Blog 4 – 29-1-19

Today we have been learning about the importance of coding in today’s society. We have used a coding programme called Scratch Junior to create an interactive story to promote literacy skills. I will explain my interactive story and how it links into curriculum for excellence experience and outcomes. The ability to code computer programs is an important part of today’s society. We now live in a society where huge successful corporations such as Facebook, google and amazon are created and run by the elites in technology. Therefore, by not teaching and giving young people the knowledge and tools to use digital technology and specifically coding we are doing an injustice for the next generation (The Guardian, 2012). When people learn to code, they learn important strategies for solving problems, designing projects, and communicating ideas. Telegraph (2014, P1) states “Students will be expected to create and debug simple programs as well as use technology safely and respectfully”. I think this is important as technology can be abused for the wrong reasons and if children are taught early on about how to use technology safely and respectfully then this can be carried on throughout their lives and careers.

 

My lesson begins with Clive the dog, he introduces himself and asks for help to find his friends. This is to allow the children to interact with the activity and to feel involved. The story is set on a farm and involves various animals. The next three slides take you on a journey throughout the farm finding Clive’s friends and asking various questions. This is a consolidation activity from prior learning, and it allows the child to interact with the activity and to further enhance their literacy skills through reading and answering questions. This activity further enhances their technology skills as they are asked to finish off the story and decide on an ending of their choice. This will allow the child to use their imagination and be creative. This will enhance their technology skills using their coding skills to complete the task.  This activity will be completed in pairs and it will allow children to work collaboratively. Telegraph (2014, P2) states “For the first time children will be learning to programme computers. It will raise standards across the board – and allow our children to complete in the global race”. I feel it was important to allow the children to use the coding activity themselves as it gives the children experience early on in their lives, giving them the best chances of competing in the global race. I have never had any previous experience coding and on reflection of today’s task I feel like I have learnt some valuable knowledge and experience. I thoroughly enjoyed this task and I look forward to teaching children about coding and designing lesson plans for them.

 

The activity I designed today covered two different areas from the curriculum for excellence (please see pictures attached below) This was aimed for early years level and the first area it covered was Literacy – LIT 0-19a “I enjoy exploring events and characters in stories and other texts, sharing my thoughts in different ways” The activity allows children to engage with several different characters and allows them to share their ideas about how the text will end. LIT 0-13a/ LIT 0-21a “I explore sounds, letters and words discovering how they work together, and I can use what I learn to help me as I read and write”. The children will be interacting with this activity by using words to answer the questions and by deciding what best fits for the situation. This will help the children to read and progress through their literacy skills. The second area covered was “Technology” TCH 0-01a “I can explore digital technologies and use what I learn to solve problems and share ideas and thoughts”. This activity encouraged children to work in pairs sharing ideas and thoughts to come up with an ending for the story. On reflection of this activity I can see how useful Scratch Jr can be for future lesson plans. This software can be used to achieve experience and outcomes for curriculum for excellence in a fun and exciting way. I would highly recommend all teachers to become acquainted with this software and to use it as a teaching tool.

 

Therefore, the importance of teaching coding to our students is imperative to give the student the best possible chances of being successful in today’s ever evolving society in Digital Technology. I feel I have gained valuable knowledge and skills from my coding workshop today and I can already see the positives teaching children this. Not only that but it is an extremely fun and interactive way to teach and it can cover more than just one area of the curriculum, in one lesson. I have thoroughly enjoyed interacting with Scratch Jr and can really feel I am starting to get to grips with technologies.

 

 

 

References

 

Curtis, S. (2013) Teaching Our Children to Code: A Quiet Revolution. The Telegraph. [Online] 4 November. Available: https:// www.telegraph.co.uk[Accessed: 29 January 2019].

 

Naughton, J. (2012) Why All Our Kids Should Be Taught How To Code. The Guardian. [Online] 31 March. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/mar/31/why-kids-should-be-taught-code. [Accessed 29 January 2019].

