Post - the Eleventh!

Comparing Two Articles
Smeets (2002) Does ICT Contribute to Powerful learning environments in Primary Education and Robertson The Ambiguous Embrace: Twenty Years of ICT in UK Primary Schools

Smeets, at the outset of his article, establishes the criteria needed for an effective learning environment. He suggests that a successful learning environment is one that is extremely open ended and not one that consists of a teacher handing out numerous facts to passive children. He also suggests that the environment needs o be meaningful in the outside world, it needs to encourage active and independent learning, co-operative learning and the curriculum needs to be adapted to fulfil individual needs. He argues that ICT can contribute to this ideal learning environment in a number of ways.
Ict makes complex ideas or processes easier to understand
It provides access to a wealth of information
It provides opportunities for co-operative learning
It can be differentiated to support all needs within the classroom

Smeets conducted a study to find out the main features of the most successful learning environments, how ICT contributes to these and what factors influence the use of ICT.

The study found that the teachers in the highest grade of primary education set authentic tasks and gave pupils autonomy in their learning. He found however that the adaptation to individual needs to be quite lacking. Teachers in this highest grade were found to value the use ICT to support independent pupil learning and to differentiate the curriculum. ICT in practice however, was mainly found to be skill based rather than using open-ended ICT programmes to encourage pupils’ information processing skills. There was little evidence to show ICT being used to support co-operative learning or to link pupils with the ‘real world’. He concluded therefore that teachers were not taking advantage of the ways ICT can support to learning environments. What is interesting about the article is that teachers who were male and more confident in their own ICT skills tended to use more open ended applications. It was also the lack of computers which affected the use of these applications.

Robertson also touches on this issue of ICT not being used or taught effectively within schools in the United Kingdom. He gives a history of ICT’s implementation and the issues surrounding it. He suggests that ICT had the potential in schools to encourage learner autonomy because of its interactivity although this was not exploited during the early introduction of computers in schools. He sets out principles that were put in place in order to improve ICT within schools including areas such as improvements in initial teacher education, clear guidance on curricular positioning, technical support and staff development. He however suggests that despite these aims, ICT has adopted all of the principles and as a result ICT was not embedded successfully in the learning environment. Like Smeets, he suggests that lack of training and subject knowledge is partly to blame on the teachers’ parts. Also, the lack of resources has also contributed to this inability to integrate ICT fully. He suggests finally in the article that despite much research into means of making ICT more embedded in learning environments, reports at the end of the 20th century have noted that these suggestions are not being taken on board.

What these articles have highlighted is the fact that ICT’s potential within the classroom to create a more powerful learning environment is not being fully realised within classrooms. ICT within the classroom needs to go a lot further than just skills based education. In an evolving world where ICT is everywhere children are sometimes a lot more efficient in its use then we are as teachers. As ICT is such an important part of their world, it seems all the more relevant to provide opportunities within the classroom to use it. Smeets suggested in his article that a powerful learning environment is steeped in the context of children’s world and ICT is ultimately part of this. In terms of supporting individual needs, ICT is often more widely available to support pupils with SEN rather than for everyone in the class and its potential to aid autonomous learning as argued by both Smeets and Robertson needs to be available for all pupils.

An enquiry based approach to ICt can also help in allowing children to access a wealth of information which again can help in independent learning as children can find out aspects of topics that interest them. Applications that support idea organisation like mindmaps can also aid children’s independence as they are quickly able to organise their thoughts and ideas.

Perhaps the most troubling point that both articles raise is the restrictions on the use of ICT in the learning environment because of teachers’ lack of subject knowledge. This, however, may become less of an issue as much initial teacher training incorporates a wide variety of uses and ideas for ICT implementation. As these teachers begin their careers, their influence with start to be hopefully more recognizable within schools and they will also be able to support their peers.

ICT can be used to a great extent in creating a rich learning environment because it can offer autonomy, opportunities for co-operative learning, links to the ‘real world’ and can support the individual pupil. These are all aspects that most classrooms will inspire to incorporate anyway and ICT can really help to achieve this.

Post - the Tenth!

The Use of Digital Cameras in Science

I have now decided that the digital camera is a God send to the classroom. In particular I have found it particularly useful in teaching science.

We carried out an experiment to see which materials will keep an ice cube cold for the longest. To do this we had to wrap ice cubes in various materials and then look at them every 15 minutes to see how much smaller the ice cubes get. But how to get thirty year four children to measure and observe the ice cubes properly? I therefore decided to take photos of each experiment at different stages in order for them to be able to look back over the experiment and write up their observations from a visual source. It also meant that during the experiment the pupils had to do no writing! Always a happy result for a class full of eight and nine year olds!

Because the class were in groups each investigating a different material, it also meant that I could display the photos onto the interactive white board so that all the class could compare and contrast the different materials.

I have to say though that it would have been nice to allow the pupils to take their own photographs. However, with one camera per class this is not very practical so it was quicker and more feasable to do it myself.

I have also used the filming function on the camera to support the less able writers. The science assessment task was to design a fair test for an experiment involving thermal insulators. Rather than getting the less able writers to record their ideas by writing I interviewed them to assess their ideas. This was really motivating for them and they really showed some good scientific knowledge that they would have otherwise been unable to communicate.

Post - the ninth

Pupil run Computer Club

At my first placement school there is a pupil led computer club. This was an idea that a year five pupil had and he wanted to teach the year threes about various applications and features of Windows. He wanted to help the year threes perform better in class. The computer club was given the go ahead by senior managemnt at the school and then the running of it was given over solely to the year fives. The pupils sent round sign up sheets to the year three classrooms and a maximum of thirty were allowed to sign up.



