ICT resources – Turtle Diary =)

Hi all,

One of my tasks this week is to utilise ICT within our warm ups, I am currently undertaking professional experience in a combined year 3, 4 and 5 classroom.  Tomorrow morning while my 5’s are out at a specialist lesson my 3/4’s and I will do an interactive game with an explicit mathematics focus on geometry and transformation (to improve spatial reasoning =).

I stumbled across this great website called turtle diary which had an ABUNDANCE of free games!  You are invited to subscribe and it is FREE!  These games have been created by educators all around the world and cover a multitude of topics and content areas.

This is certainly something I will keep in my repertoire of resources!

These activities could be used as warm ups, fast finishers activities or revision they provide differentiation by being levelled and targeted at a variety of age groups that can be selected upon entry to the site.

You can find the games by clicking here.

I sincerely hope all my fellow professionals are having a fantastic learning experience in their classroom.  I have to say, I have never been this calm or at ease in a classroom setting at any point during my time as a pre-service teacher. I have been tremendously lucky over the course of my degree to have mentor teachers who I admire and respect.  The mentors I have had during this experience have been no exception and I am incredibly grateful for their guidance, support and wealth of knowledge they have willingly and so openly shared with me.

I hope you are all feeling successful in your planning and execution of lessons =)

M

21 Things Every 21st Century Teacher Should Do This Year

Hi All,

I saw this post in my feed from Alisia, and I have to say this is really inspiring, a very comprehensive list of achievable goals every 21st century teacher (and emerging teachers) can do to enhance their practice and utilise the ever growing and evolving landscape for education.

I love the variety of ideas that are offered to make a classroom interactive. (My personal favourite being the production of a lipdub video! =P)

Pedagogically speaking, allowing your students to be the navigators of their education demonstrates your trust in their interest and regulation (with supervision of course!) I am a firm believer in adapting your pedagogy to suit the environment/group that you are with and this list gives a comprehensive guide on ways you can do just that =)

Thanks Alisia!

View her original post for full credit =)

M

ICTs in Education

An interesting infographic to have a think about as you begin your weekend! Would you do these things in your classroom? Is there anything new that you haven’t heard of. IFTTT recipes are new to me, and seem a little confusing but really helpful once you worked all of the channels and processes out. List.ly is new to me as well, but I found some really interesting resources (like this one: Best Free Education Web Tool 2013 – Edublog Awards) when I searched for lists of specific topics.

The original list, with explanations and ideas, can be found here: 21 Things Every 21st Century Teacher Should Do This Year

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Study Jams! STEM Subjects made easier

Hi all,

During this professional experience placement I have been fortunate to have two mentors supervising my practice, during my observation week I have been paying extremely close attention to the different resources they use (both print and media) to assist in their daily teaching practices.  One of my mentors is very adept at the STEM subjects- which is littered with concepts that terrify me into hyperventilation.

During one of his explicit lessons he loaded videos and animated simplified how to guides for fractions from a scholastic website called Study Jams.  These study jams cover a plethora of mathematic and scientific concepts suitable for a significant variance of ages.  What I found particularly helpful about these videos were not only did they allow for segmented step-by-step approaches to understanding the concept, they utilised subject specific metalanguage while providing simplified versions for the students.

I must admit after hearing my mentor discuss Study Jams and seeing them used in action I did spend a significant portion of my evening spooling through and boning up on concepts that had plagued me as a child.

The greatest part about study jam?  THEY ARE FREE!  You can sign up and register but you must be affiliated with a school body (as we are currently pre-service teachers, this poses slllllight problems).

So, my fellow EDC3100’ers if you are caught out teaching science or mathematics concepts please I implore you, check out scholastic study jams for science and mathematics.

You can find study jams by clicking here. 

Happy jamming

M

ICT games- Literacy and Numeracy

Hi All!

