Everyday Classroom Technology- an overview of ICT
This lesson was a really good overview of ICT both in general and in the classroom. It is intriguing to know that we need to teach children of this generation skill that are not about yet! Therefore, it is vital to teach children to be flexible in what they do to ensure that they are set for their future careers. We want ICT to be a part of the children’s everyday life even though it most probably already is. Therefore, we need to be offering the children new experiences of ICT on a regular basis to develop their technological skills- however, I do feel that there are limits when technology can rule people’s life too much.
I never thought of ICT having a huge impact on my personal life, but now that I think of it ICT makes up a big part of everything that I do, because it is all around us and can be accessed 24/7!
Virtual tour of the University of Plymouth
I leared so much during friday’s ICT task, of creating a tour of the main areas of the Universtiy of Plymouth using Power Point. I have never explored power point to this extent and found it really useful, in particular learning how to create hyperlinks between slides and web pages.
This acitvity is by far too challenging for the early years, however, I do not want to rule it out as it could easily be integrated with adult and older years support. It is also something I would use to support my teaching as well as using during events such as parents evening etc.
Geo-Technology- opening up the world
I found it facinating to find out the numerous of softwares and devices that are available to explore the geography around us. However, most of these I did not find would be useful for the younger children. I did like the idea of going on a travel and recorning what was explored and then producing a display using pictures and word bubbles.
Exploring all the sites we were given will take some time, but it will allow me to distinguish which are useful for my age range and those that may not be or how I could alter it.
P (personal) O (on) D (demand) Casting
To be honest I did not have a clue what podcasting was until today, and I now realise how far it has advanced in the past 20+ years from cassette players to iphones! Podcasting is a way of publishing audio formats (e.g. music and videos) through the Internet at your own time and leisure. I think this is really clever and good in this day and age as people are becoming evermore ICT literate and through this more and more independent.
I thought the idea of using podcasting in schools was really good, but something I’d never think of myself! Using podcasting as means of assessment and promoting speaking and listening really supports me as an early years specialist and is something I will definitely look into in the future.
Super Dooper Music Looper
Today in a group of 6 we made our radio jingle using Super Dooper Music Looper!! Apart from the group size being too big as it was hard to give everyone a go in the time we had, it was really fun! This is not necessarily a programme that I would use with the really young ones as the navigation was quite challenging. However, I really liked the amount of sound effects etc. available on the programme to use to create music. It did take our group some time to make the music jingle flow, as we found it hard to blend certain sounds together for a smooth sounding finish.
Super Dooper Music Looper is definetly something that I would like to come across again in my teaching career, and may be of use in the later stages of KS1!
Web 2.0
It took me ages to actually understand the concept of Web 2.0. However, looking through the internet I found an explination that made sense to me.
Web 2.0
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Jupiter Media (2009). Available at: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/Web_2_point_0.html
ICT and Music
I don’t like music and I sung today in the lecture and actually quite enjoyed it! It is true music brings happiness and if you can achieve it as a big cohort of people then all the more exciting and joyful!
Music is a subject which seems to get pushed to the side quite a bit. I feel this is mainly due to the fact that practitioners just do not feel confident in teaching it to the children. However, music in the ealry years is a key area for the child’s development in many areas.
I have always seen music as having a large variety of instruments for the children to explore with. But I liked the idea of using ICT to supplement areas which I may not feel so confident about. Using the computer to play a continuous beat is a great way to work from and it means that the whole class can join in without having someone play that beat. As for relevance to the early years, younger children love making noise as well as playing on the computers, therefore what better way than to let them explore music software programmes.
Cracking Eggs!
We have now recorded our animation film, and its looking good, its just in need of a bit of editing…and it’ll be amazing :)!
I felt that the animation took longer to produced than we had all expected, as all the parts were really fiddley! However, team work and determination got us through. Next time I would plan out the animation more as some parts were a bit disorganised which made the process fairly long!!
As soon as we have edited our animation I promise to upload it 🙂
The creative curriculum, planning and professional use of ICT
ICT is now used widespread across the curriculum therefore, it is very important that I as a professional practitioner meet the relevant standards to achieve excellence within these areas. As was mentioned in todays lecture, even though I may not be an ICT specialist I could still be made an ICT coordinator!!….scary thought!
Useful teaching links:
- www.teachernet.gov.uk
- www.teachingideas.co.uk
- www.primaryresources.co.uk
- www.ngfl-cymru.org.uk
- www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk
- www.halton.gov.uk
- www.topmarks.co.uk
- www.sparklebox.co.uk
- www.underfives.co.uk
These are only some of the sites out there that I have had a look through and have some useful links.
AnImAtIoN!
I really liked this first session of creating our own animation! I found it amazing how little you actually have to do to create a decent few seconds of film. Obviously, this session was to have a practise run of our final attempt this week and it was useful to explore different techniques. After having got confused with the video and photo button on the digi-blue we eventually got some draft shots of our scene! We found that it better to take a couple of shots of each frame as it made the animaion run smoother. I am now very excited to see the end result 🙂
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