Mrs. H – TL

What WAS I thinking?  How rosy those glasses are when you are first attracted to the shininess of  the $s to help your journey!  They were SO tinted that I decided I was capable of changing the culture within my school and would use them to convince the Primary staff that they could, and would, integrate ICTs into the curriculum.  The Head of Primary thought it was a fantastic idea and would support ideas we had already bandied around … so the submission went in … and was accepted.  What was I thinking?

Motivation

I’ve always been attracted to ‘shiny things’, and the ICT world is filled with them.  The rest of the world seems to have been attracted to them too, as they are now an integral part of our everyday lives.  As educators, one of our tasks is to prepare our students for living in that world, and helping them become as proficient in using ICTs as they are … books and pencils … is a vital task for (we) 21st Century teachers.  At Plenty Valley, like most schools, some teachers were comfortable using ICTs, but most of us were struggling to integrate it seamlessly into our curriculum.  There were too many applications to choose from, and we didn’t know HOW to make use of them – even those of us who were ‘more ICT literate’.

Intended goals/outcomes

Put simply – my goal was to have the Primary staff integrate ICTs into their classroom curriculum.  This would require:

• Staff  becoming more comfortable using ICTs themselves.
• Supporting them with hardware, software, training and technical backup.
• Motivation, and the conviction that they could do it.
• Individuals taking responsibility for their own learning … and being willing to change.

Description of the Activity

Each semester, the Primary school defines a whole school focus for our Staff Enhancement Program.  The focus can be viewed from various perspectives, according to the needs of individual teachers.  Incorporating ICT into the classroom program was the focus for Semester 1, 2009.  Each teacher was to identify one area in which they would like to improve their skills and understanding, and they would be supported to enable them to implement it more effectively in their classroom.

To begin the journey,  ALL the Primary staff spent one of the PD days before the students commenced school working with Adrian Bruce.  Adrian was a classroom teacher who had successfully integrated ICTs into his classroom program.  He guided us through:

• Ideas for how ICTs can be used in the classroom.
• Time management strategies for the teacher who ‘Doesn’t have enough time to do all this stuff’.
• A wide range of applications that can be used in Primary classrooms, across all disciplines.
• ‘Having a go’ playing with software applications we were interested in.
• Setting an individual, or group, staff enhancement goal – to use one piece of software to integrate into the classroom program.

Over the following weeks, staff were given time to plan and work out what support they needed to fulfill their goal, and then commenced ‘experimenting’ and learning.

It was at this stage that the Black Saturday fires hit the Kinglake Ranges, throwing the wider College community into a state of shock and grief.  For several months our focus was on supporting each other as we worked through the grieving and restoration processes.

Despite the challenges, staff pushed themselves through the learning process and have made great progress in using ICTs:

Me – Primary TL & ICT Coordinator:

My role has been to plan with, and support, staff.

• Helping staff and students learn HOW to use the applications – including intensive CyberSafety sessions for years 3 to 6.
• I developed this blog as a place to share my journey, applications, ideas and pedagogy.

Prep:

The Preps’ focus has been on:

• Learning to ‘use’ the classroom computers – logging in, shutting down, controlling the mouse,  keyboarding and working on the pod of classroom computers during class sessions.
• Using ‘Sounds Great’ in literacy sessions.
• Using KidPix to present their understandings during Units of Inquiry.

Animals and their babies

Hatching chickens

Grade 1:

• Keyboarding skills – using Dance Mat Typing Tutor.
• A study into the pedagogy related to keyboarding for young children.
• Using 2Publish+ for Journal writing.

• Inserting images and text in Word documents: The … is … the … (French teacher).

Grade 2:

• Utilising the 2Publish+ suite in Literacy, Numeracy and Unit of Inquiry  sessions.

Graphing in Maths

Poetry and story writing

Showing where our water comes from

Grades 3 & 4:

• One class has started to develop a class blog using GlobalTeacher and GlobalStudent.  Students have been given author privileges and will eventually have their own pages on the blog.  ‘Technical hitches’ have prevented the class teacher developing it as much as she would like, but she plans to use it for homework activities and for experimenting in different ways to present understandings.

• Using AndreaMosaic during their Who We Are Unit of Inquiry, related to their unique and creative abilities.

• PowerPoint to present the life of an explorer, and interactive information about explorers in French, during the Explorers Unit of Inquiry.

Voila mon voyage

Leif Erickson

• Video presentation of work developed in music (Music teacher) – too large to upload!

Grade 5:

• Incorporate Google Maps into the Unit of Inquiry that focuses on migration and its  impact.

• Using Word to make ID cards in French.

Grade 6:

• Using Web2.0 resources to teach and share information.  The teacher and students searched the Internet to find resources to support their classroom program.

eg. YouTube video by the Blue Man Group  – a short comedy to create awareness of Global Warming for the general public in the USA.

• Developing slideshows in French about French artists.

slideshow6- artists

Anecdotes from Design/Implementation

Staff found they had to battle  with ‘time’.  Time to search for applications, and the to  play and learn how to use them.  This led to discussions as to how we can ‘best manage’ our time, and utilise shared learning – between staff members who become ‘experts’ and students who are ‘computer savvy’.   We also struggled with tech support.  Staff became quite disheartened when they were wanting to work with their class but the network or hardware let them down.

The grade 2 teachers really pushed themselves beyond their comfort zone – and were excited to find how positively the students responded – and were motivated to go beyond what they had been asked to do.  The teachers ‘ran’ with them and were thrilled with the quality of the final pieces produced.

The grade 3/4 class who have started blogging are also excited by what they are doing.  Students have started working at home, and the classroom teacher is as excited as they are with the applications she has decided to use.

Several of the classes have really ‘got it’.  They no longer have to ‘think’ about how to use technology in their classroom – it is automatically incorporated across the disciplines.  They now spend their time trying to work out ‘what to use and what to leave out’ … a dilemma faced by us all!

Final Reflection

We began the year excited, but a little apprehensive, about integrating ICTs into our curriculum.  Despite the incredibly challenging year the College has experienced, we are WAY further along the path than when we began the journey.  When planning, teachers are now ‘talking’ about the applications they will use, how they will manage them, and what they need to do to increase their/their student’s skills.  There are conversations about the ‘best’ software, or what schools could be visited to see how something is being used.  We have moved beyond ‘Why do we have to do it?’ to ‘How can we do it?’

I’m really chuffed!  There has been a culture shift.  We have a long way to go, but I feel we now have a handle on what needs to be done, and the enthusiasm to continue to move forward.

In order to sustain this attitude, we need to:

• Continue to work with the College Executive to keep the integration of ICT into the curriculum a main focus.  This has already been decided for the next few years, so we are looking forward to moving on the the next stage of our personal development.
• Provide timely tech support so that enthusiasm isn’t thwarted.
• Continue PD and school visits so teachers can broaden their understandings and ideas.
• Find effective methods for training and mentoring – staff: staff, student:staff … ?

Mrs H xo

Tags: AGQTP, Web 2.0