I hope your first official week of professional experience has treated you nicely and you are finding your feet in whatever education context you are in!  I was given my first official ICT task for my professional experience placement.  My context is a combined 3/4/5 class, I was asked to provide an interactive phonics based activity that would appeal to my threes and lower level year fours.  After my googling, I found a website called ICTgames.com.  ICT games.com provides the user with the opportunity to investigate a list of interactive numeracy or literacy based games targeted to a range of year levels and topics.

What I found to be particularly helpful was that these games are available in multiple formats including PC, IWB, iphone, Ipod touch and Ipad.  As a vast majority of schools have Ipad access, the list of games in ICT games.com may be worth while investigating if you need an activity that is quick, educational, interactive and child friendly!

To view the suggestions of ICT based games for numeracy click here.

To view the suggestions of ICT based games for literacy click here.

There is no denying that as pre-service teachers and emerging educators the range of tasks we have to achieve increases daily. With great power comes great responsibility!  Having a repertoire of available interactive resources allows you to bring engagement, entertainment and enrichment into your learning sequences.

I hope that ICT games.com provides some of my fellow EDC3100’ers with something fun to do in their classroom!

Happy Second week!

M

App happy!

Hi all,

Frenzied blogging today, too many things to look at!

I had never really be big on the app happy craze.

1. Never owned an Ipad (which is becoming more and more obvious that I should get!)

2. Was always mindful of the fact that teachers do not have 9930930 hours to test a variety of applications for something suitable, cost effective, user-friendly and is meaningful  to context.

3. I have always been cynical (too much so) in thinking ‘what if Timmy’s app needs updating, what if Sarah can’t log on, what if Michael accidentally deletes everything.

So I found some pins that help to alleviate some of those potential problems, I found two particular pins that I wish to share with you all.

The first, gives a list of free available applications and their suitability for students ranging from early years, primary, middle and teacher only.  This Pin can be found here.

The second pin, provides applications that are suitable for particular tasks (with particular software platforms).  The applications include suggestions for animation, sound/audio, graphic organisers and heaps more.  This pin can be found here. 

Investigating these applications provide opportunities for us as teachers to ensure we are using the right applications for the right purposes for students that are developmentally ready to engage with them.

Thank you to those people who do all the heavy lifting, testing and reviewing so that we can share and make sure our time is spent being efficient for our future students.

Get app happy!

M

Uzinggo- For maths and science

Hi all,

Daily pinteresting landed me on a blog of a parent in the United States who homeschools her gifted son, she talks about using a subscription interactive program called Uzinggo to teach maths and science.  I opted to check out Uzinggo (firstly, how would I even pronounce that, peaked interest number 1 and peaked interest number two was how it works).

The site offers a range of subscriptions to their maths and science lessons (similar to mathletics) across middle and secondary schooling. The starting rate is approximately $10 per month (US) for a magnitude of concepts, skills and strategies for mathematics and science content strands (including chemistry, biology, physics as well as algebra and complex geometry).

What caught my eye particularly, is the interactive element that this program provides, as well as offering the ability to progress through your learning at an individualised pace.

In regards to the scientific content strands, there is a familiar pedagogical framework that lingers- the 5E’s.  Students working through the science modules engage in interactive scientific inquiry methods to facilitate their learning.

The site offers a free 14 day trial, so if anyone is interested you can find the trial link here.

Alternatively, if you wish to have a paid subscription you can find out more information here.

And lastly, it wouldn’t be a genuine ‘M’ post if I didn’t have a link to the pin that started it all, which you can find here.

M

Reblogging Maria’s web-seminars!

Good morning all,

Maria is at it again!  Providing her fellow EDC3100er’s with an opportunity to register and engage in free online web-seminars highlighting uses and applications available through google to use and integrate into your daily teaching practices.

I am a big lover of professional developments and I try and do as many as I can (especially in areas where I know I lack confidence or requisite knowledge).  As lifelong learners and future educators it is important for us to remain intune with the changes in our professional landscape and ensure we are equipped to meet those challenges.

Thank you Maria for providing us all with yet another opportunity to increase our technological arsenal (especially so close to everyone’s upcoming professional experience!)

