I’m nervous about the first day of term (this coming Monday) because I have been asked to give an INSET session on how I make best use of ICT in my classroom. It all came about from an open evening for the school’s Parent Forum AGM, where several members of staff were approached to show their rooms and resources used in day-to-day lessons. The feedback we received was pretty positive and resulted in a request for us to run an ICT session for the entire staff at the next inset day.
My plan right now is to break the sessions (about 30 minutes each) into the following steps;
show my classroom blog and the different resources I have made available online for pupils – another colleague will also discuss blogs but, having shared our experiences, it is clear that we use them for different things
short focused introduction to the latest tool I have used, screencasting, taking my colleagues through a quick and simple example using the windows software they already have on their classroom pcs and discussing scenarios where this could be used across the curriculum
a look at the video project I produced with my S2 class towards the end of last session, highlighting how open-ended activities such as this could fit into the CfE draft outcomes for Science
I had thought about a short introductory session on Glow, now that we are likely to be switched on in the New Year, but my Glow account has just been activated and looks pretty empty at present.
It might sound daft to be so nervous about talking to colleagues about what I do every day. In principle, I think it is good that the school recognises the need to share good practice. The problem here is that I can’t see there being very much interest in it. Feedback already received from colleagues suggests they don’t want to know about things that would mean spending more time doing school stuff. From my own perspective, I would have preferred to have a willing audience, rather than an audience who are there through compulsion.
Have you found yourself in a similar situation in the past? How did you approach the problem and how was your presentation received?
I had a surprise on the last day of term. I knew it would be hard to have a double period of my vocational electronics class. Soldering can work wonders for focusing the mind and keeping everyone on task but prototyping circuits in reusable breadboards is a different matter. Add a few pupils who have already completed their practical unit and you have the ingredients for a difficult last day before the holidays.
One of the outcomes I had set at the start of the week was for everyone in the class to know how to use a resistor colour code chart to determine the value of a resistor without having to make a measurement. I had pinned a snappy poster on to the classroom wall close to where the resistors are kept and, over the course of the week, I noticed that pupils had become more independent – choosing to refer to the poster instead of asking me to tell them the value of the resistor they had picked from the tray.
At the start of the second period, two boys asked if they could do revision for the NAB they would be sitting after the holidays. Could they also make up some revision questions on a sheet of paper? I was surprised and delighted that they had come up with the idea, these things just don’t happen in this cohort. Their quiz comprised 10 general questions on electronic components and their uses, followed by another 10 questions where the a given colour combination had to be converted into a resistance.
It was easy to ask the first half of the quiz to the class but what about the colour band questions? Well, I loaded up The Gimp for mac (Windows version available here) and created a “blank resistor” template for the boys to modify on the IWB. They quickly drew in the colour bands by hand and saved each as a new page in the Notebook software. Their willingness to produce drawings was unexpected and I captured each one as a gif file to keep for use again. A cartoon I saw yesterday reminded me of Friday’s events and I pulled the images into Keynote and exported the presentation as a Quicktime movie.
Try the quiz yourself. Each resistor appears twice. The first slide shows the bands, the next displays the resistor and it’s value so don’t click through too quickly. You’ll need a colour code chart.
I’m not posting this because of the ICT being used. I’m trying to convey that, when you least expect it, even a bunch of boys treading water until they can apply for apprenticeships can surprise you. Perhaps they thought they were having a “skive” on the last day of term. Whatever their motivation, I saw them take control of their learning, make excellent use of ICT and assess their peer group. All this within two hours of the October fortnight.
