Getting started in the ICT Classroom

Getting to know each other

During our first week, traditionally a time for getting to know students, I tried out a couple of ideas. With one class, I had the students create a "Bio Cube" about themselves. They add information to six different sides of a cube (I gave them suitable headings for each side), print them out and fold and glue into a cube shape. These can be made into a mobile for classroom display. Of course this is also a handy way of presenting information for a class assignment.

Another class started the year by creating a PhotoStory about themselves, which we shared as a class. They used photos from Pro.Corbis for this, and told us why they had chosen the particular photos. This was a really interesting way to find out what these kids are really like. This served a double purpose as we were beginning a Presentations unit, and students have since chosen to create quick photostories for inclusion in their PowerPoint shows - much more interesting than multiple slides of photos.

My Year 13 class used Inspiration to prepare a web showing me what ICT skills they already had (from school and home), and what they would like to know more about. I collated their webs into a class web and used this as a basis to suggest individual projects they could be working on this year, outside normal class time. An unexpected plus for this activity was with the initial web - many students started off with only a small number of skills listed but, with a little prompting from me and seeing what everybody else had, ended up with a really large web and a corresponding increase in confidence. It was interesting that initally most students kept school and home activities quite separate, not including Bebo, photo editing etc on their webs.


Research and Presentations
I've used Web 2 Tools to solve a couple of problems. The way our school network is set up, any changes that are made on the network (other than in home drives) are lost as soon as the computer is logged off. This means we have few problems with our network, but can be a bit of a nuisance at times. One thing that really is a pain, is the fact that we cannot store bookmarks in our browser. For me, this means that I am using my delicious account every day, and have also introduced a couple of senior classes to delicious, when they were working on research projects. While not everyone can be bothered with it, a few have added me to their network.

Quite a number have been fascinated by my iGoogle page, and gradually I see more and more students signing in to their own page in class. One of the main uses for this page, is for keeping frequently used bookmarks. This is a great alternative to delicious for people who don't yet need to keep a lot of sites bookmarked or, like me, just use it for the sites you go to most days.

One of my year 11 classes started the year with two computing theory units. This isn't really what they were expecting or hoping for, they mostly just want to get on with learning new applications. It was great to keep their interest by using some new tools. While learning about Ergonomics, each student researched one topic and they all added their findings to a class slideshow. We used Google Presentations for this (a new part of Google Docs) - it was a quick exercise and worked well with a group from diverse backgrounds.

We are very lucky to have Clickview at our school - the Computer Hardware video I had used before now took on a whole new dimension. We viewed the movie right through as a class (with just a projector - no need to bring a TV in), then students worked at their own pace to answer the worksheets. They thought this was pretty cool, but the really good thing for me, was that they asked if they were allowed to access these videos at other times for revision, and to help with assignments. Some did indeed refer back to the video clips for assistance when working through later worksheets - for these students this worked better than referring to written notes.

Differrentiated Learning
While teaching half a class about computer hardware etc, I also have to keep the other half of the class working on useful activities. This has been quite a challenge as these students speak very little English. To keep things going for a few weeks, I created PowerPoint slideshows which included screenshots as well as written instructions. It took a wee while for everybody to get the idea of checking back on the slideshow for assistance but we got there in the end. Now I've tried out CamStudio, the free software that records all activity on your computer and creates AVI video files, I'll be using this tool to create a bank of video tutorials. Hopefully these will be helpful for ESL students in particular.

These students will be my constant challenge this year. I'm thinking about the benefits of blogging for these students - hopefully I can work in with their other teachers on this one. I'd like to get them started but don't want them to spend too much of my class time on this as there are many other things we need to cover. Maybe I can tie other things into the blog hmmmm.... a bit more thought required.