Today we began to work on how we can use ebooks and how the influence of ipads in the classroom can be beneficial to aiding their learning. We began by creating our own ebooks which was a summary about the Roald Dahl book “George’s marvelous medicine”. This allowed us to become familiar with the apps and how simple it was to create our own ebooks. This could be used effectively in the classroom as more and more schools are introducing them. It supports all three types of learning as kids can watch videos and hear how to use the app, and then practice using the app for themselves. Also it could potentially be cheaper in the long term as you would not have to buy as many physical copies of the books if they were downloaded onto the ibooks apps and could be used over a number of years. They also have educational apps that could aid young children’s further learning. Education secretary Mike Russell is a big fan of the use of technology in the classroom and even stated “I want to drive forward a culture change in Scottish education and ensure new technologies can be embedded into learning.” I personally feel that technology through the use of ipads could be really beneficial as it would allow for pupils to be more imaginative with their ideas, especially when it comes to the likes of creating their own stories in relation to lessons. It may also allow for them to develop other skills such as communication and working with others as these are important areas in learning.
Month: February 2017
maths for understanding week 13/2/17
Today we finished off the theory part of the module as we continued on to discuss probability and the second part of fractions and decimal numbers. Looking back over the extent of the module it has really made me reflect on mu own education growing up and also how much i take for granted when trying to teach such basic concepts. It has also given me the knowledge that i will require to effectively help teach across the main ways in which i would need to teach these concepts to the pupils.
digital technologies week 20/2/17
Today we continued on developing our animation on internet safety and how important it is to emphasise the importance of being safer online, especially in an age when it is becoming more and more relevant as time goes on. In 2015 the education secretary Nicky Morgan commented that “we must do everything we can to help children stay safe online – at school and at home.” Online Safer awareness day is a huge factor in this as it helps to raise awareness in how we can help pupils to understand the many different forms of harm can appear on the internet and what we must do in order to prevent such harm from affecting their future. Our animation was targeted towards this and under the cfe, TCH (1-008a), this area allows us to develop our own knowledge and safe use of conduct when interacting and sharing experiences, ideologies and information with other individuals on certain platforms. It also allows for us to try help spread the message that being safer on the internet, in a more creative and imaginative way rather than just talking about it out-loud off of a piece of paper for an hour. It will also help to keep the attention of the pupils that you are trying to teach. Seeing what other people had created as well was really refreshing as it allowed me to see how we managed to take the same concept and yet come up with so many different and creative results for the outcomes, as each one had their own personal touch on the matter.
maths for understanding week 8/2/17
Today we began to work on decimal fractions and how we would teach it within a lesson. It allowed me to realise how basic things such as number lines and meter sticks. This is due to the fact that you can divide them up and teach them how each section represents a fraction of something much larger. It also allowed for me to understand how I was taught how to use my basic understanding of multiples and division to first of all understand how much each fraction represented and then convert them to a decimal number, but making sure not to make the mistakes of putting a number in the hundredths column instead of the tenths column.
Digital technologies week 7/2/17
Today we finished off the work from last week and discussed how this could be used effectively in a lesson. It really helped me to understand how i can use this program to allow pupils to develop not only a sense of learning of a particular subject such as maths or English, but also it allows them to develop a basic understanding of coding and the skills that can come with it. For example in TCH-0-09a the outcome is for the pupils to be able to develop a sense of problem solving skills through playing an electronic game. In the second half of the lesson, we began to discuss how we would teach internet safety to pupils in a primary school. This is an area which i feel has become much more important since i left primary school as more and more kids are beginning to activate and create their own social media accounts at a much younger age and being safe online is a crucial aspect for someone that age. We currently live in an age where technology is thriving and being safer on the internet has never been more crucial. As a result we began to research further into how to teach children from a young age how to be safer on the internet and next week, we are beginning to tie in animation with this topic as it is an effective way to help get across these important points.
Digital Technologies week 30/01/2017
Today, we began to work with a new coding program called Scratch. I had some previous experience back in high school when i did my computing higher in sixth year. It was quite amazing to see how much a simple coding program can be used so effectively and so efficiently in a lesson such as maths or literacy. It is also fun and interactive as well as being very user friendly meaning that kids can understand how to use it from a very young age and start to be creative in what they choose to make from it. As i began to plan my own lesson for how a teacher could use it in a lesson for a wide range of ages ( but more specifically the early and first levels.) For example, you can use the character models (in this case animals) to teach the basic concepts of addition and subtraction which in turn can lead to more complex areas such as multiplication and division. Or even in literacy as they can use the characters and storyboards can be used to create their own stories from their imagination. Scratch can definitely be used as a tool in helping to develop the learning process at a younger age in my opinion, especially in a generation which thrives on digital learning. According to Papert , programmig for young children is where the computer’s true power as an educational medium lies — in the ability to facilitate and extend children’s awesome natural ability and drive to construct, hypothesize, explore, experiment, evaluate, draw conclusions — in short to learn — all by themselves.
https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/coded-success-benefits-learning-program (source for papert quote)
