ICT in my Classroom

Today we had our inaugural Fish Friday Challenge. We had so much fun and I am compelled to explain what we did and to encourage you to do something similar with your classes.

Whilst I was gathering ideas for our Sealife unit (centred around the use of Endless Ocean on the Nintendo Wii) I began to think about the use of John Davitt’s Learning Event Generator or LEG for short. Essentially this is a crowd sourced list of learning topics – the DO pile and a list of styles or outcomes – the AS pile.

If you take a look at his site you will see the LEG creates a random combination from these two burgeoning lists – I just generated DO “Glaciation” AS “A Mini Opera” ! John explains:

The idea for the LEG came out of desire to nudge learners (and teachers)  and also to give them permission to move beyond the “comfort zone” of talk-look-listen-write and allow them instead to move across a whole chessboard of learning opportunities.

I decided to adjust the different sets of ideas to suit our sealife topic. Although the full list of outcomes from the AS pile is great, I needed to edit it down to just those which are manageable and clear enough for our Year 5s (9 and 10 year olds)to complete in a single session.

I created a list of sealife that the children have had some experience of or learned about during the last 5 weeks and combined it with the outcomes list in Richard Clarke’s excellent Excel version.

The class were split into groups of 3s and a couple of pairs. Each group had access to a laptop if they needed it. I spent time explaining that today’s session would challenge them and make them scratch their heads. I outlined what we were doing and it helped to just run through the different outcomes from the AS pile – they loved the idea of a finger puppet show.

I then generated the different Fish Friday Challenges – I think in the other class they even had a drum roll for this bit for added tension! I added to the Excel sheet the sentence “Show me what you know, have learned or can find out about…” which helped them to focus. Some of the combinations included:

• A Killer Whale as a 5 slide Photostory.
• A Puffer fish as a heated dialogue between enemies (good to highlight the predators!).
• A dolphin as a cartoon.
• A lionfish in the style of a weather forecast.
• A manta ray as a mime.

I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the children rise to the challenge of the different tasks – each one requiring a different approach. The children really got into it and took to it with energy and enthusiasm. One girl said 5 minutes in:

Can we do this every week! I love it!

The children were engaged and the anticipation and unexpectedness of the task really helped. The outcomes reflected their commitment and this enthusiasm. I wasn’t necessarily that interested in the outcome as I was keen to see the children work in their group to solve the challenge. But it just blew me away.

This style of activity puts the children on their toes and makes them think laterally about presenting information. As John said we were well out of our “comfort zone” but it is good to know what that other place is like. We need children to face new unexpected challenges and to learn not just from the process but also from the accomplishment of completing it too.

One of the highlights for me was the mime about the manta ray between two children who probably had the biggest challenge. They did an amazing job and I was so proud of them – I asked the rest of the class what they just learned from the mime and they just reeled off facts about what the manta ray eats, how big it is and how wide – even how it moves.

In total we spent about 45 minutes preparing the outcome and then half an hour celebrating their work. Sometimes you spend days or weeks on pieces of work, we busted this out in an hour and it was great. I am sure you can see from some of the examples in the slideshow. (Some of the children had to do video interviews with an expert – hence the Flip cams in the slideshow.)

I hope you can see the potential for any unit of work in school for this sort of approach and urge you to consider including it in your work, why not try it next week?!

The unknown direction we were taking as a class, in terms of our learning, brought about a real energy in the room which pervaded the quality of work too. A great day!

As we continue our Sealife topic we have been exploring the conservation of sea turtles and subsequently climate change. We learned how rising sea levels have a direct impact on sea turtle nesting sites. I just wanted to outline some of the great resources we used in our classes this afternoon.

The main part of the afternoon was working on an science experiment that replicated the effect of acidic oceans on the coral reefs. This has been ideal for the work we have been doing recently. Whilst I was exploring the resources on the Under the Sea IMAX film I found some nicely produced resources for classrooms. Amongst it is the experiment we did.

