A long but interesting post about what it means to be able to use computers, why most kids can't and what implications it may have for the future. Written by a teacher.
Raise other questions for students to explore in the future;
Help students to make sense of further activities and experiences which have been planned for them.
Provide students with the opportunity to process the information they have gathered and present this in a number of ways; and
Allow for a diverse range of outcomes.
Provide more information in order to broaden the range of understandings available to the students.
Help students draw conclusions about what they have learnt; and Provide opportunities for reflection both on what has been learnt and on the learning process itself.
Assist students to make links between their understanding and their experience in the real world; Enable students to make choices and develop the belief that they can be effective participants in society; and Provide further insight into students' understandings for future unit planning.
“Every student in the school had a voice — whether it was an ESL student who can’t speak the language, or someone who has a learning disability — everybody has a page or a book that’s their own,”
Inclusive practice that caters for diverse learning needs.
Why? "Evaluate and revise school learning and teaching programs, using expert and community knowledge and experience, to meet the needs of students with diverse linguistic, cultural, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds." - #1 Know students and how they learn. Retrieved from http://www.teacherstandards.aitsl.edu.au/DomainOfTeaching/ProfessionalKnowledge/Standards
It also seems very exciting that this teacher is supporting learning that is relevant & shows students that learning is not just for the future but opens up opportunities for them now.
This also creates a relevance between the student and their world both in the educational sense and the personal sense.
Kids brainstormed ideas, wrote rough drafts, edited with classmates and teachers and created their own illustrations. Some handwrote the final draft, while others chose to type up pages.
Students and teachers became motivated and engaged in literacy. Students were able to have a choice between typing their stories or writing them by hand. This task was also inclusive in regards to students who might have had learning difficulties. It provided a platform for these students to express themselves creatively through the use of colours, images, written text or a variety of materials such as button, beads, different fabrics that they could cut out and paste, etc.
Collaboration between students and teachers promotes positive learning experiences and ensures all learners are involved and able to participate. Providing students with options to create illustrations, type or write their story by hand enables all students to construct their story in a way that suits them.
Something to work on and talk about at home, and spend quality family time together. Parents become interested in their child's education - brings them into the school environment.
Positive sharing of 'finds' not only builds resources but creates a positive, inclusive and productive professional learning environment and builds moral.
Teacher was able to network with others. Created a holistic and inclusive approach to the idea. Ultimately a higher chance for success as more support is there.
Having an open minded and innovative staff helps, so does having the opportunity to try something different. Not all schools would have been so on board with the idea.
Self-paced, somewhat self directed learning. Building confidence and indepence. Minimal imput from teacher mean students are free to express their ideas.
There was a sense of awe when the books arrived and they’d seen what they’d done.”
Positive relationships between all stakeholders. Community involvement and enhancement of student learning.
ents were asked to write about world issues, so Pauline Manuel wrote “Courageous Ezra,” which she dedicated “to all children affected by war.”
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lder students were asked to write about world issues, so Pauline Manuel wrote “Courageous Ezra,” which she dedicated “to all children affected by war.”
We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.
Commenting is now closed.
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Older students were asked to write about world issue
This activity challenges student to investigate and reflect on 'real world' events promoting a deeper understanding of what happen around them and international and how they feel about what they discover.
Personally I would prefer students be given choice of topic, as dictating the topic seems to contradict the impetus for the project which was to foster a student driven passion for writing.
-year-old Zaria Gibbon
e reading and
1I got so excited because I love writing stories with my friends — I love reading and
I love how this seems to have involved the families too. I feel parents are becoming increasing less involved in the classroo, for various reasons, so it's fantastic that this has sparked their enthusiasm as well as the student's.
Having the whole school talking about something as positive and exciting as literacy is a great reason to do something like this! It shows how excited the students are about creating their own work - love it.
great idea to get the students to feel good about learning and they get to take something away from it that they can be proud off. Great concept and great on the school part to adjust their teaching and assessments
The dog wagging the tail - the teacher didn't just use ICT based literacy programs because the existed. She searched for one that met the needs and goals of her students. Even better then she shared with her colleagues.
