Having spent my first few days in school on teaching practice, I was really keen to explore what ICT was available to children in schools and how it was being utilised.
I was very pleased to see a wealth of resources at my placement school; in the form of, mutliple computer suites, standalone PC'S, IWB's and more...
I observed my first taught ICT lesson here today and was very impressed with how familiar the children seemed to be with computers... I keep forgetting how I felt when I was their age, and how alien they were to me. Computers really do form part of children's daily lives in today's society and I think what and how they are taught about ICT in schools needs to reflect that.
Since the taught sessions a few weeks back, I was also really keen to find out more about how blogs and wiki's get used in schools. The realities of mobile phone cameras and ICT in that form, are that they aren't allowed in school or in the classroom. In addition, in practice I have discovered that schools have personal intranet sites with useful links, resources and ideas on them, and also topical blogs and subject led blogs that form very creative tools to communicate with the wider school community. They are however, staff led in this case, therefore the children do not actively engage with the process of creating the blog. That said, there are facilities for the children to post comments on the different areas of the blog and to get involved with its content.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Interesting.
How would you rate this kind of approach with respect to allowing children to make effective use of the power of ICT?
In terms of children making effective use of ICT, this approach is definitely frustrating. I think there is so much more that the children can do and experience with regards to ICT. However, I do understand that schools have their limitations because of security measures, child protection, and perhaps the confidence and ability of those teaching ICT. That said, the extended ICT that was available to the children, in the form of the blogs was probably created by the respective teacher in their own time. 50 minutes each week was all that was allocated at this school to teach ICT and as a result, I am not surprised that the method that was in place was the chosen one to teach ICT. Time is clearly a huge factor in ICT education.
Post a Comment