We placed shells and chalk  in cups filled with varying levels of water and vinegar – each representing “Clean”, “Polluted” and “Very Polluted” seawater. We used some digital scales to weigh the shells and chalk before putting them in. The children enjoyed seeing the immediate reaction in the more “polluted” test and jotted down some observations. We were going to retrieve the solids today and check them, but I asked the class if they would like to leave it a full 24 hours – they agreed, so we will have to wait until tomorrow to see the full effect.

After setting up the experiment and completing some initial observations we invited the children to explore the Zerofootprint website. It provides a very child friendly survey (well written and very accessible to different reading abilities) about different aspects of life:

• Transportation
• What you eat
• Home and School
• What you throw away
• What you use

The results are then collated and the children are able to compare their own data with averages from countries around the world. We spent some time discussing some of the averages and talking through as a class the differences we found. It is a good way to compare personal and average national data.

To draw the afternoon to a close and provide another discussion point, I showed the children Breathing Earth which is a CO2 emissions, birth rate and death rate simulation. It is a strangely engaging animation and simulation of real data on a world map. We looked closely at the indication of CO2 emissions and identified the major culprits around the world. (As I explained what was shown I had some dramatic music on in the background which added to the impact of the simulation.)

I spent time drawing it back to the experiment we were doing – higher CO2 emissions means more polluted oceans, means more acidic effects on coral and sealife.

As a class we discussed how these levels might be linked with population and other factors. Breathing Earth provides a rich and engaging starting point for discussion that I would highly recommend. As you roll over a country on the world map more detailed data is shown for that nation. I think that Breathing Earth could prove a useful data resource in it’s own right – children retrieving information by finding the country and then rolling over. Better then looking at a list or on a basic webpage.

After the children had some time to work in pairs at their laptops exploring the Breathing Earth simulation we closed out the day with a film from WWF called “Knock-On Effects“.

A lovely animation that helps to remind us about the difference we can make if we all act. I love the domino metaphor and how if we all act and put up our dominoes we can gain great momentum and change some of the damage already done. We finished the day talking about what the class could do at home tonight to make a difference and what they thought of the animation.

I think that some of these resources have really helped us to show the children the connections. And to see, for example, that switching off that light at home could effect a sea turtle finding a nest. In a positive way. One domino at a time.

I recently had a great conversation with my teaching colleague Rick about the use of technology to engage children with reading comprehension. This post is about my lesson I taught today as a result of that brief yet productive talk.

Although we have been reasonably successful in addressing how we use our available technology to support the development of times table knowledge, reading comprehension has been much more elusive. This afternoon both Rick and I explored two different ideas we had, regarding the use of technology to engage and support the practice of comprehension skills. 

Rick was using the Flip Cameras in his lesson, he had about 3 available to him and was looking for the children to generate their own questions about a text. After talking with a partner and drafting the question on small whiteboards they recorded the question to camera. When there were a few Rick showed these to the class and worked on modelling the answers and then setting the children off to find the answers in pairs. By all accounts an engaging way to explore text.

We have used the discuss tool in Google spreadsheets and presentation chat before to peer review presentations. 

I worked with a Google Presentation and wanted to engage the children with the text through the use of the instant messaging window that is available. All of my children love using MSN and Google Talk/Chat, it is the one application that they all use very regularly. For two years now both of my Year 5 classes who have been using Google Apps discovered Google Chat in GMail by themselves and have got busy using it.

So how was this all setup? There are some things that we have in place that have helped. Firstly the children are using Google Apps for Education and have a unique login. Secondly we are working in my classroom on laptops.

