Update on placement internet connection

I managed to push to get the classroom internet connection reinstalled and it was!
Yay
It means that most days I can do a five min maths mental starter with the class using www.ictgames. com Its well work a quick look.
I use my starters to reaffirm the previous days learning in ICT.

It has also been very useful in science (bbc website) and in geography (Google earth)

My new gadget

Today I used my new ICT gadget in literacy.

It is a really cool dictaphone!
Boring you may think, but no! The children have been working on making a boring story of Little Red Riding Hood into an interesting one and I used the dictaphone to record each child reading their bit. I then downloaded it and have turned it into a CD. A few cheap CD's from the pound shop later and the children have some exciting proof of all their hard literacy work. They even made their own CD case to put it in.

Transferring the files to my computer was easy, but there is not currently any compatible software to turn the files into a CD. However, after about two hours of fiddling and pure determination I worked out how to change each file manually into a file compatible with burning onto a CD. Now it sounds so cool.

I am so proud of my year twos for creating this magnificent piece of work.

ICT in an out of school contect 23/1/08

The teaching assistants and I took groups of year two children for a walk around the local area to identify local landmarks and other prominent things in the area, The children had digital cameras to take pictures of the of the interesting things and buildings. It is part of the geography project ‘Southampton and out home’. The children will use the pictures in ICT lessons. They will upload them next week, choose some to print and others to put into a PowerPoint presentation. They must choose the pictures that identify and remind them of their local area.

Observation of an ICT lesson 10/1/08

The lesson was identifying the school and the pupil’s homes using Google Earth.

The children had already looked at paper maps in their geography lesson and had discussed where they lived, the country, county, city and local areas.

The ICT lesson was thirty minutes long as the class had to be split into two groups.

The teacher showed the children how to find the school using Google Earth and the children copied. For homework, the children were asked to write down their street name, which in the lesson they had to type into the computer programme. The class then discussed how it zoomed out to the whole world and then you could slowly zoom into the country, the city, they local area and then into their own street. This was to try to help the children get some perspective on the size of our local area compared to the rest of the world.

The teacher briefly discussed how the pictures were taken by satellite but they can be a bit old. At this point they looked back at the picture of the school, which still had building work and the children came to the conclusion that the pictures were about a year old. This was to highlight that the internet can be useful, but they must understand that it maybe out of date or wrong and that they must be careful when using the information found on the internet.

The role of questioning: Questions were used to move the lesson on, build understanding and confirm the children’s understanding. However, there was less questioning used in this ICT lesson then I had witnessed in literacy and maths.

Features to build into my own teaching: Children, even in year two have a good understanding of computers and the internet and can do complex things.

To remind children how to be safe on the internet and the reliability of it.

I am Sorry

I have neglected my Blog whilst on placement due to internet connection problems. So I will catch up today and do plenty of posting that I have saved up for the past month or so.