 

 

 

 

 

Blog 3 – 22/01/19

Today we have been learning about multimodality and designing our own flip chat through ActivInspire. A text may be described as multimodal when it combines two or more semiotic systems. There are five systems in total; linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial. We use multimodal presentations as they can be captivating, motivating, interactive, personalised, dynamic, memorable and engaging. Before this class I didn’t have much knowledge about multimodality and I certainly had no practical experience designing an interactive activity to enhance teaching and learning. I did prepare for the class by reading the recommended pre reading “ICT in the primary school”.  Beauchamp (2012) stated “things can now be done quicker from an ever-expanding range of sources and in better quality” I believe this to be true with the ActivInspire software I was using. However, I feel my lack of knowledge using this software proved stressful and frustrating at times as I didn’t feel I was using it to its full potential. This I believe could be a wider spread problem amongst teachers and I feel if teachers had more appropriate training about multimodal software used in their schools then this would ultimately enhance teaching and learning. Multimodal software has the potential to be an excellent tool within the classroom if used correctly. Today’s generation are digitally native and as a digital immigrant I need to change to become a successful educator (Prensky, 2001).

 

This week the curricular area I decided to concentrate on was Numeracy. My experience and outcomes for the curriculum for excellence was 1-03a “I can use addition and subtraction when solving problems, making the best use of the mental strategies and written skills I have developed. After about an hour of tinkering with the software I decided to use the a 15cm ruler image with inches on the opposite side. This image was my main theme running through the flip chart. The idea of this was to allow the children to visually see numbers on the ruler thus helping them to solve the numeracy problems they were asked. There was a mixture of addition and subtraction questions (Please see images attached below) and these were all aimed for first level children. Some of the questions could simply be answered by using mental strategies but the ruler was also a help for some children that needed it.

 

I feel that I struggled with this activity as I didn’t use the tools available in the software to its full potential. Reflecting on this, I should have taken more time and not worried about my younger peers ploughing through ahead of me. Prensky (2001, P1) states “They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age’’. I think this is very true and as a digital immigrant I need to take the time to equant myself with a diverse range of digital technologies. Highlighting these areas for improvements so early on in my teacher training is only a good thing as I can gain more knowledge and understanding if I put the time and effort in.

 

Having had the opportunity to use ActivInspire, I can see it has great potential to enhance teaching and learning. There are various different tools accessible on the software to design creative and interactive activities for children. I believe multimodal activities as a tool can enhance the curriculum for excellence. Scottish Government (2016, P3) states “Digital technologies can make a substantial contribution to this improvement agenda by enriching education across all areas of curriculum for excellence. If used effectively and appropriately, digital technology can enhance learning and teaching”

 

Therefore, the importance of equipping we with the correct knowledge and understanding of multimodal texts I believe is paramount in today’s generation to become a successful teacher. Reflecting on my experiences today with ActivInspire I have learnt a lot and I still have more to learn. Moving forward I will take the necessary time and steps to gain more knowledge in multimodal texts and digital technology as a whole.

 

 

 

References

 

Beauchamp, G. (2012)ICT in the Primary School; From Pedagogy to Practice. Pearson Education Limited.

 

Prensky, M. (2001) Digital Native, Digital Immigrants Part 1. On the Horizon. [Online} Vol. 9(5), Available: https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816[Accessed: 22 January 2019]

 

Scottish Governement (2016) Enhancing Teaching and Learning through the use of Digital Technologies: A Digital Learning and Teaching Strategy for Scotland. [Online] Available: https://beta.-gov.s-cot/publications/enhancing-learning-teaching-through -use-digital-technologies/[accessed:22 January 2019]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blog 2 – 15/1/19

Today we were learning about programmable toys and specifically a toy called ‘Bee Bot’. We were asked to read an article before the class called ‘Robots in early education’, which gave us some useful knowledge about Bee-Bot and the experience some children have had with this toy. For example, “The children had great fun. No-one was reluctant to use the Bee-Bot or had to be persuaded, and most returned for an extra activity” (Lydon, 2008, P.2). On reflection of this activity I noticed most of the class having fun with the activity, which further backs up this statement. I found this article interesting and very helpful as I have absolutely no experience with programmable toys and this gave me some insight and knowledge about them. The aim of today’s class was to design an activity for children using Bee-Bot achieving one or more experience and outcomes for the curriculum for excellence. “The curriculum introduces programmable toys as a good example for developing knowledge and understanding of the contemporary world (Janka, 2008, P.2).

