, and obviously, there would be room for improvement. Also considering that I chose to do a starter activity, as opposed to a main lesson meant that I did not have to introduce any new teaching within that relatively small time frame given, so I had the chance to provide a resource to aid revision of what would have been a previous lesson, and show how this would move onto a similar, related lesson.
The Reflection:
The course has provided a wonderful look at the role of Information and Communication Technology, not only within the lessons specified as ICT, but the application of such technologies available that can be used across the entire curriculum.
A lot of the tools that we experimented with in the workshops, such as bee-bots, can have a wonderful use within the classroom due to their simplicity and application. However, these tools cannot be used as a matter of normality, because it reduces the wow-factor of the resource, it would be a huge disappointment if such resources were to become boring to the students because of over-use. No-one would want to see a bee-bot with a sad face, would they?
Overall, I think that this module has been a very worthwhile and interesting experience, and has helped wonderfully in preparing me for the challenge of teaching ICT and using it in my lessons..
I thought I would sign off with a piece of advice, best of luck everyone and I hope you all have a Merry Christmas!
With this being one of the last sessions on the ICT course, it was time to get fully interactive and start to gets to grips with the immense amount of technology that are available to schools. Over the last few weeks, we have come across programmable robots, digital microscopes, data loggers and even the odd stop-motion animation. However, despite these objects, and many more besides, the dance mat was always going to be the best of the bunch. (Despite the appeal however, it must be said that this cannot be constantly brought out into the classroom, because the novelty will eventually wear off). It was recorded in an article in 2001 by The Guardian, that ICT was in danger of becoming too pre-planned and boring for the students, it goes without saying therefore that with innovations such as those listed above and in this blog, that there is less chance of that happening.
Whilst the initial hook of the lesson was checking out the dancing of those in the group, the programme itself, RM Dance to Advance, was an amazing initiative, with the function to be able to use the questions and games it provides, or to create your own. This can make it highly relevant to the current topic of study, whilst also making it easily accessible to the children, who will be able to enjoy the software. There is however an obvious sensitivity issue that needs to be addressed here, and that is that children with certain disabilities will not be able to operate the software or fully interact with the features.
Scratch:
After the fun and games of the dance mat, the focus turned to Scratch, a free piece of software which allows a user to program ‘sprites’ (pictures) into doing a series of actions. This is in a very similar way to the programmable robots (Bee-bots and Pippins) and other software like Logo. However, Scratch can allow the user to really interact with the programming to create whatever the user wants, (within reason), from games to short videos.
Whilst I found Scratch to be really interesting, the main problem I had with it was getting used to putting every command in the right order. Whilst this may not seem difficult when you only want the sprite to move forward a few paces, when you look at the example in the screenshot below, you can see what how vital this becomes. (This is obviously a more advanced user, but the point remains valid). Regardless of this, it is very easy to see why this software is as popular as it is, because once the user is familiar with the different settings, it is remarkably easy to use. Especially due to political influences of late, which suggest that computer programming, albeit it at a basic level, is set to be introduced into the curriculum, although this is still to be confirmed.
The video below explains how to sue some of the basic programming skills in Scratch, and how to create your own sprite to use within the programme.
Wordle:
As a demonstration of Wordle, I thought that I would use the contents of this blog to create a picture, which can be seen below. The aim of Wordle is to look at the content of a piece of writing, taken out the very common words, such as “I” and “and”, and creates a picture, something that Wordle refers to as a 'Word Cloud'. The most commonly used words in the piece of writing will be the largest, and the least common will be shown in a smaller font, thus emphasising the content of an article. Wordle also has its uses within the classroom, and is a wonderful resource for creating classroom displays, due to the variations that can be placed upon the font and colour.
As such, creativity is required within the ICT classroom to stop lessons stagnating and becoming repetitive and boring, and a lot of these resources can be used in a cross-curricular manner to good effect, and an example of this being the dance mat. However, it is important to remember that if these items are over-used, their wow-factor will reduce, and as such, these items should be used sparingly and even possibly used as a treat in case of sustained good behaviour as a reward.
The course has provided a wonderful look at the role of Information and Communication Technology, not only within the lessons specified as ICT, but the application of such technologies available that can be used across the entire curriculum. 
A lot of the tools that we experimented with in the workshops, such as bee-bots, can have a wonderful use within the classroom due to their simplicity and application. However, these tools cannot be used as a matter of normality, because it reduces the wow-factor of the resource, it would be a huge disappointment if such resources were to become boring to the students because of over-use. No-one would want to see a bee-bot with a sad face, would they?
