During my first lesson within Digital Technologies I was introduced to a software named Activinspire which enables you to design and create images either on the computer or by using the smart board. I felt this would be excellent for lesson planning because it encourages interactive learning in a fun and interesting way. Also, Activinspire allows you to save pages and so this would allow you to create your lessons in advance and could also keep them as a good revision tool for the children to use. Activinspire has multiple uses; children can write on the smart board, create and drag images and shapes and also insert audio clips and backgrounds. Therefore by making the lesson more interactive I feel this would increase participation within the lesson.

Throughout the lesson we were asked to design a mathematics activity that children within first level could use to learn about shapes. In my group we based our activity on the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” so children still had a sense of familiarity within the subject, despite learning a new topic, whilst encouraging cross curricular learning. Our activity involved having the three bears each holding an individual shape such as a triangle, circle and square and above them were more of these shapes which varied in size and colour. The objective of this activity would be that the children would drag the corresponding shapes to the correct bear. By using Activinspire we were able to use a background of a forrest supplied by the software and insert images of the three bears from google which made the activity more colourful and eye catching. Activinspire also has a library of sound effects which can also be inserted into the activity which I felt made it more interactive and would help to keep the children engaged in the activity.

I definitely feel I would use this tool in the classroom as I feel it would be extremely beneficial to children who are kinaesthetic learners as it provides an alternative method of learning from just written word. Also by having an activity on the smart board this can also encourage the children to build on their communication skills as the activity may be done in pairs and so the children would need to work together to complete the task.