Royal Society investigation into ICT and Computing in schools

As I have mentioned this to some of you, here is the link to the Royal Society's investigation into the teaching of ICT in schools.

Royal Society news 5th August

The results of this investigation are due next winter (2011). You may not (or you may!) agree with some of the opinions expressed in this article, and this could be something you could reflect on once you start your secondary placement and carry out your own observations.

Hope the week is going well.

Sue

A few useful links and bits and pieces!

I  hope you are getting on well in your Primary School Placement.

I remembered recently going to a conference where Miles Berry (an academic who specialises in Primary ICT - he also has an interesting blog here) demonstrated the use of the BeeBot in primary schools. It's a bright yellow Bee Robot that children program by giving it simple instructions. I found a video so you can see it in action - click here.


I have responded now to everybody who sent me their study day 1 tasks reflections by email and a few of you have mentioned FutureLab and their work so I thought others of you might like to look at what they do. The link is here.  They publish reports on the use of digital technology in education and have examples of innovative uses of ICT on their website. They have recently published a report on the use of games in teaching ICT

I can't remember if I have given you the link to Computing At Schools but here it is.

I have really enjoyed reading all your reflections on your blog. As requested, I am going to limit the Blog Readers to your individual blogs to the students on the ICT PGCE. It would be great if you could add a reflection to your blog at the end of each week on the course. It will be interesting for you to read about each others' experiences.

Finally, I am posting an alternative subject knowledge audit on the VLE. This is taken from the Teaching ICT book's website and I think it will be useful for you to see other content areas of ICT that you may need to swot up on. The first audit you were given focused really on the software skills you would need. If you could fill that in within the next two weeks and email it to me, then Richard and I will be able to give you help with filling in any gaps.

Have a good week!

Sue

Task for Study Day 2 - Tuesday 21st September

1. Review on your blog three key things that you have learned since last Tuesday and how they will help you on your placement.
2. This task follows on from Task 6 on Monday. Look over one website on the Resources for Teaching list in more depth.  Find one resource that you really like and feel will be useful. Write a review of this on your blog.
3. Follow these links to the Assessing Pupils Progress section which is on the National Strategies site. There are Assessment Guidelines and a Teachers’ handbook both accessible as .pdfs from this URL. Read through these and consider ways that you can use to assess learning a) during the lesson and b) after the lesson. Write notes for yourself.  In Wednesday’s session you will plan a lesson that you will deliver on Friday. You will need to use this knowledge of assessment when completing your lesson plan.

Task for Study Day 1: Thursday 16th September

Your task is to read Chapter 1 of the book “Teaching ICT” by Carl Simmons and Claire Hawkins (pages 1 to 12) and reflect on some of the questions posed.

I would recommend you buy a copy of this book when you can, but for now I have scanned in the first few pages and made them available on the VLE. If you cannot yet access the VLE (http://vle.anglia.ac.uk ) then I will email you all a copy of the chapter.

You can access nearly all the pages (except 8-9) on Google Books here: 

 

There are six reflection points within this chapter. I have included them all here.

1.1  Consider the following prompt questions:

• What is education? What is its purpose? When does it happen and how?
• Who is a teacher? Are teachers the only people who teach? How is teaching different from training? What makes a good teacher and why?
• What is learning? How do we know that learning has happened? How do we learn best? Is learning involuntary or do we have to consciously learn?

1.2  What do you believe?

·          Why do you think education is important?

·          How did education influence your life and why?

·          Why do you want to be a teacher?

1.3 Consider how you learn best, perhaps focusing on something which you do or know particularly well, and consider how you learnt it. What makes that form of learning most effective for you? Now consider a situation where learning was not so effective. What made this learning experience ineffective? How could it have been improved? What lessons can you learn from this reflection for your teaching and learning practice?

1.4 Review your subject knowledge audit and the one on the companion website (www.saugepub.co.uk/secondary - click on the teaching ICT book, then Chapter 1). Consider if your subject knowledge is broad enough to address all the topic areas raised. What else do you think should be taught in ICT lessons? Are there any topics that inspire you that you would want to include? How might you achieve this?

1.5 What role do you think the ICT department and staff should have in advising and supporting staff from other subject areas? How do you think cross-curricular projects may benefit pupils and staff? Are there any disadvantages to cross-curricular projects?

1.6 Identify some ways that emerging technologies such as social networking tools, games and mobile technology could be used for educational purposes in lessons (see http://www.futurelab.org.uk for ideas).

Can you choose two of these reflection points in the chapter and write about 150 words on each, reflecting on your own previous experiences. Please could you email this to me at sue.sentance@anglia.ac.uk prior to Monday morning when we have a subject-specific session starting at 9am.

Welcome!

Welcome to the ICT PGCE at Anglia Ruskin University!

My name is Sue Sentance and I will be working on the programme on Mondays and Wednesday mornings until Christmas and then will be the full-time PGCE ICT stream leader from 1^st January 2011. This semester I will be working together with Richard Lowe, who will be delivering the sessions on Fridays, and also on Wednesdays in induction week.

My intention is that we can use this blog to communicate with each other virtually! We will also use Discussion Forums on the VLE and certainly make resources available to you there. The main purpose of this blog is that you will each have a personal blog to use to reflect on your experience of the PGCE ICT and your experience in your schools and on the course.  I would expect you to do this weekly and will be giving you blog-related tasks. In addition to blogging, you can obviously contact me personally on any matter at sue.sentance@anglia.ac.uk.