1. I created a presentation, which is in effect our text, in my Google account.
2. I shared the presentation with the class as VIEWERS. This is important as it will mean that the children will immediately see the file in presentation mode and not in editing mode. Loading time was slow today, although once all loaded we had no other problems.
3. The instant messaging window will open when they click “View with others” (Bottom right hand corner) you will see their names appear in the “VIEWING NOW” box on your own presentation.
4. We then did some shared reading of the text about Spies and Gadgets. I used the “CONTROL THE PRESENTATION” tool available to me as owner of the document. As I clicked and moved through the presentation everyone’s laptops updated. This was immediate in every case, not bad for sixteen wireless laptops and proved useful for whole class work.
5. Once we had a good look through the text as a class, and some initial discussion, I then explained the question answer process. I would add a question in the IM window and they needed to navigate to the correct page and respond with their answer, also in the IM window.
6. As I typed I muted the projector image so kids didn’t get a head start, that was helpful.
7. The children answered in the IM window and I could see their name with the response showing ownership.

You may be thinking that some children may just look at other people’s answers. I talked to the class about this and encouraged them to engage with the text themselves, nevertheless seeing their peers answers proved a valuable function of this group IM session. Children were commenting on other answers and it caused some to question their own accuracy if they saw something different.

Of course there was the odd smiley! But that is what the children do when they IM, I was kind of entering their world. It is a delicate balance. I want to harness the engagement that IM brings and yet not make it too schooly so they switch off. I ensured that when they answered anything all of our usual literacy standards applied and the class responded well to that.

We worked on about 10 questions together and all of the children were totally engaged and motivated to find the answers and use the IM to form their response. They also maintained this engagement for considerably longer then when we work with paper and pencil.

As the answers rolled in I was able to immediately give feedback to different children, asking them to look again at what they had written. One particular question about the reasons why we use tables to present information caused the children to respond about the content and not the purpose. I discussed with the whole class what the correct answer might be, gave the children the start of the sentence in the chat window and asked them to answer again.

Beyond this one lesson I think that if the children were to use the Google Talk client then we could be looking at a variety of different texts and not just something created in Google Presentation. With the chat window open and a website or film playing it would allow us even more flexibility. In fact it could work with any other type of available application.

My target in the lesson was to engage the children with reading comprehension using technology we use in our classroom. I think we did that. It is taking what the children enjoy doing and harnessing that engagement, attempting to merge and utilise the skills they use outside of school to impact on their engagement with their learning. 

A year ago when I was talking to my class about Twitter they all looked at me as if I was MAD! Last week I did much the same thing with a different bunch of 9 and 10 year olds and, things have changed – only about half of them looked at me as if I was totally BARMY!

So what has been the difference? What has changed so much in the last year to effect children in my class?

Simply put, I think there has been a huge increase in the number of times Twitter has been referred to in mainstream media. I have heard Radio 1 DJs discussing it and I even saw Chris Moyles’ Twitter account when he had 55 followers, later that day he had 55,000! Our local commercial radio here in Nottingham has also been on about it – on the same day I heard both the morning and drivetime show talking about Twitter.

Photo credit to Matt Hamm

This is of course just part of the bigger picture for our kids but I think it makes a huge difference. My class are confident, social, inquisitive internet users who will happily explore new resources and sites. About 10 percent knew about Facebook and had been using Mum’s or bigger sister’s/brother’s account.

The “older sibling effect” is an interesting one. Although it may only effect a percentage of my class their awareness of these social networking sites has been raised by those in Year 7, 8 and 9 who are regular users. Combined with the fact that social media seems to be becoming less “fringe” makes our 9 year olds much more aware.

So is it up to us in primary education to teach and guide the children on how to use these appropriately? I think it is.

Not many of my class could actually explain what Twitter was, or indeed Facebook, which at best was “a place to look at pictures of your friends and class mates.” I don’t think my class is particularly different from those around the country, and so next year I can probably expect even more children knowing about these sites as I think even more mainstream space will be filled by them.

