ICT in my Classroom

I have been meaning to write about this wonderful site for a while now. It was one of those miraculous finds back in 2002/2003 that fades into your surfing past, but it undoubtedly has been (and remains) one of the most popular websites for the children at our school.

Ferry Halim is a digital artist and has created a site showcasing current projects and flash artwork. I think that searching for examples of excellent flash artwork may have been the reason why I found the site. As part of the little site is a part named Morning Sunshine which has about 60 interactive games that are utterly, jaw-droppingly beautiful. Nothing that I have ever come across on the web can touch these wonderfully craftedlittle games.

So when I first began playing them I discovered their simplicity and visual appeal would work perfectly for early years children. So I sought to spread the word about the site and I produced a document that allowed staff to see the different skills used by the children in every one of the games. For example the Game Type or Screen, Specific mouse control skills and other skills required.

Back in 2003 I was teaching ICT to every class in the school, including a session with 2 Foundation classes. We always began the session by using the interactive whiteboard and a simple art package like Blackcat Fresco to trace some letter shapes. I introduce the use of a music beater, the cloth covered sort, to help the children use the boards for the first time. I would still recommend this today as they have trouble with tracing smoothly on the board with their fingers when first experiencing the tool. After this short session we would work on simple mouse skills using the Ferry Halim games. “These Little Pigs” is one of those games that I began using with the Foundation stage children. All it requires the children to do is pop a bubble the little pigs are riding on at the correct time to stack them on top of each other. So just a single click. Much better illustrated if you go to the site and play it! Well the children and staff couldn’t believe how engaged they were and with a very peaceful soundtrack to the games it was lovely letting them get on with it.

So the document and site has become a very important part of developing early mouse skills at our school. I would also continue to recommend the use of the site for the early days of interactive whiteboard use, as I have done in the past when working with other schools.

This is an extract from the document I refer to, with the details of the pig game and another just to illustrate what I mean.

My top three games from the site would have to be High Delivery, Pocketful of Stars and Bubble Bees. Please let me know what are your top three games. It looks like more games have been added since I edited the document back in 2006 so I will need to add the extra details about the games on soon.

Please use the games with your children (even the older kids love them) and let the staff have the document to support your school’s ICT planning and development in the early years.

So we are finally getting somewhere. Our laptop project has taken some big steps and we are nearly ready for September and the 4 classes to begin work with their new laptop resource. 8 is the magic number.

I have managed to purchase 8 laptops for each of the 4 classes involved which is great news. After much deliberation and balancing of features and budget we have gone for Toshiba A120s and I am happy with the sort of spec these machines have and also the sort of pedigree they come with. We also were able to take advantage of an amazing 3 year swap out and refund warranty. So they will not only replace the broken machine but refund us the cost of the machine!
I never imagined these machines to be high flying super computers. They need to slog through just basic multimedia and online work - as we have a very strong computer suite too, we can afford for these machines to be slimmer in terms of their computing power and features. So what will happen with these new machines? What will be their regular diet in terms of use?

I suspect that it will take some time to get used to the idea that no one is going to book the laptops out or take them away. They are in the classes to stay - what a luxury! But the pedagogical change cannot be underestimated and over the next few days, and early on in September I will be working closely with the teachers involved to ensure our eyes are open to the possibilities.

It would be very easy for someone like me to go charging in spouting about all sorts of stuff that can be done but that would be wrong. My past experiences of colleagues working with new technology has taught me to ensure they are comfortable accepting it into their learning environment and that they can happily access it for short period of time independently. So that they become familiar, they form an opinion and want more. All guns blazing is not the drill here. Remember not everyone thinks like you Tom!

After this initial time I will then work with the staff to focus their attention on specific aspects of the technology and perhaps deliver some training. I may introduce one thing such as Diigo for research or something like Voicethread. This is how I approached the whole school training and development of our interactive whiteboards back in 2004 and that was very successful.

So the wheels are in motion and no doubt will gather in momentum as we get storage and wireless connectivity sorted.

I would not usually talk about such things but thought I would mention the site I have contributed the pictures to. The Classroom Displays blog collates ideas surrounding this very creative element of school life. After taking photos of my DT display on Shelters and uploading these to my Flickr account I added them to the Classroom Display Group. This is a pool of photographs, that Linda the TA behind the blog runs, and is a great resource for visual ideas. I have also added some notes to my Flickr photos to illustrate some of the parts of the display better.

Let me know what you make of it - and why not take a photo of one of your good displays and contribute to the growing pool of pics. This would also be a great professional development opportunity and helps contribute to portfolios of work. I have started my own School Displays set in my Flickr account to keep such evidence.

I was passed on the details of this fascinating new site for children. It looks delicious and is described as:

WebbliWorld is an exciting, stimulating, virtual world that kids can explore, inhabit, belong to and share. It is a world that promotes caring, responsible behaviour and gives kids the opportunity to voice their opinions on topics that matter.

You create a Webbli (avatar) and there are ways to earn Webbles, the going currency in WebbliWorld. Currently I have amassed a small fortune of 1000 Webbles from emailing the site details to some friends and rating other Webblis, what I will do with the stash I don’t quite know yet. Games and internet links are presented to you by 3 characters - Wanda, Wez and Wij.

It is early days for the site but with involvement from Aardman Animations it seems set to be very engaging for children, some of the little animated shorts are very cute. There is also a WebbliBlog tracking news and developments, may be worth an initial look and keeping tabs on in the future.