So long, farewell...

This is the link to my final English assignment for uni. We had to create a multimodal assignment using ICT and discuss the issues of teaching English in the 21st century. Of course I listed new technologies as one of the major issues, and I stumbled upon a technique called "flipping" your classroom. What an amazing way of using ICT to teach your class! There is so much potential and the options are endless.

http://prezi.com/fpsip8lh3ug6/english-assignment-2/?auth_key=7fd8a4864386e66ad2fc985f8ff3b07e3dbf03eb

Comments on other students' VELS post

Commented on Elizabeth Wood's blog, Lizachu's Life.

"Liz, I really like how you've integrated ICT into your classrooms for both your methods. My methods are the same as yours and you've given me some great ideas for how I can implement ICT into my future teaching practice as an English AND Humanities teacher, as up till now I've mainly had opportunities to use it in humanities but have had a few issues with using it in English in the senior years."

Commented on Chris Brown's blog, Educating with ICT.

"Hi Chris,

What an excellent task! What a perfect way to combine your journalistic background with your new career.

I find with Year 7's there is so much possibility when it comes to enriching their learning experiences using ICT. They are so much more eager to please and I find they (girls in particular) love the opportunity to show off their creativity. Your question to the students "does content need to be sacrificed for the sake of design" is an interesting one and it forces them to consider the different purposes of writing. All in all, it seems like you gave them a really engaging task and I might have to use it myself in future :)"

Assignment 1 - Part deux

#1 - ICT provides a rich and flexible learner-centred environment in which students can experiment and take risks when developing new understanding.

There's a huge range of options for using ICT in Humanities. Many of my lessons with my Year 8 SOSE class involve a trip to the computer rooms or the library as I'm very much in favour of student-driven inquiry learning. I have just started teaching them about natural disasters and in our first lesson they were split into pairs to research a natural disaster. The only directions I gave them was that they had to find at least 10 interesting facts about their natural disaster and they ran with it. We were in one of the computer rooms and they were using the Internet to do their research, visiting websites like Wikipedia and a host of disaster-specific pages. After a gentle prompt, students were rushing to YouTube to incorporate a clip into the presentations they'd have to do about their natural disaster and were enthralled by the sights and sounds of the natural disaster footage.

They were using MS Word to collate and organise their information, and some were also asking if they could create a PowerPoint presentation. These are features of the VELS Level 5 Standards for ICT, in particular "ICT for creating" and "ICT for communicating" as students were independently selecting which websites to go to, and conducting searches on search engines to find the information they required to complete the task. The activity was entirely learner-centred and the students required very little, if any, direction from me, except to monitor the noise level as they excitedly showed off and discussed their findings with each other, and to confirm the order of the presentations as every pair wanted to go first!

I'm personally excited about the upcoming activities in this particular class as we'll be using an online game that was introduced to me by one of the students. It's called Stop Disaster, and in it, students are able to select a scenario where a natural disaster is about to hit. Each natural disaster is linked to a specific geographical location (eg. bush fire in Central Australia or tsunami in South East Asia) and students have about a certain amount of time (depending on the difficulty level) to prepare the town for the impending disaster by reinforcing existing structures, building a hospital and a school and putting in place defences to help minimise the damage. The site and the game are brilliant and give students the chance to explore and experiment (and certainly take risks) with the possible outcomes, proving that learning can definitely be fun!

Back at the grindstone

Well time sure does fly...

The block finished up about 2 weeks ago and it's crazy to think how quickly it went by. Thanks to a bit of PD with one of the friendly teachers at school, I was able to incorporate SmartBoards into some of my lessons, in both English and Humanities. We used the computers quite a bit in both subjects also with various projects and tasks requiring ICT, from Wordle, to PowerPoint, to the regular, old Internet to do a bit of Googling.

One of my Year 8s in Humanities showed me a great source on the Internet. We've just started a unit on natural disasters and she showed me this game called Stop Disasters. I asked her to forward me the link and that night I had a great time trying out the different disaster scenarios. For anyone teaching Geography, this website is an excellent resource, and the game is excellent for getting the students to think about what needs to be done to help protect a town/village/city from an imminent natural disaster. Definitely check it out!

Blocking It Up

Our 3 week block placement started yesterday and I'm pleased to say that nothing terrible has happened yet. I'll be teaching a Year 11 Literature class, a Year 7 English class, and SOSE (Humanities) to a Year 7 class and a Year 8 class. The Year 7 class that I'll be taking for English and Humanities (my placement school calls it SOSE so I'll probably end up swapping between the two terms) is actually the same class which is great because it means I have a real opportunity to build a good rapport with them.

I got to see a Year 10 French lesson this morning which was really exciting for me as I speak French. I was able to help the girls with their work and participate in the class somewhat, and not just take a backseat role and solely observe. It was interesting to see how the teacher incorporated ICT into the lesson. There were two computer activities; first they had to log on to the website that is linked with their workbook and do some grammar work which involved dragging and dropping an answer into the appropriate spot, or filling in the blank in a sentence. Once that was done, they moved on to a website that I thought was fantastic. It's a website called Language Perfect and schools buy the program and do all sorts of wonderful language things. The teacher today logged in as an admin and uploaded a new vocab list and the girls were then able to log in and do the vocab test almost instantly. They can translate from French to English and vice versa. There's a whole bunch of languages available and I think it's a great tool for LOTE teachers.

My Humanities mentor has been teaching the Year 8's about the Australian political system and has been using the computers in the library quite a bit. One lesson the girls were shown a few videos on the Smartboard from the PEO website which has a great online education section for both teachers and students. Otherwise the girls have been using the computers to complete their work and look up MPs and find out about the different electorates.

I haven't seen any ICT used yet in English or Lit but I'm doing some lesson planning right now for the Year 7's to use a bit of ICT and create a composite Powerpoint presentation as a class. More on that once it's actually been done.

Stay tuned...

The first of many to come...

Semester 2 began a week ago and it hasn't got off to a running start. In fact, you might even call it a false start. Last Friday I got sick, was sick all weekend, missed classes on Monday and am still sick but on antibiotics. Thank you, modern science and medicine. So one week in and my perfect attendance record is ruined ;)

But all is not lost as I am in the online tutorials for this subject (ICT) and thanks to the fact that I had a blog last year while I was living in Israel, I am up and running and have got myself set up with a new blog so that I can regale you all with my tales of teaching using technology (or how not to as the case may be).

So welcome, and hopefully this will be a great learning experience for all parties involved.