ICT: We all know that we should be using different forms of information technology to enhance our students learning experiences. In my 11 years of teaching experience, I’ve had the great fortune of being able to experiment with different methods and I’d like to share my findings with you.
This is a re-blog post originally posted by Richard James Rogers and published with kind permission.
The original post can be found here.
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One thing is certain: ICT definitely enhances learning, when it is used and planned properly!
I’m going to split the methodologies into four streams for the sake of clarity: Instructional ICT, Supportive ICT, Exploratory ICT and Collaborative ICT. If all four of these streams are used in unison with each other, then teachers will find that their workload reduces dramatically, their students progress rapidly and parents are kept happy and informed. Now what could be better than that?
Safety First
Make sure your students are safe online. Educate them about the SMART acronym. See this extract from my book below:
Instructional ICT
Interactive Presentations
MS PowerPoint has been around for more than two decades. My lecturers were using it in university, and I even created PowerPoints as a student when I was in high school. Now I’m 33 years old, and some schools are still content with the notion that using a PowerPoint can count as ‘using ICT to enhance learning’.
I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t cut the mustard these days.
Try using presentations that get the students actively engaged. Do your students come up to the whiteboard to move objects around, match words to descriptionsor interact with simulations? Do you use your PPT or other presentation as a prompt for getting students out of their seats, such as by making them stand on either sides of the room for True/False answers, or asking them to form a human graph?
Tablets, Smartphones and Laptops
Portable technology has revolutionized every area of teaching. When embraced and utilised properly, mobile devices can assist in the the delivery, assessment, record keeping and discovery of content, as well as building up key skills such as communication and collaboration.
I wrote about this exhaustively in my book, which I would recommend for any teacher who wants to brush up their classroom management skills through the use of ICT. For the sake of conciseness, I shall summarise the main themes here.
Don’t be camera shy
Camera’s on smartphones, tablets and laptops can be used for variety of purposes. Try the following:
- Taking photos and videos of experiments, projects and fieldwork to put in reports
- Setting up a QR code treasure hunt where the students have to hunt for ‘clues’ and information around the school campus (great fun). Students can even compete in teams for this task, and collate the information together in a unique way, such as a flow chart, at the end of the lesson. See below:
- You can also use smartphone, tablet, laptop and standalone cameras with students to create videos (which can be shared online), podcasts, radio shows, stop-motion animations and even instructional lectures, such as a model-building demo. I’ll write about this in more detail in next week’s blog post, in which we’ll focus on Exploratory and Collaborative ICT.
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