Wonderful that this teacher has been able to follow her students for that length of time. The benefits this must have for special needs students are immense
This reminds me of a student with ASD at a school I am aware of that wrote his own book about the struggles of making friends. It was an amazing experience for this boy, his twin sister illustrated it for him and his best friend assisted. He performed readings of the book for all the classrooms. Such an amazing experience for the child and the school.
Another awesome result of this activity is that it makes literacy possible and enjoyable for all students. Not all students enjoy or succeed in reading, but show far more engagement with writing, especially when given freedom of expression, and encouraged to write about something relevant and enjoyable to them.
School on board with expanding the programme so that others may benefit. This also show that the teachers are in support of the programme. Domino affect.
What happens when teachers from across a school encourage their students to write and publish their own books.
Can you identify some of the educational reasons why this was a successful project? This is a week 5 activity.
Reasons as to why I thought this was a good idea:
- students and parents are involved
- everyone in the class, all learning abilities, got involved
- it gave writing a sense of purpose for the class
- students could relate it to interests and real life concepts.
- students took charge of what they are going to write
Kids brainstormed ideas, wrote rough drafts, edited with classmates and teachers and created their own illustrations. Some handwrote the final draft, while others chose to type up pages.
1
"Every student in the school had a voice - whether it was an ESL student who can't speak the language, or someone who has a learning disability - everybody has a page or a book that's their own," said Remedios.
6
"It made writing meaningful and purposeful."
2
It also got the school buzzing.
According to KPMG demographer Bernard Salt, the great challenge of the future will be for workers to embrace huge change.
Salt says that while all workers will need technology proficiency, it is in fact ‘soft skills’ that must be taught to Australian children.
‘This is the skill of being fluid, flexible, agile, social,” Salt told Yahoo7 Finance.
Journal paper talking about "digitized health and physical education".
"The emergence of digitized health and physical education, or 'eHPE', embeds software algorithms in the organization of health and physical education pedagogies. Particularly with the emergence of wearable and mobile activity trackers, biosensors and personal analytics apps, algorithmic processes have an increasingly powerful part to play in how people learn about their own bodies and health. This article specifically considers the ways in which algorithms are converging with eHPE through the emergence of new health-tracking and biophysical data technologies designed for use in educational settings. The first half of the article provides a conceptual account of how algorithms 'do things' in the social world, and considers how algorithms are interwoven with practices of health tracking. In the second half, three key issues are articulated for further exploration: (1) health tracking as a 'biopedagogy' of bodily optimization based on data-led and algorithmically mediated understandings of the body; (2) health tracking as a form of pleasurable self-surveillance utilizing data analytics technologies to predict future bodily probabilities and (3) the ways that health-tracking produces a body encased in an 'algorithmic skin', connected to a wider 'networked cognitive system'. These developments and issues suggest the need for greater attention to how algorithmic systems are embedded in emerging eHPE technologies and pedagogies."
Hi Steph, WOW! That does seem impossible. I can imagine phones will go holographic in the future, but I have no idea how it will be possible to touch through a phone and touch carpet or different materials. It is defiantly a good resource that provides food for thought.
More for actual teachers as need to sign up, but you can have a free trial. Teachers at my work use this a lot for letter recognition and literacy practice. Something to keep for future - great for early childhood and special ed.
This is a great website that I found, it is primarily set up for Pre-Service Teachers to help them build their ICTE (Information, Communication and Technology in Education) capabilities. It even has little packages that you can log into the site with your Scootle account and look at practical hints and tips on integrating ICTs into your lessons in English, History, Maths and Science. Easy to use and quite informative. Has a lot of information about TPACK too :) the packages come in three areas, early childhood, upper primary/lower secondary and years 9/10. There is even reflective video clips from Pre-Service Teachers that have used these packages.
By helping children self-author and produce e-books, early childhood professionals can make the use of computers more interactive and personal.
