ICT in my Classroom

Today we once again hosted headteachers taking part in the Strategic Leadership of ICT (SLICT) programme from the NCSL (National College for School Leadership). This will be about the 3rd year in a row we have hosted for the event. We had seven visitors with us this morning from different schools around the UK. We are always happy to welcome colleagues to our school, so that maybe they can learn from our experiences.

Much of today’s talk was centred on our development, over the last 3 years, of interactive whiteboards in each classroom and what strategic lessons we have learned from that process. But we did also begin to explore the “next big thing” – and we discussed how new technologies will be making an impact on what the future curriculum will look like.

I did give out this blog address, so if there are any of today’s visitors reading this I do hope that all went well with the rest of the day and the very best of luck with your future ICT plans.

It has been a busy day for ICT in my classroom today – ususally is on a Tuesday as we have our time over in the ICT suite. Anyway I will try and explain everything we did.

Google Earth – Where are we today?
Did this slightly differently today as I explained to the children I had found the location of some people who had commented on our class blog. So I started looking down on the earth from afar and very slowly zoomed into Sydney and Canada respectively. We then looked closely at Sydney and loaded a 3D model of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge – we even zoomed onto the bridge and panned along it, on the model there are even tiny cars and bikes – I said to the kids it was a good way to start the day – driving along Sydney Harbour Bridge!
Mayomi
Used this great visual mindmapping tool/site today to explore what we had learned so far in our 2D Shape work. Really simple to use when combined with a IWB and wireless keyboard which I used today.

Unfortunately there is no way to embed the map into your own site which would be great so I am going to explore whether I can hack some code to embed the mindmap into a wikispace.

RSS / Newsfeeds for Headlines
Just mentioned this today as we have been looking at newspapers and a journalistic style in our work. I had seen something on a blog before about it, but I just explained what RSS is and how we can get newsfeeds really easily. I think that it is very important to explore how different literacy and news is today – not just broadsheets and tabloids anymore, but a more fluid style of news that is much more personalised.

I just used the “Latest Headlines” bookmark on my Firefox toolbar to show them, we then just guessed from the headline what the news story was about.

Also briefly looked at Headline History which is cracking site I hope to use agin this year.

Quikmaps and our class Wikispace
I was a really happy bunny this afternoon as I knew that I had set my children a challenge, and they rose to it so well! Basically my Year 6 children had made a Quikmap (see previous post about the activity), powered by Google Maps, and then embedded the map into our class wikispace. It looks great! Take a look over on the history pages on our Wikispace. Scroll down and wait for the maps to load – don’t forget to click on the placemarks to see the work the children have done and why it is under History.
It also helped me to understand some of the practical problems that occur when you have lots of concurrent authors of the same space. Look out for some details soon.

Today I asked some of my children to use a scanned example of a newspaper article in Flickr and add notes to it. Basically they were finding examples of language features that we have annotated in a more traditional way in their books. What I like about Flickr notes is the fact that there is still an unobstructed view even with annotations. I may continue this with text types throughout the year.

Click on the picture to see the notes.

I asked individuals to work on this using the SMARTBoard – then I cascaded this down to others by asking the child who has just completed an annotation / Flickr note to explain how to do it with another cild and so on.

I spent most of today attending an INSET day at Highwood Player Infants School talking to them about using their IWBs which they have just had installed.

Many thanks to everyone at the school for inviting me and making me feel so welcome I hope that some of my ideas provide a springboard for your school’s IWB development.

Apart from the resources I planned to discuss we spoke about and used a range of other material. Below I have tried to record most of those thoughts from the morning:

• Artrage 2 – a fantastic art package ideal for the use on the interactive whiteboard. Look out for more on this soon, here on my blog as I will be introducing the use at my school and planning some training.
• Microsoft Local Live – we looked at the school and Highwood Player had really clear imagery from the “bird’s eye view” setting. Would be useful to look at before short walks or local area studies.
• Quikmaps – Another mapping site that allows you to scribble and add placemarks. Again would be to look at before short walks or local area studies.
• BBC Little Animal Activity Centre – we had a read of the animated books and phonic activities.
• Google Earth – just mentioned this briefly but a wonderful tool that I am huge fan of. Read the rest of my blog for more information.
• Topmarks Educational Website Search Engine – very handy when looking for something specifically aimed at schools.

Please follow the links above to the relevant sites.

Further down my blog, you will have to scroll a bit, there is the notes from the session with the links from the images. Please feel free to print these and use in school.

Notes from session (handout)
Ferry Halim Guidance
Powerpoint of Year 2 Instructional writing work (ordering digital images)

I would really appreciate it you could take some time to leave me some feedback about the training session – scroll to the bottom of this post (or the one further down) and find the word “Comments” click on it and leave me your thoughts.

I really value your feedback and remarks so that in the future and can take them into account for other similar training sessions. Thanks again.

Aims for the session:

• To give you some real, creative and practical examples of ways to embed the use of the IWB in your teaching.

Introduction:

• Tom Barrett
• Year 6 classteacher
• ICT Subject Leader
• Assistant Headteacher
• I have been using IWBs for the last 5 years in my teaching.

5 Ways in for Free

1. Ferry Halim

Non-educational site providing a wealth of beautifully created games. Ideal for early whiteboard or mouse skills. Links to these skills I have highlighted in my Ferry Halim Guidance document.

2. Furbles

A maths programme that needs no internet access and runs as a small piece of software downloaded in seconds. Its uses range from sorting according to colour, shape number of eyes etc – to data handling and creating pictograms and bar charts. DOWNLOAD IT HERE
3. Mathszone

An extremely useful set of maths links to interactive activities throughout the maths curriculum. Notable links include activities from Toftwood Infant School.

4. Northumberland Grid for Learning

Some excellent activities for early mouse and whiteboard skills; such as connect the dots and dress the teddy.

5. Using Digital Photographs

Where is your troll?!
Taking photographs using the digital camera and feeding these into a literacy activity.

Instructional texts – link with science and forces. Year 2

Class went outside with skateboard, TA with a digital camera recorded each step when discussing how to skateboard. TA returned to class and loaded the pictures into whiteboard software (also printed small pictures off and photocopied for other independent work) – lower ability children were asked to work independently (could be supported initially by TA) to put the photographs into the correct order. Highly motivated and completed the task successfully.

Your next steps

• Make the most of online resources – get the children using the boards with the Ferry Halim games.
• Approach the IWB as a tool that can be used in every part of the lesson – from shared to independent to plenary.
• Never worry about doing something that works perfectly well without an IWB; you are allowed to switch them off! – Just be aware of and reflect upon the choices you make.
• Share your experiences regularly with each other. Have a fortnightly clinic session or make time for getting excited about successes in staff meetings.
• Perhaps plan an IWB related target for performance management – as the development of IWB skills will be something that is already happening and is part of the School Development Plan

Any Questions?

Giving Feedback for this session

http://tbarrett.edublogs.org

At the very bottom of the post is a link to COMMENTS please leave your feedback in this way and if there are any questions or queries in the future please feel free to add a comment or contact me and I will try my best to help.

HANDOUT from the session with these notes.