The session I managed to catch the end of was the session on letter writing using Word. The pupils seemed really focussed and I was impressed by the level of expertise from the club leaders. The sessions are set up much like a typical lesson with an intro, an activity and then a plenary at the end. (Not to mention the behaviour policy being carried out throughout the session using the teacher's pens of course!) The pupils had even prepared a simple powerpoint presentation to help with teir introduction.



I was extremely impressed by the computer club. The concept of peer mentoring is one that is held in high regard and this club solely run by the year fives to teach the year threes is a fantastic example of the power of pupil led clubs. The year threes who attend are extremely enthusiastic about their tasks and all seem to think that their ICT skills have improved. It is great to see ICT being implemented so strongly in a school. After all, children are often more competent on computers than some adults so why not let the experts do the teaching?!

Post - The Eighth

Discussion Boards

Using discussion boards is a really good way of reflecting and commenting on other people's opinions and ideas. We used a discussion board to comment on an activity where we had to comment on graphs.

Using a discussion board in this way allowed us to not only post our own findings but also look at other people's findings. This was a great tool in cooperative learning as we were able to see which aspects we may have missed off our own graphs.

Discussion boards can also be used in this way in the classroom. They would allow children to post their own views and comment on other people's. Group work is a very important strategy used in the classroom today and perhaps these discussion boards create a different opportunity for group discussion. Perhaps these would be more effective with shyer children.

However; in using the discussion board I am sceptical about how much they can be used. I think verbal discussion is far more effective and instantaneous as you don't have to wait for someone to make a post. They are perhaps therefore more relevant when used in a social context like Facebook than in the classroom environment.

Post - the seventh

Uses of Databases and ways in which you might use them to help children learn in any subject at school

Databases are a good way of evaluating and storing information for various purposes. Businesses will often use databases to store a wide variety of information such as contact details, bank details etc. They are useful in that they allow users to ask questions of them for example, how many men prefer to eat hamburgers compared to women. The result can then be manipulated and sorted and can also be transferred into graph format. They are very quick to search, they are easy to edit and to add to, they take up little space but can have contain a huge amount of data, they can also be used in relation to other programmes, for example word to create mail merges and they can be more secure than paper files. In the ICT lesson we saw how they can be used with history and gravestones. I would suggest that they can be useful in other subjects. They could be used by children for geography. This could involve putting details of various countries in the database and then could be searched for the country with the highest population for example. Perhaps they could also be useful in maths in data handling and interpreting as well as spreadsheets. In Science they could set up databases for the properties of plants or butterflies. I would suggest that databases are very versatile and can be used by children in lots of subjects

Other activities using ICT which you could use to make History more relevant to children.

To make History more relevant for children using ICT you could:-
· use websites to take virtual tours of museums
· Use CD-ROMs like Encarta to allow children to research
· Inspiration – to create mind maps or diagrams for certain topics. This is a way that pupils can display their own thought patterns and processes from bits of evidence for example
· Blogs and Wikis could be interesting ways in which children can record their thoughts about topics.

Post - The Sixth

Using Inspiration

I have decided during this post to evaluate the programme Inspiration and discuss its advantages for children in the classroom environment.

Inspiration is a piece of software that allows people to organise their ideas and thoughts in various diagrams. These include concept maps, idea maps, webs and storyboards. The programme also allows users to organise their ideas with pictures and symbols. The programme is also extremely straight forward to use which enables pupils to create effective diagrams in a minimal amount of time.

The programme is also useful in that it allows the diagrams to be exported and saved in various formats. This allows diagrams to be incorporated into other programmes such as word, power-point and even dropped into a web page, as I have done above. This would therefore seem to be an advantage of the programme above pen and paper as the diagrams are easily transferable.

For children this software has various uses. I would argue that children love using the computer so will put a lot of time and effort into making the concept webs so they would be better than if they did their maps on paper because of the novelty. The concept maps are also far more easy to edit if they are on the computer and editing is an important skill for children to master as they need to be able to realise that making mistakes is OK. The process is also extremely visual and this can help meet important learning needs.

Although this idea can be very very useful for children to map out their ideas in an effective, visual way. Also this programme may be faster for children to map down ideas, for me, I would rather use a pen and paper for my planning. I would argue that for some people then the software will never be as effective as a pen and paper, but I think children will really benefit from using this programme.

Post - The fifth

Using Spreadsheets to solve mathematical problems

When faced with a lengthy wordy problem for example what lengths of fencing should Mr Mcgreggor use to gain the maximum area for his vegetable patch with 15 m of fencing, a traditional pen and paper method would involve children undertaking a vast amount of calculations in order to solve it. They would have to calculate all the various combinations individually using number bonds to fifteen.

A Spreadsheet such as Excel allows a pupils to put in formulas and copy them and therefore the programme works out all of the calculations. Some people would suggest that this makes pupils lazy and gets them out of doing sums. However; I would argue that the pupils still need to know what cells and what sums to use in order to make the formula correct. In this way they are still going through the process of doing the sums but the computer is working out the answer. I would suggest that in using a spreadsheet the pupils become much more aware of the process involved to get an answer rather that fixating on just getting the right answer.

They can use a spreadsheet to solve calculations quickly and effectively and allows them to solve problems and reach conclusions more quickly than if they had to use traditional methods. This then allows them to come to a generalisable solution (introducing basic algebra) and they can then adapt their worksheet to solve similar problems.