Until my Enquiry Placement I had seen very little evidence of assistive technology being used for SEND purposes in the classroom, but on that placement I saw a wonderful use of iPads to assist a child that was visually impaired. The iPad was used to link up to the interactive whiteboard, mirroring the screen that every other child in the class could see, but on an iPad that was mounted on his desk. This allowed him to access the work that everyone else was doing. During Guided Reading, the teacher also ensured that she downloaded a large text e-copy of the book for him to read along with the class.
I have read about other ways creating an inclusive classroom using technology. One such way is use of microphones to assist children with hearing difficulties. One of my fellow trainees used this in the classroom, and expressed that it made a huge difference in terms of that child’s attainment. I will briefly, as part of this pick and mix unit, mention technology as an assessment tool. I mentioned, during my time on GPP, how the PE passport iPad app and the “Learning Ladders” program can make the job of assessing children much easier, as it collates the information you input and can generate useful reports to easily track progress (or lack thereof) across each child and throughout each year. There are other useful online assessment resources too, which I would love the opportunity to explore in greater depth on FPP, including the use of testing (summative assessment) through multiple choice Google forms to elicit information, which will immediately generate a picture of where each child/the class as a whole is in terms of that subject. Voting systems, as mentioned in a previous blog post, are another useful way of assessing children’s understanding. They can be used as a more immediate alternative to Google Forms.
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This pick and mix module is separated into several parts. I shall cover them all in order.
1. Learning through games Learning through interactive games is considered by many teachers to be a positive activity that can engage children in fun, competitive and exciting ways. Websites such as Espresso, which I had experience using during my time as a teaching assistant on iPads, allow children to play various games across the whole curriculum. It’s also quite handy for any special days throughout the year, such as remembrance day, mother’s day, Eid, Diwali etc… as it often updates with relevant activities to those times of year. Espresso and Education City both work in similar ways. They are packed with units of work for children to complete which include games. Children can work through these individually on iPads, or collaboratively during carpet time. 2. Handheld devices In some schools the ratio of equipment (often laptops or iPads) is 1:1. Sometimes however this isn’t the case. On iPads I can recommend the following apps: Garageband, Audacity and one of several stop motion animation applications. Fancy apps aren’t always necessary, though. Simple recording of video and audio can also be of great value to a class and can help teachers provide evidence when it comes to formative assessment. On laptops, I would thoroughly recommend Scratch and Scratch Jr. I will be blogging about this in the next few days. 3. Behaviour reward systems When I worked in the infants of a school in South Manchester, we used Class Dojos. This is a system whereby children can be rewarded with points (recorded on an animated avatar) for good behaviours. The programme has the capacity to also take away points for negative behaviour, but we opted not to use that function, so children consider the technology to be a positive force. In many ways this is a technological version of Skinner’s operant conditioning. 4. Harnessing YouTube Safely As many schools ban Youtube from being used in the classroom, it is worth planning ahead, downloading videos using a Youtube converter, and playing them without the adverts (which could show potentially inappropriate and uncontrolled material). 5. Classroom Voting SystemsI do not have any experience with classroom voting systems. That said, I have researched them and I am very excited at the prospect of using them in my classroom. They appear to be fantastic in terms of generating discussion, eliciting information that children do or do not know, and engaging children using technology. The advantages are numerous: they gather information very quickly and efficiently, pinging them to an associated app (program); they retain anonymity of children (great in terms of eliciting without causing potential embarrassment); they are a great formative assessment tool, which can direct teachers to what the next stage in teaching should be. One disadvantage though, of course, is the cost associated with a) the purchase and b) the upkeep of the technology. The most commonly used Classroom voting systems are called Socrative and Activote. First it is worth noting that not all schools have a favourable opinion to children/classes blogging or tweeting, citing safeguarding issues and noting some of my findings from my post on internet safety. As most social networks have a minimum age limit of 13 (including Twitter), these views could be warranted. That said, with parental permission, and under the guidance of a professional teacher who understands how to deliver a rigorous computing curriculum (computing, of course, being a national curriculum subject), it might be acceptable to the school… or even, dare I say it, celebrated.
There are arguments that blogging is beneficial to children in various ways. Firstly, there is the computing skills learned – how to manage a website or microblog. Then, there is writing for an authentic audience which can be very motivational – more than just the class teacher will see it, therefore it is a real, important piece of writing that is ‘out there’ in the big wide world. Also related to literacy, it can help children to engage with English in a way they wouldn’t normally, spotting and using features of ‘good’ writing. The website, “Teacher Challenges”, has an excellent guide for setting up a class blog. It tells you how to create one, edit it, and polish it to look professional. If you are looking to set up a blog, I would recommend the site I am using to host Primary Newbie – Weebly. Finally, some tips for Tweeting.
The Primary Newbie Twitter account is here. Give me a follow if you are so inclined! |
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