Unless the mainstream of primary education addresses this then children’s awareness and use of social media will always be (as it is now) 10, 20, 1000 steps ahead of the type of education they are entitled to. I am not talking about lessons on how to get the most from your Facebook account for 9 year olds, but time to raise their awareness. An opportunity for us to show positive examples, to build their knowledge and understanding and help them make better choices in the future.

Do you have a class of primary children? Do they know about Twitter, Facebook and social networking sites? How can our curriculum best adapt to these changing times? Can it?!

A pupil that I taught in my NQT year is currently doing a period of work experience in our school for her A Levels. It has made me realise how long I have been at my current school. I have decided to look for something new, a fresh challenge.

I was pretty green around the gills when I joined my current school and my headteacher always says I joined just after all of the boring, yet essential, ICT developments had been completed. Like installing fibre optic cabling across the site and ensuring the broadband was properly working.

I have been fortunate to gain teaching experience from Nursery to Year 6, valuable leadership experience and the freedom to development a wide range of creative technology projects to support the curriculum. From some of the UK’s first whole school interactive whiteboard development back in 2002/2003 to our recent Flip Video Cameras for each class.

which way? by swissrolli
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

I have spent about 7 years working closely with my headteacher in developing an environment that is beginning to provide learners with the ability to choose how they want technology to support their work. And throughout all of that there has been a continual promotion of a creative approach to technology. My headteacher is in fact the first to pass me a job advert he considers me suitable for – I am indebted to him for the trust and faith he has shown in me to develop my subject and to follow my passion.

But I feel that it is time to move on – I am still an ambitious teacher and although I have been quietly exploring other avenues I want to begin to look in earnest.

I am curious and excited to find out what new opportunities and challenges are out there.

As part of my numeracy lesson yesterday I used our class Nintendo Wii to support some of the shape work we have been doing. I identified the mini game Block Spot within Big Brain Academy as an opportunity for the children to continue to practice visualising and consolidate their understanding of 3D shapes.

After a short times tables test, which we do at the beginning of every week with our Year 5s (9/10 yr olds), I explored some vocabulary and basics of reflective symmetry on a grid using SMART Notebook. We briefly revisited the shape symmetry we had covered in the previous week and I ensured the children were now thinking of a line of symmetry or mirror line independent of any one shape. 

As a precursor to reflecting different shapes in vertical and horizontal mirror lines we used simple colour patterns reflected in a grid and a simple flash activity from Primary Resources. On the class IWB we completed some together and I highlighted some possible areas that could be problematic – we counted the squares to and from the axes and all of the methods used to check the position of reflective symmetry.

I remember using this in my first year of teaching in a computer suite. On Tuesday the children worked in pairs on our class laptops to challenge each other in making a pattern and then completing the correct reflection. I had planned to continue on to do some work on paper but the practice and familiarity they gained from just working with different coloured squares will contribute to their work later when reflecting shapes. For a challenge children could work on a grid of four quadrants (2 mirror lines) and a random pattern and for those needing more support they could continue with the single mirror line with adult support.

As the children were working on their laptops I had the class Nintendo Wii running with Big Brain Academy and called out a pair of children at a time to use it. I used it in Solo mode and the Practice of the game Block Spot (Visualise category). I would have preferred them to have played against each other or in a small group but that would have included other games – I wanted them to just focus on visualisation of shape to support the week’s topic. In the pair they took it in turns to answer 10 questions about matching a random 3D shape made of coloured cubes to a choice of four. All of the blocks on screen are spinning and so recognising the features quickly and their similarities is tricky.

You can see what they got up to in the Block Spot game in this short film taken during the lesson.

I was pleased to see that the rest of the class were not distracted by the Nintendo Wii being played on the IWB and other then a few cursory glances were getting on with their own reflective symmetry task. The novelty of using the Wii in lessons has already worn off!

The motivator of using the Nintendo Wii as a way to support learning is a no-brainer to me with this age of children and I am pleased to further establish it as a learning tool in the classroom. It is not simply good enough anymore to adhere to the argument that they use too much of these things outside of school – they are very powerful ways to deliver learning and engage children. It is just a case of finding the correct game and context.

