Two weeks into my EPL and I am starting to see new and interesting ways that I could incorporate ICT's into lessons to increase their value and students engagement in lessons. I have to admit as a learner, I myself need to see things put into context, I guess I am a very visual or hands on (active) learner. Simply reading about different ICT's and trying them out for myself, while I could begin to see their worth, I needed to be in the classroom, I needed to immerse myself in the education system to truly see the links where these technologies could really be incorporated for the best possible student outcomes.
I spent the first two weeks basically like a sponge, for lack of a better analogy, I soaked up every bit of information I could, observed every lesson I was able to, from a variety of different subjects, grades and teaching styles. I observed the teachers different teaching methods, while watching the students to determine the effectiveness. I observed different methods of gaining the students interest and tools used to keep students engaged in a lesson.
In the classroom I quite often found that a tool regularly used to engage students was the usage of ICT's. From my observatory role the evidence of the effectiveness of these tools in the classroom was often quite obvious. In later blogs I will discuss the usage of ICT's that I have observed in the classroom, as well as some technologies that I have not observed, but where I think they could be implemented with positive outcomes for students.
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Hi Emma,
ReplyDeleteWhat are you actually seeing. My experience has been that secondary students have less engagement with hands on ICTs in the classroom than primary. Are students accessing ICTs to support their learning independently of the teacher or is the engaement around provding a variety of ways of presenting by the teacher?
David
Usually I have found that the engagement is mainly based around providing a variety of different ways of presenting information to the students to provide for different learning styles. However, I have observed students doing independent research on the library computers, in order to design, carry out and write up an experiment of their choosing (more on EEI's in another blog). Interactive whiteboards have also recently been added to the science rooms, while I have not observed students using these for independent learning the potential of this technology is mind blowing.
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