"We use ICT throughout the school and throughout the curriculum, we don't have separate ICT lessons, it is absolutely vital that the children become familiar with ICT. The on screen phonics lessons are absolutely superb and we use ICT for reading to re-engage the less enthusiastic children."
Technology is pervasive in Dan's school - the library is the first room pupils enter. The weather station is situated where anyone can look at it in passing.
Over the recent phase of smartphone / tablet development evolution has been rapid and it has often been the family who provide learners with their first exposure to emerging technologies. Many children use smart mobile devices and/or cutting edge games technologies at home, school can look outdated if it can't match what is at home. The technologies in the room shown below are good, they are well maintained, treated with respect and used to very good effect in this primary school. Until fairly recently education providers were usually ahead of most households as far as access to new technologies goes. Funding is a major issue across the sector, however; iPads are on their way in this school and many others.
I had an interesting chat with a participant on the day who is going totally iPad in his school. They intend giving the children a lot of ownership over the devices; allowing them to choose which apps they install, put their own music on them - personalising them. That is a very important concept for children, if allowed they will decorate their books, their bags, their bedrooms and customise themselves to affiliate with groups and imprint individual identity. Through allowing ownership of objects of desire, such as mobile devices, the school shows respect for the children. A similar approach is being deployed at the essa academy, a discussion with the principle and director showed there to be significant interest, by both staff and pupils, about their new iPads for all approach.
I had an interesting chat with a participant on the day who is going totally iPad in his school. They intend giving the children a lot of ownership over the devices; allowing them to choose which apps they install, put their own music on them - personalise them. That is a very important concept for children, if allowed they will decorate their books, their bags, their bedrooms and customise themselves to affiliate with groups and imprint individual identity. Through allowing ownership of objects of desire, such as mobile devices, the school shows respect for the children. Personal ownership is also preferable to the communal use of some hardware such as headphones through which the dreaded nit can rapidly spread or some skin / ear conditions might be passed on.
Interactive White Boards
These are a fairly common feature in classrooms, they are not always used well, however; things have moved on since the time I met a teacher who has drawn on the screen with a whiteboard marker and never wanted to go near technology again afterwards. Julian had some thoughts on IWB use:"Most teachers tend to either shy away from using the IWB altogether (I know!) or they simply use it as a screen for their PowerPoint presentations.
…you can navigate freely within and around your presentation but also get the children to interact with it and then use their content to aid the learning of others. For example a child comes forward and writes their version of a calculation (possibly wrong and definitely the wrong size - usually too small). It is possible within Notebook to quickly group and enlarge their writing so that it is visible to all then as a class make and annotate corrections. Once complete this can all then be grouped and shrunk, dragged to the corner of the screen ready to be enlarged at the end for your plenary once you have finished the rest of your delivery. Genius - in my opinion.
PS. Death by PowerPoint is still alive and well within education."
Back to Dan at St Neot who is not just using the IWB for showing a PowerPoint...
"Who wants to read what it says about mosquitoes?"
"Who wants to read what it says about mosquitoes?"
Me me me sir.
I didn't notice the twitching and fiddling and shuffling that used to happen when teachers asked children who wanted to read out of the big book. I did notice enthusiasm, engagement, pride - all essential elements in a good learning event. Technology does not need to be all bells and whistles and flashy stuff - straightforward, interactive, well designed, fit for purpose - that's enough to give the teacher an edge on learning.
"Drag the labels into place; which one goes where?"
"What do you call a picture with labels? - That's right its a ''Diagram'... on goes the label."
Well designed interactivity can be a wonderful supplement. In the days where books dominated, the answers were often in the back of the book, sometimes upside down, it was hard not to read more than one. Today interactive quizzes provide affirmation of success, there is no chance of accidentally cheating, there is no rubbed or scribbled over wrong answer left on the work. There is a sense of autonomy - achieving for themselves on a little self directed excursion within the huge journey through a school day.
Laptop group supervised by TA, pupils on differentiated tasks.
Even word processing documents generate a sense of pride, mistakes can be rectified leaving no scar, the end product is clean and professional looking; something to be proud of.
Even word processing documents generate a sense of pride, mistakes can be rectified leaving no scar, the end product is clean and professional looking; something to be proud of.
Elements of game design are evident in a lot of educational software. Affirmation of success, reward, positive supportive comments, encouragement to try again. Children become immersed in well built software just like an avid reader or film buff will enter a state of almost living in the fiction. They often enter into dialogue with the machine, this may be internal or external dialogue, sometimes little bursts of an extended internal dialogue escape into the real world. Whereas this man-machine chatter can appear pointless it is often a dialogue based on a feedback loop between the child's individual perception of what is to be done, the child's actions, their interpretation of the machine's response to their actions and a renewed perception of what needs to be done. I have noticed sometimes they talk to themselves and the machine in a removed voice, as if the dialogue was from a commentator watching the game. "Talking it out" with the machine is as natural to many children as talking their way through any problem internally or out loud with their friends.
