POKEMON!

How apt.

ICT professional development opportunities.

Today there was a presentation in our ICT tutorial (Emma, Erin and Meg) with regards to professional development programs for teachers in using technology. I found this especially interesting and relevant to us as graduate teachers.

The group initially discussed why we learn ICT at a university level as a part of our Masters of Teaching. They identified the reason to be that we are provided with a framework for teaching and learning with ICT in secondary education that is practical. Other topics the group discussed included:

Why is learning with/using ICT important?

• We live in an ever changing world, and it is important for us to keep up with new technologies.
• So many different types of media and texts are being produced, and students need to be taught how to "read"different styles.
• ICT can enhance learning.

What PD is available or considered for teachers?

• In 2009 the government announced a four year $27.2 million National Broadband Network Enabled Education and Skills Services program
• $16million is specifically designated for professional development for teachers in schools. e.g. leadership, infrastrucutre, learnign resources, teacher capability.
• Professional learning according to DEECD: external opportunities (organised through schools and PD coordinator - but can be costly), internal opportunities (e-learning coaches within the school, support from senior management, teacher/school preference for in house PD) and online opportunities (range of sources available through DEECD website).

The group also identified that despite significant investment and progress, there are still improvements that need to be made to see this vision come to fruition. I agree with them that it is our responsibility to continue our ICT education beyond this course, and to make the most of the opportunities available to us.

Thank you for your informative talk, Emma, Erin and Meg!

How does ICT relate to English and ESL?

As we are now in the closing days of our MTeach course work, it is time to reflect on what we have learned in relation to our teaching practice and style, and in this particular subject, on our use of ICT in our method areas.

Technology is easily integrated into the English & ESL curriculum, and can be used to enhance and encourage student learning. I have seen this in practice throughout the year in a multitude of ways. For example:

• In a Year 7 English class, when students were completing a simple comprehension task on a studied text, they were able to gain more insight into themes using their laptops. I witnessed one student who wanted to know more about the significance of the setting (in regards to time and location) of the novel, researching what world events were happening in the 1930s. After some basic research, he found information on The Great Depression and was able to understand themes, character motivations and societal influences of the novel. The depth with which ICT allowed him to extend himself to is invaluable. 
• In a Year 10 ESL class, one student in particular who has low skills with hand writing was better able to express his conceptual understanding of the work we had been doing when using his laptop. This meant his knowledge was not stunted by his hand writing skills, and he was able to display his knowledge confidently and efficiently.
• In a Year 9 accelerated English class, I witnessed students working collaboratively in creating their own zines. This was wonderfully impressive. They each worked on their own computers, but via Google Docs to allow them all to edit at once. Each student within a group was assigned a task, e.g. one worked in Photoshop to create images for their zine, another worked in Publisher, and another in Word. The excellent team work and ICT skills these students possess is inspiring.

ICT is a fun way to learn and teach -- I am constantly amazed at the work my students are able to produce using technology. I look forward to seeing the new developments in ICT in an educational context over the coming years.

ICT & VELS

 "Through the selection and application of appropriate equipment, techniques and procedures, students learn to process data and information to create solutions to problems and information products that demonstrate their knowledge and understandings of the concepts, issues, relationships and processes related to all areas of learning."

I swore in the opening post of this blog that I would make a conscious effort to integrate ICT into my teaching this semester. No one was more surprised than me when it actually turned out I used something digital in every single class I taught in the block round. And I don’t mean I just checked the time on my iPhone, or played Angry Birds, or discreetly looked up words I didn’t know the meaning of with online dictionaries (although that did happen once – who knew ‘mendacious’ was a word? I’m yet to meet anyone who does… apart from this student in my Year 10 ESL class who managed to use it in a closed book, in-class essay. I know right. What. A. Gun.). But I did use various other ICT techniques to enhance my students’ learning and engagement during class. 

My focus on this round has been with Year 9 and Year 10 ESL classes. The Year 10 cohort has been given laptops this year to help them develop their learning and ICT skills base. Interestingly, they all hate the things – apparently the laptops are slow, heavy, unreliable, distracting, and since they aren’t allowed to charge them at school, always running out of batteries. However, none of them can deny that the laptops have made extra room for them to “demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of the concepts, issues, relationships and processes” in a way that handwriting never did. Now they are able to swiftly type up ideas, checking their spelling and grammar along the way, and as teachers we can see their conceptual understanding of texts in half the amount of time. They are suddenly able to show off knowledge much more effectively. Often, we will plug their personal laptops into the projector and read through individual work on the screen so we can edit together as a class, which has shown to be a valuable learning experience for us all. 

The Year 9 students will not get their own laptops until next year, and at the moment the computer literacy in this group is very low. On top of this, more than half the class are recent arrivals to Australia and the English language, and therefore have extremely low written skills, so I think it’s pretty important for them to get up to scratch on their hand writing before we put them onto computers. To integrate ICT in this class then, I decided to use my own laptop to help with presenting ideas. As we were doing a unit on poetry, I had a lot of fun showing them examples of poetic devices on the projector, and listening to music together that had lyrical components showing these poetic devices (even though sometimes my music was “GROSS, Miss!” and I had to find some less “gross” music for future lessons).

Although at first I was hesitant about using ICT in my classes, I’ve had so much fun with it on this teaching round that I’m sure I’ll continue to use it as much as possible. Also because I’ve already spent the $30 on an adaptor to plug my Mac laptop into their PC-only projectors.

[My comment on someone else's blog can be found here on Emma's site.]

Storybird

Storybird is a fun and creative way to use both collaborative learning and ICT skills in the classroom. And we all know that even if I am unable to cement down any useful language content in a single lesson, I'm damned well going to hang my hat on anything fun, creative of collaborative we do. I know the students in my year nine and ten ESL classes this semester would have a lot of fun with this website, and hopefully we'll get a chance to look at it.

The downside of sites like this is that it requires a reliable internet connection and computers, which we don't always have at school.As a lot of the kids at school haven't got computers at home, and only touched one for the first time a couple of months ago, I may also need to spend a fair bit of time explaining computer basics that the rest of us take for granted. It's a far stretch from those private schools where iPads are a part of the booklist. Either way, even if I'm unable to organise a time when students can create their own Storybirds, I'm sure it would be an engaging and unusual way to present information to them, as opposed to using PowerPoint of Prezi.

Storybird gives impressive and appealing results immediately, making projects instantly rewarding and presentable. I'm looking forward to using it in some way in the classroom this semester.

New Semester's Resolution

This semester I swear I will actually use ICT in the classroom, beyond just watching The Princess Bride with the Year 7s using my mentor teacher's laptop and the classroom projector.

Though that was fun too.