As the new term starts again for those of us in England – I thought it would be a good time to start blogging after following the example from Tim Rylands and having a mostly analogue August.
A lot of teachers reading this will be planning and for subject co-ordinators that will also involve looking at how ICT is delivered in their schools and year groups. Thanks to twitter I have had some great ideas that I have been able to implement and have a go at in my classroom. There are boroughs that have also shared their resources online as well.
I find the best value with a lot of these ‘schemes’ is the ability to dip into them, move them around to suit the needs of the individual school/class/year group. Since January we have been looking at two resources that support the planning and delivery of ICT within the classroom.
First is teach-it from do-be, what this resource does is provide is step by step how to use guides for a range of free web 2.0 resources and ideas for cross curricular ideas to bring the curriculum alive in the classroom. Their featured free resource at the moment is Tour-it – which shows how to record a tour in Google Earth and ways that this can be used in the classroom. I know that this may not be for everyone but for those who want to try new technologies it provides a way of working through new technology that they can then use in their own way.
I have shown these to student teachers when covering Geography and they really find it useful as have staff in school when introducing new resources at INSET sessions. These resources are available online as well as in a folder with ideas grouped together in sections such as games based learning.
Secondly is Switched on ICT from Rising Stars this has been in written in collaboration with Terry Freedman, Miles Berry and Tom Barrett – having their expertise working on this scheme is a fantastic reason to take a look at it. The scheme has a lot of fantastic modules that again can be used in ways that suit your school for example, it comes with six activities again with step by step guides and a dvd-rom with resources, laminated cards for the children to use as well as including e safety points and level descriptions. It is based on a mixture of web 2.0 resources as well as ‘old’ favourites such as Publisher and powerpoint. Progression and skills across the year groups is also included.
At the moment Switched on ICT is available for Key stage 2, with Key stage 1 resources being published this Autumn – for me this scheme provides exciting lessons with support underpinning them for those teachers that may not be confident in using new tools. As well as including great ideas for even the most experienced teachers.
As well as commercial schemes – there is also ideas and planning free on line. Ian Addison is fantastic in sharing resources that he creates and his latest is this ict planing website a site that is already filled with some great ideas and will continue to grow throughout the year.
Ian is also responsible for undertenminutes which does what it says – videos explaining how to use educational technology in under ten minutes – a great way to start a staff meeting.
Last but not least is this sight from from the Isle of Man department of Education which looks how to use a range of technology across the curriculum – thanks to Simon Haughton who tweeted the link earlier this evening.
If you have not seen these resources before I would definitely recommend taking a look – would also be interested to hear what you use in school.
Here’s to a great year ahead.
