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.
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I have now completed the mandatory Internet safety module on the University’s Blackboard page.
One thing that drew my eye was the key stage 1 friendly (and I suppose early ks2) Think U Know videos which help to enhance the digital literacy of 5-7 year olds. One of them, “Lee and Kim’s Adventure”, explored the dangers of giving too much information to people that you do not know personally offline. By showing how they can be tricked when playing a game by somebody pretending to be a child, it was exploring a heavy message that was delivered sensitively. The featuring of a wise superhero character who sang a song at the end was a good move as it prevented the piece from causing upset and anguish to its young audience. In order to take this e-safety module further in the classroom, Blackboard suggested turning the videos into short mini-dramas. Having recently explored drama in the classroom, I’d also suggest that this is an area that conscience-alley or freeze framing could work well in. |
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