This kind of engagement has many of the characteristics of 'flow' or being in an 'optimal learning state' as discussed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalzi in 'Flow the Psychology of Happiness' and other works. A lad in my class used to pass my friend and I every morning on the way to school, he always had a ball and was mumbling to himself something like: "Moore goes round the outside, he is set up beautifully...he strikes...its a goal.. the crowd go wild..." He sometimes arrived in class elated having won 5-0, occasionally he would give himself a hard game and arrive quiet and thoughtful. Our fairly new chemistry teacher picked up on his dialogue one day when asking him to demonstrate an experiment: "Johnson comes up to the desk, has he got every thing he needs: yes he has, the tripod is up, the burner in place, we have ignition..." he responded to the dialogue with exaggerated expression, even went into slow motion action replay. Something big happened that day, teacher came into our world, we became a team of helpful and focused commentators, the teacher cheered, we cheered everybody won. Chemistry lessons were always fun something to look forward too, homework was not a chore we wanted it to be good because we liked the teacher. That is one of the key drivers to raising standerds - great teacher pupil interactions.
Today many of the young parents who volunteer to help out in schools then become teaching assistants, will have experienced fairly pervasive exposure to digital technologies in school from a young age. Many will have home computers and/or a smartphone, in theory they should be taking to technology in the classroom like ducks to water but many are fairly nervous themselves or are in settings where teachers are not confident. There is a huge difference between being the child interacting with a whiteboard and being the TA who sets up the whiteboard activity. We need teaching staff who have the time to feel that same excited spirit of inquiry that children experience, teachers who come out of a lesson filled up and full of joy. Standards are very important but under the current complex and micromanaged system there is a preoccupation with the detail of the curriculum, with meeting attainment criteria targets, with planning and record keeping, maintaining position in league tables etc. Learning is time-tabled and prescribed, there is insufficient time for the big wide learning adventures that technology can offer.
After many years of having to draw from a very mixed bag of learning platforms that included many offerings that were complex to set up and administrate, there are new offerings that are well designed at last. One thing I no longer hear in the classroom and rarely hear from any of my students is the 'virtual' word. Virtual Learning Environment - what a misnomer; learning online or onscreen is really real, as real as any reality really. Like many schools, St Neot are looking forward to getting their new learning platform up and running, the weather station will link into it, there will be provision for online homework, blogs and places where parents can see what the children are achieving. The school are not rushing ahead; these things are sometimes better done step by step, making sure each part works well before releasing the whole.
This kind of engagement has many of the characteristics of 'flow' or being in an 'optimal learning state' as discussed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalzi in 'Flow the Psychology of Happiness' and other works. A lad in my class used to pass my friend and I every morning on the way to school, he always had a ball and was mumbling to himself something like: "Moore goes round the outside, he is set up beautifully...he strikes...its a goal.. the crowd go wild..." He sometimes arrived in class elated having won 5-0, occasionally he would give himself a hard game and arrive quiet and thoughtful. Our fairly new chemistry teacher picked up on his dialogue one day when asking him to demonstrate an experiment: "Johnson comes up to the desk, has he got every thing he needs: yes he has, the tripod is up, the burner in place, we have ignition..." he responded to the dialogue with exaggerated expression, even went into slow motion action replay. Something big happened that day, teacher came into our world, we became a team of helpful and focused commentators, the teacher cheered, we cheered everybody won. Chemistry lessons were always fun something to look forward too, homework was not a chore we wanted it to be good because we liked the teacher. That is one of the key drivers to raising standerds - great teacher pupil interactions.
Today many of the young parents who volunteer to help out in schools then become teaching assistants, will have experienced fairly pervasive exposure to digital technologies in school from a young age. Many will have home computers and/or a smartphone, in theory they should be taking to technology in the classroom like ducks to water but many are fairly nervous themselves or are in settings where teachers are not confident. There is a huge difference between being the child interacting with a whiteboard and being the TA who sets up the whiteboard activity. We need teaching staff who have the time to feel that same excited spirit of inquiry that children experience, teachers who come out of a lesson filled up and full of joy. Standards are very important but under the current complex and micromanaged system there is a preoccupation with the detail of the curriculum, with meeting attainment criteria targets, with planning and record keeping, maintaining position in league tables etc. Learning is time-tabled and prescribed, there is insufficient time for the big wide learning adventures that technology can offer.
After many years of having to draw from a very mixed bag of learning platforms that included many offerings that were complex to set up and administrate, there are new offerings that are well designed at last. One thing I no longer hear in the classroom and rarely hear from any of my students is the 'virtual' word. Virtual Learning Environment - what a misnomer; learning online or onscreen is really real, as real as any reality really. Like many schools, St Neot are looking forward to getting their new learning platform up and running, the weather station will link into it, there will be provision for online homework, blogs and places where parents can see what the children are achieving. The school are not rushing ahead; these things are sometimes better done step by step, making sure each part works well before releasing the whole.
"That is something that we are learning to use and the moment I am thoroughly excited about it. so instead of 'research this then write it in your book', it will be 'research this put it on your blog or your discussion page'." Dan Jewell
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