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

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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.