Xtra Normal

If you can type you can make movies, jokes, captions etc. share with friends or just play around with the applications.

Word Exercise

Greg asked us to open a word document, then turn off the screen. He read us this caption, then asked us to turn the screen back on and check the spelling we used. this was to emphasise the type of speaking and listening, writing and spelling exercises we could use in the primary classroom.

Subject:  Ode to a spell checker

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye amwrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect awl the weigh

My chequer tolled me sew.

stopdisasters.org

http://www.stopdisasters.org/ is a terrific classroom resource, especially if you're looking at natural disasters in humanities. students can work individaully or collaborate in a team to rectify real-life inspired global disasters.

Sum Dog interactive games

Sketch Swap

Reasonably Clever!

D film

Create your wild self!!

Integrating ICT & Maths

Mermaid Story

Protection of students in ICT & games

This week's lecture presented us with some fairly confronting ideas as we were introduced to our responsibility for protecting students in the classroom from cyber predators, explicit content and cyber-bullying. This is a very real issue that can, and has, lead to unforeseen tragedies of social exclusion and even suicide.
Technology in the 21st century is a part of children's everyday lives in our society. These days it seems like you're the minority if you don't frequent sites such as youtube and facebook. these can be great sources of entertainment, research and education, and socialisation. But what about when children are not street-smart enough to protect themselves from damaging or explicit content? Who should be monitoring these children? Media coverage has ensured most people are aware of the ramifications associated with cyber-bullying and the explicit content of many many internet sites.Yet there is nothing in the technology that can stop children from visiting these sites.
When devising a learning curriculum that incorporates ICT, there are processes the teacher can undergo to ensure the navigation of sites will not lead to explicit content. this is an idea i have yet to explore hands-on, so im not 100% on how this works, but in my learning journey in becoming a classroom teacher find this to be one of the entities of teaching that is paramount for protecting our students.
It is our duty of care to protect our students, as Greg pointed out, this could be as simple as adequate classroom supervision.

Upon leaving the lecture i felt quite melancholy from witnessing the youtube video of a family's experience of losing their child to suicide as a consequence of cyber-bullying. So it was nice to learn that a focus of the workshop was to be on the construction of games and quizes to use as learning aides in the classroom.
I was feeling a bit silly at the end of what was a long day of back to back classes, so created my example of a quiz based on Aussie comedy. chuckling to myself got me through the final stretch of the day, and i did in-fact grasp the concept of creating the program and believe it would be an effective learning resource in the classroom as it can be directed towards pretty much any learning topic.

Quiz

reflection: Week 5

In this week's workshop we were asked to create a brochure for a holiday destination. The program we were to use was Microsoft Office Publisher and the content was to be a combination of our creative input and items from the internet by means of photos and information.
I am familiar with this program, having made brochures before; the program has many options for personalizing the presentation of information and I could imagine would be a teriffic way of encouraging students to navigate software and websites in a creative way.
In previous studies, i had a task that required me to create a 'Wellness' brochure for families of young children, a task that required a lot of professional research. Greg's assignment for us was of course the holiday destination brochure, a task that is more reflective of past experiences or interest directed. In a primary classroom the brochure activity can be integrated into a vast array of learning topics to suport many valued skills in primary education, including liteeracy, ICT, research skills, creativity and intrapersonal learning etc.

This week Greg introduced us to e-portfolios, what will count as our major assessment and what will no doubt be a large part of our primary classroom for assessment and reflection on individual student progress and achievement. An e-portfolio features multiple examples of students work in a student-centered digitalised collection of information both teacher and student governed that can act as a guide for future planning and a reflection for past skills and knowldege.

As a teacher-in-training i am well aware of the professional development journey i have embarked upon. Embedded in this journey will be the acquisition of ICT skills as described in this week's class as the following stages; Entry, where instruction is explicitly compreheded; Adoption, the mentoring stage of learning; Adaptation, tranferring knowledge; Appropriation, which involves peer to peer collaboration and Innovation, the final stage where skills are efined and 'coached' in interpersonal learning.

Ready...deep breath.....let's go!

Brochure

Week 1 reflection

I've never been an overly tech-savvy person. I tend to just play around with programs and applications until I figure them out in a hands-on approach to learning. The first workshop was very hands-on, navigating our way around the Inspiration program and creating our own blog page. These processes encouraged us to express thoughts and ideas in a creative way, incorporating broader ICT applications and processes such as retrieving information and pictures etc from other ICT sources and combining them in our own virtual concept map.

Notions of ICT have positive aspirations for the primary classroom. We are living in a technological era where ICT skills are prominent across many everyday circumstances. Social networking sites, email, internet banking, research, even looking up maps opposed to using the good old melways, are all examples of the technology we rely on regularly. In our objective as primary school teachers, to prepare students with knowledge and skills useful and important for their futures in global society, it is important we support children’s comprehension of information and communication technologies as they have become practical life skills.

Programs such as blogs can support children in the accessibility of information within a stimulating discourse in regards to a particular subject or issue. Creating blogs gives students the opportunity to be abstract in their thinking and creativity and can incorporate sound and music extend this opportunity. Blogs can be accessible to teachers, students and families; a relative issue about the student personally and/or academically can be monitored by all parties supporting their individual developmental journey.

ICT is an engaging, exploratory and useful tool for the learning student. It can be fun and creative and open up almost unlimited possibilities and information. I want to support skills useful in ICT for my students by devising a pedagogy which incorporates ICT across the curriculum in an enjoyable and functional way.

Inspiration play-around