PowerPoint is ideal for helping young children to make basic self-authored e-books.
information and communication technology (ICT) is being viewed as another tool for early childhood professionals and children to use in this domain of learning in a way that can complement the more traditional provision of literacy experiences (Hills, 2010; Parett, Quesenberry & Blum, 2010; Marks, 2007; Siraj-Blatchford & Siraj-Blatchford, 2003).
Brown and Murray (2006) put it, children need to be able to use ICT so that they are adequately prepared for the future
This can be included in play-based, co-constructed classrooms by incorporating the internet, digital camera, iPad. Communication can be a simple as a menu of pictures, looking at a picture to create a mask or sea creature, to photograph a collage item and add the photo to a construction book.
Western society has invested print-based media with significant authority, but notions about literacy are changing. As society and technology evolve, there is a shift to an acceptance of digital forms of literacy (Jewitt & Kress, 2003). Increasingly, young children are exposed to communication tools and circumstances that are multimodal instead of solely linguistic (Hill, 2007
ICT as a tool for enriching the teaching and learning environment for young children.
They explain a mode as a ‘regularised organised set of resources for meaning-making, including image, gaze, gesture, movement, music, speech and sound effect’
(p. 2).
Text now refers to multiple forms of communication including information on a digital screen, video, film and other media, oral speech, television, and works of art as well as print materials. Electronic texts in particular have become part of children’s everyday lives to the extent that before they commence school, a growing number of children have more experience with electronic texts than they do with books. It is important to recognise that print is now only one of several media which transmit messages in our culture (p. 156).
The reading of texts has traditionally focused on decoding–encoding print’s alphabetic codes. Texts children read today, however, might be a mixture of images and print, and the delivery might be interactive with mobile forms rather than just print fixed on a page (Walsh, 2008).
These multi-media forms of literacy include traditional forms of print and numbers, but also hypertext, symbols, photographs, animations, movies, DVDs, video, CD-ROMs and website environments (Luke, 1999; Walsh, 2008).
Belonging, Being and Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework. In particular, Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators, has a section on how they can use ICTs to access information, explore ideas and represent their thinking (Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations [DEEWR] for the Council of Australian Governments, 2009).
Families and parents are still a child first teacher. Teachers acknowledge and respect that each child comes to a centre with varying degrees of prior knowledge.
Young children may have access to certain technologies as they were already present in their homes but this did not always mean that they were allowed and/or able to use these. O’Hara’s findings support the arguments made by Marsh (2004), Smith (2005) and others that young children already have an understanding of ICT knowledge and competences when they enter formal schooling as a consequence of differing levels of parental intervention and modelling along with being able to acquire their own new information, abilities and attitudes.
that to read and create multimodal texts, children do need to be able to combine traditional literacy practices with the comprehension, design and manipulation of various ‘modes of image, graphics, sound and movement with text’ (p. 108).
Walsh (2008) and Healy (2000), we are not suggesting abandoning practices centred on the traditions of print literacy but instead propose early childhood professionals include a range of texts for young children that expand beyond the current print traditions. Self-authored e-books are one way to accomplish this, as they can create a partnership between ICT and reading.
Back-to-school time often coincides with the arbitrary banning of toys, apparel and assorted nick-knacks from our classrooms and playgrounds. It seems as if instinct takes over whenever administrators encounter something kids care about. The reflexive impulse is to forbid these objects from the educational environment
There are several reasons for taking a deep breath and exercising caution before enforcing the next pog embargo.
We risk alienating children from school and missing potential curriculum connections.
High-tech devices allowed today may integrate prohibited technologies in the future. Convergence will bring increasing power to kids and headaches for administrators. What happens when the book bag contains a laptop, the laptop contains a cell phone or sneakers contain a laptop and a cell phone?
