Tech Tips Tuesday

This week's tip: Take time out for reflection

I'm on holidays at the moment and so have had the luxury of time for reflection. While I painted the window frames and walked the dog I listened to some podcasts and pondered my current teaching practices when it comes to the integration of technology.

A lot of people in my Personal Learning Network (PLN) seem to be doing this at the moment, and I think a recurring theme is: Yes, we have a lot of cool tools, but WHY are we using them? How are we improving student learning outcomes through their use? Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't be using ICT, I'm just saying we should be able to give a reason for why.

Here is an overview of the resources and what that helped me to think through.

It's Elementary #33 - Interactive Whiteboards
This podcast helped me to realise that in my classroom most of the Smart Board touches are actually mine. I use the Smart Board predominantly as a teaching tool and don't give my students enough time to interact with it. I'd like to think of some new ways to ensure that my students are touching it more throughout the day.
One thing that urks me about interactive whiteboards is that only one person can be manipulating it at a time - be that me or one of the students. When we use it for games, we have to pass the keyboard around the classroom, and the other kids get bored. I try to beat this by getting the rest of the class to write the answer with their finger on the carpet, but by the end everyone has had enough! Maybe we need to rotate through groups while the other students are doing book work or other activities.
On the positive side, I also realised that my students learn a lot through my use of the Smart Board as a tool throughout the normal school day. I teach basic computer skills through modeling as I use it and troubleshoot. I would be lost without it at this point because I use it for so much of my teaching. I use it to show pictures, use graphic organisers, search for information online, brainstorm, show videos, present written instructions, do quizzes, play games, display a scanned worksheet for explanation, and with my 'document camera' to model Maths concepts.

Using Technology for Higher-Level Thinking - Am I?
This blog post, by J. Mendel made me think some more about how I am using technology to develop higher-level thinking. One of the many jobs on my "Things to Do List" is to develop a resource that demonstrates how technology can be tied with the Quality Teaching Model. I'm just not sure when I'll have time to get to this!
The videos students created for our Rowan of Rin unit really challenged student thinking. They collaborated with others to search through the text to determine how their characters may have been feeling at different points in the story. They then conducted video interviews (news broadcast style) to present this information. By the end of the unit, students were creating their own questions for characters to respond to, and were throwing in some dramatic flair! The part of this project that I'm disappointed with is that I'm sitting in my own home editing the videos with fade in/fade out, text slides etc all without the input of students. Next time I want to find a way for them to take part in the whole production.

The Technology Specialist as Teacher Leader (from K12 Online 2007)
In this podcast Patrick Ledesma talks about the right way to get people on board with ICT. He talks about getting the infrastructure working well, making the links to the curriculum etc and THEN having fun with it. He warns us not to just be seen as Tech Geeks enjoying all the fun toys!

Holding a Mirror to our Professional Practice (from K12 Online 2007)
In this podcast Derek Wenmoth talks about the value of reflecting on our practices. He shares a tool that was developed to help teachers to self-reflect on how they are using ICT in the classroom.
I tested out the Educational Positioning System for ICT and found it quite useful. While it only gives back the information you give to it, the process aids your reflection and the information comes back to you as a visual representation in the form of a map. It helps you to clarify your philosophy and you can easily see your areas of strength and weakness.
From using this tool, I realised that an area for my own further development is using ICT to explore student creativity. I'm thinking now of new ways to allow students to access technology to get creative.

And one last one, more for fun, Kerrie Smith wrote Are You a Digital Collaborator? about recent research into Internet Typology and the use of mobile devices. There is a quiz you can take to determine where you fit into the mobile technology typology. (Wow, lots of 'ology' words!) This is more about your personal use of ICT than your classroom use of it, but I found it interesting all the same.

If you liked these, here are some more Tech Tips.

Friday Fun - 13/3/09

As I pointed out to the parents of my students, this week was a "hold your hat and enjoy the ride" sort of week. Monday was out due to a public holiday. My teaching partner, Jonno, and about a fifth of the Year 4s were out on Thursday for a rugby day and Friday was our swimming carnival. We had a bit of teaching in the middle there, but had to pack a lot into a few days!

I must say that Jonno was absolutely AWESOME this week. I was impressed with how calmly he pulled off all the sport organisation - and so professionally as well. The swimming carnival was a huge success and the kids had a fantastic day.