 

It took me a while to decide what activity I was going to design. I had so many ideas in my head, however a lot of these ideas were far too complicated and not directed for the early years or first level children. I decided to choose my experiences and outcomes and then design and fit my activity around that. The experiences and outcomes I decided to choose were, HWB 1-15a. This curricular area is Health and Wellbeing and the experience and outcome is “I am developing my understanding of the human body and can use this knowledge to maintain and improve my wellbeing and health”. I then decided that this would tie in nicely with one of my initial ideas, which was to identify the organs in the body. My plan was to draw the outline of the body and then draw and colour in the organs. I assumed this would be straightforward, however I encounter a couple of problems such as there are two lungs and two kidneys in the body, and I couldn’t squeeze the pair of organs in the one box. This wasn’t a problem I envisioned before starting, it was only when starting to draw I noticed this was an issue. I managed to get around this problem by making sure I asked for the left side of these organs to be acknowledged in the questions. I could have also by passed this issue by only putting one of the organs on the drawing, but I did not want the children to think we only had one of these organs. My second issue was the large and small intestine would take more space up than one box and the small intestine is inside the large. I made the decision to draw half the large and half the small intestine in separate boxes next to each other. Reflecting now I am not sure if I have made the right choice by doing that and I may take a different approach to the drawing of these organs in future. TCH 1-14b was another experience and outcome, which covered this activity. The curricular area is technologies and the experience and outcome covered in this area was “Demonstrates an understanding of the meaning of individual instructions when using a visual programming language”. As part of the activity children need to read a question for example,” which organ pumps blood around the body” once the child decides they know which organ they are looking for they must then locate that organ on the drawing of a human body with Bee-Bot. They need to follow specific instructions to allow Bee-Bot to move from one location to another. I believe this activity would be very beneficial to children and by using Bee-Bot it would further enhance the learning experience for the children. I found this task extremely rewarding for myself and I thoroughly enjoyed designing the activity. I hope going forward I can learn from my mistakes and design better activities covering a variety of outcomes and experiences for the curriculum for excellence.

 

I feel this activity was a success and I can see how beneficial Bee-Bot can be to improving academic and life skills for children. I have taken on board the mistakes i have made designing this activity and I feel next time I can create an even better activity.

 

References 

 

Janka, P. (2008) Using a programmable toy at preschool age: Why and how?

 

ICTopus Article (2008) Sharing good practice: Robots in Early Education by Alison Lydon.

 

Blog 1

I am studying BA Education at UWS, and I have just started term 2. Today I started a new optional module called Digital Technologies (DT). I decided to choose this module as I haven’t much experience with DT and I don’t feel very confident in how to fully utilise the different types of technologies out there. I am hoping that this module will give me the knowledge and tools to successfully and effectively teach children in DT. I believe this module will make me become a better teacher as I will be able to fully engage and teach children within the digital spheres.

 

This course has 4 tasks to complete throughout the 12 week module. Which are; programming toys, coding, movie making and ebooks. I am very excited about these tasks as I have zero experience in any of these areas. I enjoy being out my comfort zone and I will fully embrace the experience. I look forward to interacting with these tasks and taking the knowledge and experience gained into the classroom to teach children one day. We also have a reflective journal to complete every week throughout the module. This is another area of much needed improvement for myself and I look forward to seeing the difference between my reflections from week 12 to week 1 and I would hope for a massive improvement.

 

Scottish Government, (2016) states “Digital Technologies can enhance learning and teaching, equip children and young people with vital digital skills and crucially, it can lead to improved educational outcomes”. I believe I have a lot to learn about Digital Technologies, and the massive benefits it has to enhance our educational outcomes. I look forward to engaging with digital technologies and reflecting throughout the 12 weeks.

 

Scottish Government (2016) Enhancing Teaching and Learning through the use of Digital Technologies: A Digital Learning and Teaching Strategy for Scotland. [Online] Available: https://beta.-gov.scot/publications/enhancing-learning-teaching-through-use-digital-technologies/[Acessed:8 January 2019].