Category Archives: Uncategorized

What to do when technology fails

Sherridan wrote a little while ago what ideas we have if technology fails, or takes a while to get going. This has happened to me a few times on my prac now, luckily my Mentor teacher warned me that it was a frequent occurrence and to make sure I have a back up plan. I should let you know now that I am in a grade 3/4 class, so the students have a bit more patience when things don’t go to plan. Most of my lessons use the IWB, but I have made them so that I can write up most of the material on the white board (like they use to do before technology took hold in the class rooms). I also try to print up the pictures I’m going to use so that I can still demonstrate what I need to with those pictures. Granted my lessons aren’t as good when I have to do it this way, as most of the activities I make using the IWB are interactive for the kids. I still try and get their involvement by getting them to come to the front of the class and putting tokens in cups (each cup represents a different answer or concept) then I or we count them to see what the majority of the class think is right. Obviously this wouldn’t work for all activities, but it still gets the students involved in the exercise, and keeps them engaged. During Maths I have competitions with the students, I break them into groups and put a question on the board, at the moment they are doing area. I choose one person from each team and get them to answer the question on the board, the first to answer rings the bell at the front.

As for small fill in activities I do hang man; 20 questions – think of an item, students have 20 questions to guess what the item is; Memory – have 10 + sheets (depending on the age group) with pictures of different things on them, give students 30-60secs to memorise items, take sheets down, then put all but one back up and students have to guess which one is missing.

I have heaps of others, but need to get back to planning lessons. I hope everyone is enjoying their prac.

Connect.ed a lesson in cyber safety

I’ve just finished going through the connect.ed activities on the cybersmart website. One thing that surprised me was how much I did actually know about the terminology that was used in the ‘cyber world’. Another thing that I was surprised about was the fact that there is a difference between what is considered to be cyber bullying and cyber aggression. The main thing that was considered to be the difference was how the recipient of the harassment reacts; if they are intimidated or overly upset than it is considered to be bullying, however if they are not that upset then it is just aggression. I don’t think this is a good way to look at it. I think both issues need to be addressed with the same importance, because I believe Cyber Aggression will lead to Cyber Bullying.

I agree with Wendy’s post about feeling uneasy playing the part of Billy in the simulation, I really think it was a great way to demonstrate how easy it is for Cyber bullying to start, even if it is among so called ‘friends’. I think because kids aren’t able to see the reaction of the person they are making fun of online, they may not realise how upset they are making them. Although the ‘experts’ suggest letting them know, I think this would only work with your ‘true’ friends and would be better to talk about in person rather than discussed on an open forum like facebook.

Overall I found the site very insightful, and I will be referring back to it in the future. 

 

Teacher Tube

I found this site, while looking at Jackie’s blog and thought I’d share it again, because I found it very useful. As Jackie explains, TeacherTube is basically like Youtube – you can upload videos and look at videos. But this is directed more towards the things that teachers would be interested in. How to teach certain lessons, or using particular technology in the classroom. It is organised so that you can choose the year level you are looking for if your looking for something specific to your year level.

Assignment 2

Wow, I thought assignment one was full on, but assignment two is equally time consuming. Having thrown out all my previous uni assignments from my first attempt at this degree, I have no reference of my own work to look back over for my unit plan. I know there are example unit plans to help us out, but I also know if I had kept my previous work I would have been able to see my thought process as to how I got my unit plan together. Also, having been away from Uni for three years, my memory at creating unit plans is a bit hazy.

Having looked at other people’s blogs, such as Esme‘s, it makes me feel hopeful that I will be able to get there too. I agree Esme, that it is a juggling act to find the time to study for other subjects, not to mention fitting in work, and have some sort of life too. Good luck to everyone.

Pixton – animated comics

While looking through Brendan Luck’s Blog, I noticed he wrote about draw a stickman. I like this type of medium to get children using their creativity to create stories or presentations, and I started looking into other resources which would do the same thing. I was looking through my Edmodo (see this post to find out more) account and came across a resource called Pixton. This is a site that is set up for individuals to make their own comic strips, but there is also an area specifically designed for teachers and students, there is a video on this page which explains the benefits of using Pixton in your classroom . This page gives reasons as to why Pixton is ‘Pedagogically Interesting’.

The only problem I have with this is the amount of time you would have to spend getting students familiar with the way this site works and not spend more time playing with the characters, then on inputting the information that they are meant to be presenting, but that is the same with any new resource, I suppose, and once they knew what they were doing it would work faster. 

Edmodo

In my search to find resources I stumbled upon a site called Edmodo, unfortunately I had about 12 browsers opened at the same time and can’t trace back how I managed to find to resource, so I am not able to directly credit someone, so if you have already posted about edmodo let me know, because I probably found it from you and I will credit you properly if you let me know. 

This is a short video that briefly explains how teachers and students can use Edmodo, it is a resource that I think is more suited to higher year levels, but I know there are some students doing EDC3100 who are not in a school setting, such as Gerry Ryan, who may possibly also be able to benefit from something like this too.

When I signed up it asked me to choose the areas I was interested in – science, PE, maths, etc. Then, once I’d signed in, it sent me to a home page, which is set up like facebook, and you can see other teachers posts. They may be asking for advice on a topic, or giving links to resources. This was the part that I liked, as it gives you up-to-date information about what other teachers are doing, and you can keep in touch with them in one place. At the moment it looks to be a fairly new site and there aren’t too many people using it just yet, so it will be good to keep an eye on and see how it goes.

 

 

 

Who’s For Dinner?

I was looking on Scootle for some resources for assignment 2 and I came across this an online game called –Who’s For Dinner? I think it would be a good tool to use as part of an introductory lesson on food chains. It starts off introducing the concept of a habitat and then the food chain/web within that habitat with different animals/plants linked together as either predator or prey/food source, and explains how each is linked to another. For example fish eat the tadpoles and the fox eat the fish. Then it goes into the game section where you can choose to be either a tadpole, fish or Heron (bird). Depending on which animal you choose depends on what you have to eat and what you have to try and avoid. The aim of the game is to eat enough food so your animal grows and doesn’t starve, and to avoid being eaten by your predators at the same time. I was looking at this for around the year 4 level, but it could easily be used for other year levels as long as you linked it in to other learning.

Safety on the internet

I’ve been looking through other peoples posts, and I found one written by Helen, about  how to make sure your students/children are using these online resources in a safe way. This to me is a big issue, as teachers we are responsible for what happens in the classroom, but I think we also need to  be able to teach students to use these resources safely when they aren’t in our care. Helen put up this link to a UK website called Thinkuknow. This site covers a range of topics about how to teach students of all ages how to use the internet/phones safely, and shows videos, that can help kids relate to the situations they may face. This is a great resource, Thanks Helen for sharing it.

Week 5 already!

How time flies when your…hmm not sure if having fun is quite how I’d describe the last five weeks, I might just change that to busy! But busy is good, as long as you’re able to manage your time wisely, and at the moment I really haven’t been able to do that. 

I’ve been told by many people over the years to make sure you have a good work to social life ratio, however, they never included study into that equation! 

The one thing that I appreciate about this course is that there are many others in the same boat, who are trying to juggle everything at once. 

While I work 3-4 days a week, (24hrs a day for those days) as a nanny, I am still able to have 3-4 days off to myself. For those of you who are parents, I take my hat off to you, for those of you that are parents and have other jobs on top of that, I don’t know how you do it. However, that fact that you are doing it shows me that it can be done and I can do it too!