The End

It was great to see the ways in which teachers diversified their programmes to suit having the same resources in their classrooms every day. However, there are still times when it would be better to have a larger number, especially if you are teaching a specific skill that you want the whole class to use simultaneously. It would seem that the older the children are, the easier it is to manage larger numbers of computers/laptops, as they are more capable and are able to remember more instructions/directions and can troubleshoot themselves. Observations in younger aged classes shows that it can be very difficult to operate a larger number, as the children are more demanding of your time and need a lot more assistance - even with finding the letters on the keyboard - this can potentially lead to disaster, and can turn a lesson into a nightmare! The option of having an extra adult pair of hands would eleviate the problem, or use older students to help. With the second option, this would mean that children would miss out on the learning that is going on in their own class which could pose issues later on.

All teams that were part of the trial have expressed a need for more equipment - we will have to see what the BOT can give us in regards to this. Watch this space ...

Year 2 feedback Term 4

Pros:
We have computer ‘experts’ to help when teacher was busy.
Easy access at all times, ie, can use it in all areas, at any time of day.
Extended the range of activities available.
Is a great motivation tool.
There are always new things to find and use online.

Cons:
There are only 5 computers available and often more than this in a maths/reading group.
Internet doesn’t always ‘want’ to connect.
Difficult to incorporate into already established class routines, etc.
Work is often unfinished during their ‘turn’ on rotation.

Suggestions:
Would be great to have a wider range of games available. We have a lot of outdated games which no longer work but would be great to have updated versions!

Year 3 trial feedback so far

This is the feedback from the Lead Teacher in Year 3. It is important to note that the team has less laptops than other teams, and it is still quite early in the trial.

Pros

Can integrate ICT into all curriculum areas
Can have 3 children completing all the days work on a laptop
Laptops are available at all times of the day

Cons

I feel I am using them less now because:
Some days I need all children to be writing in their book or completing a task therefore the laptops are sitting unused
An ICT task set takes weeks for all children to complete whereas with 10 computers the whole class can be finished a task in 1-2 days

Prefer – having allocated time slots with the whole COW because I can focus in on teaching skills with a group of 10-11 kids while the others work independently then swap over. I cannot teach 3 children and then have the rest of the class working independently. Tasks can be completed in a short space of time rather than dragging out for 2 weeks. ICT can still be integrated into all curriculum areas, it is up to the teacher to ensure that tasks set cover the entire curriculum and that a variety of programmes are used to complete these tasks.

Year 6 final review

1.All teachers in the team like having access to the same resources each day (ease of access, saving work to the desktop if necessary, bookmarking specific sites for the class).
2.The children are able to run on an activity rotation to complete ICT related tasks.
3.We will now trial having one block a week each class in order to teach specific skills and then re-distribute for the remainder of the day.
4. The team would like more laptops and mobile devices to incorporate into our programmes.

Resources

The Year 3 team have taken the bull by the horns, and have split their resources and are implementing the system. I will be working with them on using Newsmaker in their classroom programmes in the coming weeks.
The Year 1, 4 and 5 teams are happy with the way they are currently timetabling their resources at this stage.

The trial continues to Year 3

Year 3 have agreed to trial the split system, after seeing the success from Year 6 and Year 2. This will start today, with a redistribution of equipment (chargers and laptops). I am REALLY excited about how this is progressing!

Feedback from Year 2

After a fortnight of trialling the split, here is the feedback that they have given me:

• Turn taking - children end up with a longer amount of time on the laptops throughout the week doing meaningful tasks
• Other kinds of activities have been included in the day to day programmes (such as shared book activities)
• Bookmarks and links have made it easier for children to locate websites that are pertinent to them
• Workstations - task boards and tumble boards are being used
• ICT is being integrated more effectively - no longer a stand alone thing!

Problems:

• Children don't like others 'hanging' around - this has been addressed with the premise that their name will be put at the bottom of the tumble
• Children need to be upskilled on troubleshooting - such as opening the wrong file or website
• Younger or less capable children need assistance from either older peers, teacher aides or teachers when uploading or converting files for their Ultranet pages
  

Suggestions for Junior School ICT

View more documents from RochelleStansfield.

This is what the Year 2 Team were given, along with the Kidpix ideas (see earlier posts)

The extended trial - Year 2 Team

After much discussion with the Year 2 team, they have also agreed to trial the same system that Year 6 have. All laptops have been labelled appropriately, commonly used websites have been bookmarked, and they are ready to go! Each member of the team has been given a flyer with ideas and some suggestions on how to manage the pod of laptops effectively (and integrated). The Team Leader is very enthusiastic about the new system in her team. Everyone seems to be on board. I will be reviewing this with them in a fortnight to see how it is going.

