ABC Splash is a new education website for Australia, packed with 100s of videos, audio clips and games. Totally free to watch and play at home and in school.
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
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).
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).
ICT as a tool for enriching the teaching and learning environment for young children.
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.
ICTs are used in education in two general ways: to support existing ‘traditional’ pedagogical practices (teacher-centric, lecture-based, rote learning) as well as to enable more learner-centric, ‘constructivist’ learning models. Research from OECD countries suggests that both are useful, but that ICTs are most effective when they help to enable learner-centric pedagogies.
despite rhetoric that ICTs can enable new types of teaching and learning styles, for the most part they are being used to support traditional learning practices.
Experience in EDC3100 supports this. People tend to use ICT to enhance existing methods, rather than for transforming what they do. Especially in Assignment 3 (which is based on Professional Experience).
The existence of formal and informal communities of practice and peer networks can be important tools to support ICT in education initiatives and activities. Such support mechanisms can be facilitated through the use of ICTs.
This is one of the main reasons behind the push for you to create a Personal Learning Network. A PLN is a peer network that can be an important aid to your teaching.
Adequate time must be allowed for teachers to develop new skills, explore their integration into their existing teaching practices and curriculum, and undertake necessary additional lesson planning, if ICTs are to be used effectively
Effective teacher professional development should approximate the classroom environment as much as possible. "Hands-on" instruction on ICT use is necessary where ICT is deemed to be a vital component of the teaching and learning process. In addition, professional development activities should model effective practices and behaviors and encourage and support collaboration between teachers.
A summary of work done by a World Bank supported group. Attempts to summarise what is known about the use of ICT in education -- original shared by Lisa Stewart
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.
From the site
MathPickle was founded in 2010 to inject new ideas into the classroom. It is the driving force to get curricular unsolved problems into classrooms worldwide - one for each grade K-12. A conference in November 2013 established the thirteen unsolved problems.
Aimed to solve this problem
Whenever an elementary school teacher wants to teach addition, she will invariably face 20% of students who already know how to add and another 20% who are struggling with last year's curriculum. How can she engage the top students without losing the bottom students? How can she engage the bottom students without boring the top students?
It’s every teacher’s dream. Students are no longer writing for a grade or for their teacher. Instead, they are writing for their peers and generating their own topics. Can this really be possible?
Blogging has enabled my writers to discover their unique voices and uncover a true love of writing. It has given them a creative outlet where they can express themselves, challenge their writing skills, and build their self-esteem
I’ve reached out to my Personal Learning Network (PLN) on social media, solicited readers using the Twitter hashtag #comments4kids, found educators through S2S Blog Connect, and signed up to form partnerships with other teachers via Quadblogging.net.
This article is a part of a recent increase in interest in the difference between trolling and abuse in online forums. A potential good opportunity to explore some questions of digital citizenship.
iEARN is a non-profit organization made up of over 30,000 schools and youth organizations in more than 130 countries. iEARN empowers teachers and young people to work together online using the Internet and other new communications technologies. Over 2,000,000 students each day are engaged in collaborative project work worldwide.
Interesting new tool out of Google. Provides an apparently simple and full featured way to create computer-based learning/tutoring paths. Might be fun to play with at some stage. Questions remain about long term support and the effort required to implement in a classroom setting (accounts for students etc).
"February 1, 2014
Whether you're the parent of a child with a reading disability or an educator that works with learning disabled students on a daily basis, you're undoubtedly always looking for new tools to help these bright young kids meet their potential and work through their disability. While there are numerous technologies out there that can help, perhaps one of the richest is the iPad, which offers dozens of applications designed to meet the needs of learning disabled kids and beginning readers alike. Here, we highlight just a few of the amazing apps out there that can help students with a reading disability improve their skills not only in reading, writing, and spelling, but also get a boost in confidence and learn to see school as a fun, engaging activity, not a struggle.
"
Great apps Amanda!! I'm in the process of teaching my six year old to read and write as she attends an all Chinese kindergarten and is not learning any English. After an eight hour school day she really resists any more work that I try to do with her, which is very frustrating for both of us. She does however LOVE the iPad and I'll be trying some of the kindergarten specific apps mentioned in the article. Hopefully she won't even realise she is learning while playing. When we return to Australia she will be behind in reading (as our main focus for her right now is Mandarin) and will require targeted help.
Very helpful site!! The world is changing and we (as future teachers) should all be exposed to all the various ways that we can engage students in constructing and actively engaging in their own learning. If I was a child with dufficulties in reading I would rather engage with an Ipad rather than any other traditional way of teaching. Again this site is a proof of what a useful tool ICT can be and the positive results it gives when used in the right way.
"Collaborative learning is a type of learning where a group of people pool their resources and attempt to learn together. Even if the "group" is just two people working together, collaborative strategies can help to stimulate interesting debate and allow learners to discover a new perspective on material. Many educators are now turning to collaborative learning strategies to help their students to learn. Here are 10 of the best collaborative learning tools available on the web today."
This week as part of our learning path activity for EDC3100 we were asked to 'fill in the blanks'. Here is a great website that talks about Schema and gives some great activities to help with prior knowledge and building on new knowledge! :) Enjoy
Third, and most importantly, it requires us to shift the power of learning from the teacher to the student; to become the facilitator for learning rather than the deliverer of knowledge and in so doing, to let students lead their own learning. That is a very disturbing prospect for many educators – and parents – because it's all about relinquishing control and taking risks.
what each student needs to learn, when they need to learn it.
potential of students to learn independently and collaboratively.
A blog about embracing digital technology in the classroom. Has some interesting comments about teacher attitudes to technology and new ways of learning. May be something to consider in reasons for using ICTs in the classroom
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