I also discovered another game within Big Brain Academy that I would use within any future lessons on symmetry. It is called Art Parts and is described as follows:

In this Visualize activity, players must complete the sample painting by stamping the missing pieces onto an unfinished scene. When it becomes more difficult, Art Parts flips the unfinished scene sideways or flips it upside-down.

There is much more to explore in terms of using the Wii to support the general learning environment of a primary classroom – but I think that in my classroom I have seen it become a source of great fun and an engaging learning tool.

Please let me know any games or ways you have used your own class Wii to support your lessons.

Our class had a very enjoyable numeracy lesson today in which they were further exploring nets of 3D shapes and developing their ability to visualise them. We used SMART Notebook on the class laptops to help record our work as well as Google Earth for our shape of the week.

This week we have been exploring nets of 3D shapes and for the lesson’s “Shape of the Week” starter I had Google Earth running with the Pyramids (Egypt) placemarked – we zoomed, from right out in space, into the location of these great monuments. (I still love the awe and wonder of that, so do the kids!) It was a good link with our Ancient Egyptian history topic. I had switched on the 3D Buildings layer and I panned and moved about the modelled pyramids. We then spent some time talking about the properties of square based pyramids, their nets and the pyramid family in general. I scribed their ideas straight onto Google Earth using the SMARTBoard pens and annotated the pyramids. I good start to the session.

For the main part of the lesson and the independent task I wanted the children to visualise the top and the bottom of a net. Which face in a cube net does not move and which would become the top of the cube? So we combined the practical use of Clixi with a SMART Notebook that allowed the children to easily recreate and record the nets.

I shared a notebook file on the network, which the children accessed and opened on their own laptop. The children were working in pairs on their numeracy tables. They made the possible nets with the Clixi and then generating the same net in the notebook from some infinite cloned shapes I had setup. I then wanted them to colour the top RED and the bottom GREEN to show they understood how the net behaved when folded. The technology was not complex but it allowed them to quickly recreate the nets and show what was needed – less time was spent recording due to the technology. Which meant that more time was spent visualising how the net worked, exploring the Clixi nets they had made and discussing the possibilities in their pairs.

I was really pleased with the progress made throughout the lesson as the children discussed and explored the nets of cubes, cuboids and pentagonal prisms. I was equally impressed, however not surprised, in the successful way the blended learning resources worked – how they complimented each other and how the no frills technology began to become invisible amidst the learning going on.

Over the last 2 weeks I have hosted visits to our school from a couple of ICT coordinators from primary schools in the region. 

In the first visit of the year we spent time discussing the process of the ICT Mark, a national accreditation for technology in schools, and how it can help become a diagnostic tool for curriculum development. My school completed the ICT Mark back in 2006. Alongside discussing how to get the most out of the process for technology in the school, I explained how we have used the whole diagnostic process to help plan and implement subject development across the other curriculum areas. It has proven extremely valuable in our school and is now part of the whole school development plan.

The second visit took place yesterday, in which I welcomed an ICT coordinator exploring the concept of mobile technology. They are to be moving to a large scale new build in a few years and so will implementing laptops in the classroom. It sounded like they have already had some success with them in their current setting but was looking for more inspiration on the practical uses of the technology in primary.

I spoke about how the vision of “choice” that we have is at the heart of decisions we make in terms of technology and how the resource must be owned by the children. They saw the children working on their morning activities, in which they have a specific group, table and independt activity to work at first thing in the morning. This allows them to get straight on when they walk in the classroom – engaging them in class immediately. We do this for half an hour most days and it has proven very successful to making a good start to the day. The children access a range of activities on the laptops as well as away from them too.