The trial continues

Well, so far the trial has been very successful. The members in my team enjoy having the same resources, all day, every day. The children are very good at setting these up in the classrooms and getting things organised. There are no disputes about which ones should be where. Having this equipment in classes has made it far easier to incorporate ICT seamlessly into classroom programmes. The use of tumble boards and task boards has also been trialled. When the need for more laptops has come up, within our team we are very good at sharing. Now we just want more!

The trial begins!

As of Monday this week, in my team we are trialling having 3 laptops in each class, with a cartoon character family member as identification. So far, so good. The feedback from the children and teachers is very positive. They like the fact that they can have access to the same equipment, all day, every day. Although there is not a large number of laptops in each room, there is no waiting for the old timetable system (where we would have 12 laptops for 4 - 5 blocks per week). Hopefully this should make for better usage. Time will tell...

The NEW Action Research Proposal

Action Research Proposal

Names:
CBS - Lead by Rochelle Stansfield

Audience for proposal:
Belinda (Eastnet Cluster), CBS staff

Rationale/Issue/Puzzle:
To investigate different ways of distributing ICT resources to maximise integration and productivity of students at CBS.

Learning Intentions:
To explore and implement different systems in distributing ICT resources within the Year 1 and Year 6 teams and monitor their productivity via surveys, observations and output.

Timeframe:
Terms 2 - 4

Implementation:
Term 2 - Survey all staff as to how they would prefer resources to be allocated. Distribute equipment according to the needs in the survey
Distribute equipment in the same manner we have done so far this year (set block bookings for each class - 12 laptops for 4 - 5 sessions per week)
Term 3 - Distribute 3 laptops plus 1 desktop per class, all day, every day, with systems in place for storage, charging, etc
Term 4 - (Beginning) Survey children and staff in the team to do a direct comparison between the two systems and analyse results
Present findings to the team, staff and cluster

Ethical considerations:
Check that children have signed and understand the Cybersafety agreement.

Resources:
Release for development, implementation and logistics
Team training sessions

Meeting with Belinda and Suzi

It was great meeting with Belinda and Suzi today. I was feeling a bit confused about the way in which my action research proposal was heading off on another tangent. After discussing my ideas with them, I felt very reassured that it was totally okay for me to shift my focus onto something that is probably a little less ambitious and to me is far more important than what was originally proposed. The information that I have gathered recently has lead me in the direction of resource management to maximise output and increase the integration of ICT in classrooms. I will need to discuss these ideas with Jenna to see how she feels about this idea. I will also be ensuring that any ideas that will assist with integration will be shared with staff members so that they can start implementing simple tasks that can be part of their literacy programmes (without the work!)

Knowledge Saturation

At this point, I think it is fair to say that I have been really impressed with the way in which the schools that I have visited have been using ICT. I am still looking at the different ways that ICT can be integrated into classes, so that it is simply part of the day to day programme - not a stand alone exercise. It is going to take time and effort to change the mindset of many, but hopefully sharing ideas and strategies with the masses, will allow me to develop the spiral of skills that will assist the continual development of skills across the school.

The Assembly item

It was my Team's turn to present at the recent school assembly. I had a few ideas in my head of how I wanted to do this. Firstly, I wanted every child to be actively involved in the assembly. Secondly, I did not want any 'wait' time between transitions, as this is generally the time when chatter from the audience starts and someone has to interrupt the flow of things to settle everyone back down. My idea initially was to have all the music edited, etc ready to go at the push of a button. Unfortunately, when this was put into practice, flicking from movies to music (back and forth from app to app) it was going to be a technical nightmare and I really didn't enjoy the prospect of accidentally clicking on the wrong one! The answer to my problem dawned on me - put EVERYTHING back into imovie, then create one Quicktime movie that would play from the beginning to the end. So that is exactly what I did - seamless!! That's right, folks, we are living in a digital world :O)

Kidpix Ideas - Compiled by Jenna B

Kidpix ideas 2010

View more documents from RochelleStansfield.

These were the ideas that Jenna and I saw at Summerlands Primary and Elm Park, using Kidpix. It is often seen that teachers run out of ideas on what to do or how to fully utilise such programmes. Hopefully, this offers some inspiration!

