This week we were working with the programme ActivInspire. ActivInspire is a tool used by teachers and pupils to enhance a lesson with interaction on interactive whiteboards/laptops. You are able to create numerous flipcharts which each hold as many pages as you want. ActivInspire also includes many features such as: being able to add text and photos, have moveable objects (such as coins) and audio.

Today, we were given the task to get comfortable with how to use the programme and then attempt to create a flipchart with a few pages which can be used to accompany a lesson.

Additionally, our attempt had to be multimodal as multimodality is important in the classroom, as stated by Beauchamp (2012, p.8) “The multimodality of technology is another reason to use it, as it allows teachers to present an idea in a variety of different ways to help pupils understand it.” A text can be described as being multimodal if it combines two or more semiotic systems. There are five semiotic systems: linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial.

Initially, I felt that working with this programme was going to be fairly simple and would not take a lot of time to create a lesson. However, once I started to experiment with the programme I realised that it was going to take more time to get used to working with it, than I expected due to the variety of features that were available. It was also advised that we worked in pairs for this task, personally, I felt that working in pairs was extremely helpful as many of us had not used ActivInspire before. Therefore, we were able to help each other.

My partner and I decided that we were going to create a money lesson through ActivInspire. We started out with a cover page with the title and learning intention. The learning intention was, ‘I will be able to use a variety of coins to create different totals and explain what change is required.’ Then, we included an introduction page which was titled ‘Let’s discuss money…’ and below was the eight different coins which the teacher would be able to use to discuss the order of said coins (1p to £2), how to distinguish the coins by their shape and size as well as discuss the value of the coins and give real life context, such as a shopping trip. This page was a set background choice which we altered slightly to fit our purpose. We then included examples of how to use the coins to make an amount, we included two very different totals, 62p and £3.40. The children were given the task to move the coins needed to make the total, to the opposite side which had a piggy bank (as an example of real-life context as many children have piggy banks). Our last page was an example of how to work backwards and be able to explain what change is required. Therefore, meeting our learning intention.

Our lesson included the semiotic systems: visual, audio and gestural. Visual; as our slide was rather colourful and included images. Additionally, our flipchart theme was blue with yellow writing as, generally, this combination is easiest to read for most people. Audio; with the different money totals we included an audio recording of that amount being said to so that the children would be able to read it off the board as well as hear it if necessary. Gestural; this is probably the most prominent semiotic system in our lesson, as the children are able to press firmly on all of the coins and move them to where they desire.

The use of ICT in the classroom can be extremely helpful when delivering a lesson and bringing it to life. This can be achieved by programmes such as ActivInspire. As further discussed by Beauchamp, “The ability of ICT to present ideas in a variety of ways can help to structure new experiences but only if you as the teacher have sufficient understanding on the area yourself.” (Beauchamp, 2012, p. 100).

I feel that this programme is very useful to help make a lesson more interactive in comparison to using a different programme such as PowerPoint. However, I find that PowerPoint can be easier to use with both having a similar amount of features. Therefore, depending on the lesson you are planning, decides which programme would work best.

In conclusion, I feel that getting experience of using this programme will be useful for me as a developing student teacher as I can use it in the classroom. Initially I felt that this programme would be fairly easy to us, however, it required more practice than I anticipated. I soon discovered that once I got my head around it that I became more efficient and became easier to work with. Therefore, I look forward to using ActivInspire in the future to help enhance the children’s digital technology skills which are becoming increasingly important as, “Digital technology can enrich the learning experience for all of our children and young people.” (Scottish Government, 2016, p. 8).

Practicing with ActivInspire

Starting to create our lesson

Page one

Page two

Page three

Page four

Page five

References

• Beauchamp, G. (2012) ICT in the Primary School: From Pedagogy to Practice.

 

• Scottish Government (2016) Enhancing learning and teaching through
  the use of digital technology, A digital learning and teaching strategy for Scotland.[Online] Available:https://www.gov.scot/binaries/content/documents/govscot/publications/publication/2016/09/enhancing-learning-teaching-through-use-digital-technology/documents/00505855-pdf/00505855-pdf/govscot:document/?inline=true/ [Accessed: 8 January 2019]