I taught a maths lesson in which we were developing our understanding of nets of cubes and exploring the various ways we could make them. I decided not to use the laptops as the children needed hands on experience of using Clixi to make them. I stressed that the sense of a blended learning environment was important to me and so the decisions to put them away were just as important.

On both visits I ended up speaking about Twitter! Both ICT coordinators were not members of any sort of community of fellow practitioners that could help and support them in their work. I could not help but recommend the education technology Twitter network as a great source of support, friendship, inspiration and connections. I took some time to demonstrate Twitter by giving a shoutout (as some of you may recall) and was grateful as ever of the wonderful response received from people.

Face to face meetings with colleagues are always great and I feel privileged to be in a position to offer some support, help and encouragement to visitors to my classroom. I hope in their short time with us I did just that.

I have been fortunate enough to be part of a Teachers TV programme recently aired entitled “ICT for the Non-Specialist – Blogs/Wikis”.

However the part that we were filmed about did not include anything to do with a wiki – what we did showcase was TutPup, Voicethread and Google Docs. We are in the second half of the film.

The programme synopsis is included here 

The use of blogs and online collaboration in education is explored as teachers discover how and why they should make good use of them.

Head of geography at Bury Church Secondary, Sally Sumner, uses blogs as a resource in the classroom and as a revision tool, having overcome her initial doubts about her ICT skills.

MFL teacher Janet McCann finds blogging invaluable for motivating the boys in her class, and discusses why the pupils find this technology so engaging.

At Priestsic Primary School, Nottinghamshire, ICT co-ordinator Tom Barrett uses online collaboration tools for peer assessment, developing the pupil’s literacy skills.

Collaborative online educational games are also shown, providing a safe environment on the web for pupils to improve their numeracy skills.

A rare chance to see me in the wild! I hope that you find some of what I articulate about the tools useful and please ensure you take a look at the context document that I wrote to accompany the film which is available in the “Resources” link.

It is lovely to see my old class talking about how they use technology and how it helps them. Some permission issues prevented me and the film itself from saying TutPup or Voicethread - it had to be all very generalised. But those three tools that I have mentioned and that appear in the film are stalwarts of my classroom practice – just today I sent out this Tweet

“My class is suddenly alive with the buzz of 30 Y5s playing+challenging each other on http://tutpup.com so much good game talk going on  ”

The other films in the series are:

• ICT for the Non-Specialist – Virtual Worlds

  The use of virtual worlds in the classroom is investigated

• ICT for the Non-Specialist – Podcasting

  A school uses podcasting to raise achievement levels

• ICT for the Non-Specialist – Mobile Learning

  A primary school uses handheld computers to improve learning

All of the children in our year group have been enjoying using our class Nintendo Wiis and we have even used them to support the numeracy work that has been going on over the previous week. A student teacher began work in my colleague’s classroom on Monday and was amazed to see him enjoying a game of tenpin bowling on the Wii with some children from his class. She remarked that she was not expecting to see that when she walked in!

In addition to looking at ways the console can support parts of the curriculum, I have added a bit of structure to how we use the Wii just for fun in the class. The children can earn Wii Minutes from me through all the usual avenues of hard work and good behaviour.

I have 15 and 25 Wii Minute tickets to give away which would allow someone to play on it during a breaktime or at a lunchtime. I thought it would be fun to have the tickets in the shape of the Wii remotes and on the flipside is the number of minutes as you can see in the picture. I set my teaching assistant on to it and once printed the images of the remotes were backed with gold card and laminated along with the number of minutes – simple.

The children have been motivated and enthusiastic to earn them alongside the usual class reward system we have. Yesterday a pair of children enjoyed a game together who had both earned some time and today a boy who was working brilliantly throughout the morning chose a friend to join him in a blast on Wii baseball.

In my opinion it gives me a great way to reward those children who are always working so hard and do it with a smiles on their faces. The reward is genuinely engaging for them and they love playing it on the big screen with plenty of room to swing the bat or serve an ace.