Visit to Elm Park

Jenna and I visited Elm Park today - it was great! It doesn't seem to matter where you go, there are always ideas that you can take away from the experience. Here we have another school that has disbanded the computer suite concept, and has opted for having as much equipment in classrooms as possible ... watch this space!

The survey ...

I have created a survey that should help us to identify a number of things that are needed for me to do the Action Research Project. How on earth can we move forward before we know exactly where we are and where we need to go?
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/6FRLZGV

Visit to Summerland Primary

Well, this is just what I needed - some fresh, new ideas to get me a little bit excited! Firstly, I have come to the realisation that laptops and computers need to be in classes so that they can be easily integrated into the classroom programme. I was really impressed to see that there was evidence of work that integrated ICT on the walls of the classes. It was evident on our visit that the seamless integration of ICT was because the teachers knew that they had the same equipment in their rooms each day and there was no guess work as to 'whether the laptops were charged, did it have the right programmes, was everything going to load properly, is the desktop set up how I need it to be??' I really loved the idea of naming the equipment - cartoon characters and sports people - what a cool idea! Much easier to remember a name as opposed to a crazy number/letter identification exercise! It simply no longer works for me to have the system we currently have in place - COW's for each team, timetables, an ICT suite. The learning is disjointed and there doesn't seem to be consistency. So if this is what I think, what do the rest of the staff think? I think a survey is required!

Time goes by ...

I am feeling a little bogged down at the moment - there don't seem to be enough hours in the day. I feel like I really need to get into other classrooms to see what is going on and to motivate others. Jenna B has come on board with me, so hopefully we can work together to get the ball rolling.

Technology in action!

I have just got back from camp, where one would expect that you would not see ICT in action - this was certainly not the case as we took digital cameras for the children to capture 'on location' shots, including close ups, action shots, faces, landscapes, texture, foliage to name a few. Their next rotation was a workshop with another colleague who was showing the children how to upload their photos into iphoto - selecting the best ones and deleting the not so flash shots, and displaying them in a montage format using The Printshop 2. These will be finished off in class when we get back from camp. Who said we can't take laptops with us?? That's right - no one!

The Motivation ...

Thanks to Belinda at the Lead Teacher Day in May - she has inspired me to look into the possibilities of having itouch technology in classrooms, after her sharing the experiences that she had on her recent Apple Bus Tour in the USA. It has made me think 'What are we doing and where are we going?'

I have met with one person from each team to do a workshop using The Printshop 2 - a fun and interesting way of publishing and displaying work for both the staff and the children. It was great to see the other staff being really keen and motivated to learn some neat little tricks - I will have to follow this up to see how these new skills are being implemented in classrooms.

Action Research Project begins!

I have set up the action research proposal - basically I will be teaching the e-learning team a variety of ways of recording and displaying children's learning with the use of ICT. The next thing I need to do is survey the staff to see what they already have up and running, so that I will be able to identify the next step.

Wallwisher

I used wallwisher with my class last year and found it really good for brainstorming lots of ideas simultaneously. This year, I have a class that have a lot of ideas and are quite vocal about them. Using wallwisher meant that they didn't have to wait their turn while I wrote or typed up their ideas. The source of motivation was using the book 'The Lorax' by Dr Seuss. We have been looking closely at sustainability and what it means. Here is what they came up with.

Action Research Proposal

Names:
CBS - Lead by Rochelle Stansfield, Sarah Wallace and the e-Learning Team.

Audience for proposal:
Belinda (Eastnet Cluster), CBS staff

Rationale/Issue/Puzzle:
To have a sustainable, authentic digital learning environment that shows progress of our students learning at CBS.

Learning Intentions:
To explore and implement ways of sharing learning using digital strategies and resources available in our school, especially the things you can't put in books.

Timeframe:
All year and beyond.

Implementation:
T1: Develop a spiral of skills/expectations that are age/level appropriate. Ensure that there is a specific purpose of the digital strategy, eg 'Can we see this evidence in the child's books?' 'Is it showing a specific goal or learning intention?'
T2-4: Implement staff training via the e-Learning team in how to use the equipment effectively and appropriately. Ensure that digital evidence is uploaded to each child's ultranet page.

Ethical considerations:
Check that children have signed and understand the Cybersafety agreement.

Resources:
Release for development and implementation
Staff training sessions
Budget for equipment - flip minos, easispeaks
Access to relevant programmes - Newsmaker, Garageband (podcasting)