Teaching with Technology

Got back from my interview today to find out that I’d actually landed the job as Deputy Head!   So excited!  The opportunity to develop the ICT in this school is phenomenal.   My whole ‘pitch’ was from the heart about how I felt that ICT could revolutionise the classroom experience and the Governors and the headteacher totally agreed, they want the whole of year 5 and 6 to have ultra-mobile Samsung Q1’s.  I can’t believe how forward thinking they are and what an amazing chance this will be.  

Excited is not the word!   Come on the future!

Just wanted to put down a note about how were using Senteo in the classroom.   Simplest way to describe it is think who wants to be a millionaire ask the audience.   Each child has a key pad that they can use to answer questions in Smartboard software.   It gives you really clear assessment of areas of weakness for the chgildren and I’ve found it really useful whilst revision for the SATs.

Each child has their own logon so you get really specific information as well as a class overview.   The software also lets you ask ‘instant’ opinion questions which can be useful.

We’ve used it for :

• Assessement of specific Numeracy skills eg multiplication methods
• Science revision
• Listening assessments in Spanish

Really we’ve just touched the tip of the iceburg and next year things should really take off.

Found on the Animoto website that you can get free access to full length movies if you send them an e-mail and keep them updated.   I just got the code to let 140 children use it.

Seems worth it!

Came across this site on another blog.   Feedjournal is a way of printing off rss feeds into a newspaper format.   I thought that this could be a really cool way of creating a newspaper from a shared class blog.   All the students write on the blog and then just set up the feed.  I think it looks really cool and pretty simple to use.   Saves as a pdf and then use issuu to publish like the one below.

Made this one thanks to Murcha

Just a quick post.   We’ve been experimenting in school with the use of the smartnotebook recorder.   It’s really quick and easy to use and if you connect a microphone then it’s the simplest way that I know of creating and avi.   If you then want it as flash etc then use Flash video MX (free) to convert it.

This seems to have worked pretty well for us – but if anyone knows a simpler way….

Been trying this week to get my head round Twitter and how it can be useful to school and my own professional life.   It all seems to be a bit random at the moment I think that Twittergroups might be the answer as it seems to let you organise things a bit more simply, but need to investigate it a little more fully.

Came across this great site on another blog www.animoto.com

Started to put together a Voicethread project looking at how the children feel about moving on to their next school.