ICT in my Classroom

Last Thursday night I presented to Ivanhoe Grammar School about the uses of ICT in my classroom. But this was no ordinary professional development event, Ivanhoe is in Melbourne, Australia.

We conducted the net cast using a free trial on some desktop conferencing software and used Skype for the voice call. It was quite a challenge for me as you don’t have the ability to see the faces of your audience so you don’t know when to go back over things or just shut-up fo a minute! Joseph Papaleo helped organise the event for his school and from his responses it seemed to be a success.

During the presentation I covered a range of topics, giving practical examples of their use in my classroom -

>>Blogs
> Writing for a real audience and purpose
> Visitors and comments

>>Google Earth
> Starting the day with a “Wow!”
> Going beyond geography
> Being an information tourist

>>Using Wikihow for instructional writing

>>Turning Point audience voting system

>>MS Photostory – an alternative presentation tool

I would just like to thank Joseph and the staff at Ivanhoe for inviting me to present and I hope that although the line was a bit poor you all were able to take something that could make an impact in your classroom.

I came across this great little Maths game – thankyou Sandaig Otters. Lots of Japanese text so no instructions.

All you have to do is choose three spheres that add up to 10 before they scroll off the bottom of the screen, if you get a total that is greater than 10 you lose part of the life at the bottom. You can make other numbers by combining smaller integers. It would be a great little starter for a maths lesson to get the kids brains working – works really well on the IWB.

We have SMARTBoards at school and one of the new features of Notebook 9.5 is the lasso screen capture feature. Just click on the camera icon on the toolbar.

In our newspaper work we have been looking at the differences between direct and reported speech. A simple activity that involved the screen capture tool was that we went to the Newsround website and scanned news stories for examples of the different speech. A child then chose the lasso capture tool and lassoed (!) the part of the text, this is then captured into the notebook software and we sorted it into a table.
I have also used this tool in the past when exploring shapes in a photograph (like of railings) the children can draw around the shapes they see – these are then captured to Notebook. It is then possible to sort the shapes into different groups, triangles, quadrilaterals etc because the clipping retains the properties from the photo. In the past you could only do a square around the shape so it was more difficult to organise them after they are captured via their properties.

Here is a movie (WMV) from the Steljes site of the tool in action.

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.

Further to our work on Mina’s journey using Google Earth – I asked some children who had completed the standard addition sums in their maths books to calculate the different distances of Mina’s travels. They used the measure tool in GE 4 to plot her journey from major city to major city – they then applied the addition strategies to work out her total approximate distance.

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.