I share Maria’s original post today in the hope that anyone wishing to familiarise themselves with google applications attends!

You can view Maria’s original post here.

Thank you Maria!

M

Abc Splash digi-books- Teaching resource.

Hi all,

I have been looking into resources for an upcoming unit plan design and stumbled across free resources available through ABC splash that I thought I would share.

Particularly, what I caught my eye were the ‘digibooks’ a collection of short films about various educational topics, the digibooks are categorised into primary and secondary levels (ensuring students are accessing developmentally appropriate stimulus) and cover a significant portion of the KLA’s, including history, geography, science, arts and literacy.

Having just been on professional experience, the students in my class were completing an  integrated studies unit on english and history completing a historical/personal recount comparing and contrasting their contemporary lives with the lives of a child in colonial Australia.  My supervising teacher had invested in a great ABC resource called ‘My place’ which has Australian actors re-enacting colonial lives for adults and children during Australia’s settlement period.   I personally thought this resource was outstanding and leveled very appropriately to children in year 4 and 5.

Reflecting on my professional experience, teaching the historical implications for colonialism for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians could have really been demonstrated deeper using the collection of digibooks available through ABC.

This use of digibooks will be definitely something that I continue to investigate and continue to recommend.

To access the digibooks click here. 

Happy digibooks!

M

Take the lollipop… I dare you!

Hello all!

Following through with the digital citizenship and cybersafety thread I opted to do the ‘Take this lollipop’ activity, and if you haven’t done it already…. here is the link you need to click.

Participating in the take this lollipop activity really does give you a sense of urgency and discomfort at the thought of your personally shared information being manipulated or accessed by someone you don’t know or wouldn’t want to know.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, here is a little synopsis about the rationale behind the take this lollipop you can find more information here. 

It has become almost second nature for us (don’t lie and say you’ve never done this) to google someone that you haven’t met, are about to meet or in a job capacity.  It is notable for us as pre-service teachers to be reminded and aware that that second nature instinct we ourselves have dabbled in, and that is the reality that a potential employer may make a the decision about our employability based off our facebook profile, the way we pose in pictures, the rant we had about someone or something.

I have taken the digital citizenship avenue very seriously, and googled myself, to find not a great deal of information or pictures but enough to make me feel mildly uncomfortable and fumble with my settings on numerous social networking and subscribed sites.

For us to teacher ethical behaviour and cyber safety we need to model it by being protective of our information and mindful of our digital identity.

Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

 

M 

Murphy’s Law

Hi all,
As professional experience looms and fear becomes a mainstay of your professional toolkit I am reminded of a blog post I saw earlier from Cammac77, reminding us of the fickle friend that technology can be and prompting us to ensure not only that we are prepared in our planning, but that we plan for the possibility (or in some cases assuredly) that our technology plans may go awry. For those of you who err on the side of caution (like I do by nature) it would seem good practice and good sense to ensure you provide yourself with the best of organisation and planning for best and worst case scenarios.

In our expectations on technology sometimes we can get complacent, and have an unrealistic expectation that it ‘should’ work. Without giving yourself oodles upon oodles of extra work as a precaution- Cam suggests just testing all your videos, presentations and technology staples.

Best of luck to all those preparing busily for professional experience in October, I wish you all the best.

And thank you to Cam for his pragmatism in reminding us to be cautious about our planning and that even the best laid plans can go awry!

All of you who wish to check out Cam’s original post he includes a great website for just in case!

Thanks for stopping by

M

cammac77

Hi Bloggees

As they say ‘Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong’. It is my experience that when using technology in the classroom more often than not something will go wrong. IT is unreliable; be it due to poor infrastructure, virus’, out dated equipment or just a flat battery. My suggestion to all planning on using IT in the classroom would firstly be to test everything before you start. Secondly, always have a backup plan. You don’t want to be stuck with nothing alternatively planned when the Internet goes down or there is a blackout.

Here is a link to some useful ideas you can used when the technology doesn’t work. Click here.

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