I have just completed a week in a Primary School where I will be doing my first school based training in January. I was very excited to see how ICT is used in the school. I was happy to see large evidence of ICT around the school, in the form of digital cameras, music players, DVDs, IWBs and computers. Personally, the best use of ICT that I saw was the digital pictures of pupils on school trips, pupils' work, and activities. These pictures were on display all around the school combined with examples of art and written work. I think it really brightened up the walls, and could really motivate the children to carry on producing great work and enjoying school life.
There were four computers in each classroom. These were mainly used as rewards and as an activity in 'choice time.' I didn't see any structured ICT teaching at all during the week, although my class teacher mentor told me that there is usually an hour a week of ICT, which is taken by an outside person. I was told that the Year 2s were currently working on word processing, which is obviously an essential skill to learn. However, I was dissappointed that the children had little 'hands on' structured teaching in ICT as there were only four available computers.
The IWB was not used as much as in other schools I have been in, but when it was used, it was used well. It seemed to motivate the children to take part in activities and to answer questions. I would like to use the IWB as a way of sharing my learning objectives and success criteria with the children, which was rarely done in this class.
1 comment:
Useful comments...
... These were mainly used as rewards and as an activity in 'choice time.'...
It is sometimes difficult to work with younger children using computers. But there are lots of things they can do. Taking photos, video, tape recording and editing to create a story... as well as wordprocessing. We will look at some other software which suits KS1 in a week or two.
Post a Comment