Reducing classroom distractions is often cited as the rationale for this rule, but this is nonsense. If you walk into Carnegie Hall or an airplane, a polite adult asks that you please turn off your phone for the comfort or safety of those around you. Why can’t teachers do the same
If a student disrupts the learning environment then that action should be punished in the same way we address spitballs, note passing or talking in class. It is irrational to have different rules for infractions involving electronic devices. We must address behavior, not technology
Ms Cassidy's blog documents the interesting and valuable learning achievements of her students. Her blog offers a great variety of lesson ideas, including those which involve ICTs such as twitter to communicate with other learners from around the world and enhance the learning experience of all.
Upon researching a 'sharing teacher' - a teacher that is sharing what they do online, I stumbled aimlessly across a weblog entitled Ms. Cassidy's Classroom Blog. This weblog is from a class of 6 year olds in Canada and not only shares pictures and special activities going on within the classroom, i.e. Pancake Day, but also invaluable ICT resources such as Videos Just For Us and Learning with Twitter. The absolute BEST thing about this weblog though is that the 20 students in the class and actively involved within the ICT. They can comment and add any discussion to the page they like about their learning and the teacher provides an individual page for each student which they are solely responsible for keeping up to date, and posting evidence of their learnings. This is an exceptional idea of incorporating ICT into student learning as well as provide student parents and families an artefact in which they can see exactly their students learning and development.
Kathy Cassidy is a teacher in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada. She is a first grade teacher who uses her blog to share the learning of her students with the world. Within her blog each child has a separate blog where they share heir activities and learning with videos pictures and posts. I have found this excellent as it allows the children to develop ICT skills early in their education and gives the parents and insight of why it is a great way to learn and allows them to see how there children are learning. her blog is always updated with will be great to follow for the rest of the semester and future. i was drawn to Kathy's blog as she teaches in the same context I do and reading her blog I felt like I knew her children and discovered more ideas to incorporate ICT'S into my pedagogy.
It's fun to make the Playdoh balls, but even more fun to smash them with your fist! After working so diligently to help Emmy Barr with her business, the students wondered what she had won in the contest.
I found this blog really interesting as it shows the children are engaged in using ICT in the classroom with their own blogs and videos of their work. It also shows the use of not using ICT with lots of hands on experiences. I think it shows the importance of using both in the classroom depending on what your learning. I will definitely keep a close eye on this blog.
Learning contexts are becoming very digitally driven and so is the future workplace- as a teacher it is our position to make the correct choices to approach our teaching to suit these digital worlds. No matter how new or uncomfortable.
chool begins here in Victoria on Tuesday. It is the first time in ten years that I have not spent the summer busily preparing for the new school year. That has been a strange feeling.
My daughter, Novalie, is 5.5 months old and I am absolutely loving motherhood. While I won’t be in the classroom this year, apart from some possible replacement teaching, I’m thankful that there are still ways to keep up with education.
There was a time, not so long ago, when maternity leave would mean you’re out of the ‘education loop’. Now, with blogs, Twitter and other online resources, the education community is at your finger tips.
Great use of ICT to keep her skills current and to meet current trends and changes.
recently wrote some tips for graduate teachers on the excellent ABC Splash site which may be of interest to educators beginning their careers next week. I enjoyed having the chance to reflect back on my own learning journey.
This is kathleen Morris and her blog page is about how to incorporate blogging into her grade 4 classroom. Even though Kathleen is on maternity leave I believe the information posted in 2013 is relevant to my assignment reasons. Another note Kathleen was a team teaching partner to Kelly Jordan who has launched her own blog this year.
Although Kathleen is on maternity leave at the moment I found her blog posts both inspirational and incredibly helpful. She provides links to other helpful blogs as well as tips for new educators on how to stay connected. Kathleen is also a big advocator of integrating technology into our class rooms.
This blog is by Kathleen Morris. She is a primary school teacher in Victoria. She has a wealth of knowledge on her blog and I have been reading a post about integrating blogging into the school classroom.
A teacher currently on maternity leave, using social media to keep up to date with the current education, teaching and learning trends. Dedicated teacher to be ensuring she doesn't lose skill or ability when it's time to return.