Fun this Week

Readers' Theatre
I spent Monday night making a quadruple batch of playdough. Hubby was confused: "Aren't you teaching Year 4 now?" I figured that even Year 4s like playdough now and then! Or at least the chance to express themselves creatively and explore ideas physically.
This week's readers' theatre was about B.W Hawkins and the Dinosaur Models which are displayed at the Crystal Palace Park in London. In line with the Art-full Pedagogies strategy from the Springboards into Literacy workshop I went to, I decided to give my students a chance to create their own playdough dinosaur sculptures before reading the script. Students worked in small groups to create their dinosaurs using playdough, match sticks, pasta and sequins.
Then, as students began practising the readers' theatre scripts, they had personal experience of what it's like to create dinosaur models and the text was far more real to them. Students put a lot of expression into their reading and were interested to see the process of B.W. Hawkins when making his models.

Assemblies
On Tuesday we had a special farewell assembly for our retiring PE teacher who has been in the school for 12 years. He has had a huge impact on his students over the years and has fed their enthusiasm for an active lifestyle. He will be greatly missed by the students, staff and wider school community.

We also had a visit from Stirling Mortlock, a well known local rugby union player. He spoke to students in grades 4-6 about Earth Hour and discussed the importance of looking after our planet every hour, every day - not just for Earth Hour. When we got back to class students began creating their own posters to remind people of appliances that use electricity and provide tips for reducing electricity consumption.

Class Meeting
We had a class meeting to discuss and complete a Biodiversity survey for the school's Student Representative Council (SRC). Students considered the areas of the school grounds they like, dislike and use. They listed the types of wildlife they have seen within the school grounds. They then considered changes they would like made in order to improve the appearance of the school grounds and the opportunities for biodiversity. The SRC is collecting this data from all classes, staff members and families in the school community.

Visitors
We had a number of visitors in our school this week. Some teachers from the UK visited to see our school and the programs we run. My teaching intern also visited to meet students and get a greater sense of the classroom organisation. She will be beginning her 8-week internship at the end of March.

Maths
This week we looked at lines and angles in our maths lessons. I was surprised by how interested and enthusiastic the students were when it came to learning about angles. The questions students were asking showed great depth of thinking. It's disappointing that we could spend so little time on it due to all the interruptions. I look forward to exploring it further later in the year.

Will You Be Funky 4-Eva? Quiz
As mentioned above, Jonno took some of our kids (and some Year 5/6s) to a rugby day on Thursday. For a bit of fun and relationship building, I designed a trivia quiz (in PowerPoint) for part of that day. Students got into mixed groups of six and created names for their teams. Questions came from a mix of subject areas and some included photos or videos. Each team was given three coloured match sticks that they could trade in - one for a dictionary, one for a calculator and one for a computer - to help them with a question. Every fifth question was a "Who Am I?" followed by a team challenge. The challenges we got to were:

• perform a nursery rhyme
• present a tongue twister
• build a sculpture or building with no more than 20 pieces of lego

It was a lot of fun and gave students opportunities to shine both academically, dramatically and technologically.

Swimming Carnival
The carnival was a lot of fun. Students competed in races (including a 'boat race' with rubber tyres) and then played in the pool. They even had some time on a water slide. We were all exhausted by the end of it, but the kids also had a disco at night. (I admit - I skipped out on that one).

Rowan of Rin
For details of our Literacy Unit on Rowan of Rin, click here.

Friday Fun

This was the final week for school in my state. It was another busy week, but still fun.

Fun This Week:

Are We There Yet? YES! - This week we finished off our imaginary journey around Australia. The last few pages of "Are We There Yet?" by Alison Lester were a bit of a rush, but we made it! I created an online quiz using ProProf which we did as a class and then I was going to have students do it in the lab. Unfortunately, the videos didn't work at school due to system blocking of videos. But if you want to check it out, you can see it here:

Australian Geography » Quizes

So instead of doing the quiz in the lab, students explored the SmartBoard Notebook containing all the videos/photos etc for the term. It was a great way for students to review the material. We then went back to the classroom where they tried to label an Australian map with states and capital cities. I was REALLY impressed with how much they had learnt. The following day we actually read another story about a journey around Australia called "Santa's Aussie Holiday" by Maria Farrer and Anna Walker. It was interesting to hear the discussion as the kids compared the two journeys.

Gifts - Students made and wrapped gifts for their families. (I'm not going to spill the beans about those!)

Swimming Pool - On Thursday the junior school (K-2) went to the pool for the morning. The kids did a lot of swimming and splashing early on. Towards the end a couple of my boys set up their own little soccer field and started playing soccer. A couple of the girls joined in as cheer leaders. I was most impressed as they did it all on their own initiative without any encouragement whatsoever from me!

Class Party - On Friday afternoon some of the parents organised a class party for the kids. It was a pretty wild half-hour so I think we were all quite glad it was at the end of the day! Again, the kids showed initiative - climbing on chairs, stacks on, and running around the classroom!!! (It's much better when they use their powers for good!) The parents were really lovely with all their kind words and gifts. It was a pleasure working with them.