End of this course . . .

It is now the end of the course, after a very busy year, it has finally come to an end. During this year I have learnt alot about teaching and especially about how to incorporate ICT in to teaching. This was done both through this subject and from my other tutors and my mentor teacher. Some of the highlights have been able to see the theory in practise at my placement schools, watching students interact with the ICT and how it affects the environment of the school. I have found this very fascinating. I have found students seem to enjoy interacting with ICT and it works well as an engagement tool. I have also found ICT very helpful in explaing and exploring complex ideas with my students. It allows for me to be able to cater for multiple intelligences, by using audio, video and kineasthetic. I think this is one of the true advantages of ICT rather than just using the whiteboard and worksheets, this aids in breaking up the lessons for students and giving them a variety of experiences. I also think it is important for students to develop strong ICT skills as they are becoming increasingly more important as time goes on and seem to be incorporated into nearly every job these days. One of the disadvantages of ICT is it is highly unreliable so it is important that the teacher has a back up plan incase the technology fails and they can not do the planned lesson. Overall so I believe ICT has many more benefits than disadvantages.

This will be my final blog on this site thank you for taking your time to read my posts! :)

Nearing the end of Placement

As placement is coming to an end, I have found ICT to be invauable in the classroom. Most recently I found ICT useful to display you tube clips to my class, I found this helpful as it engages the students and offers the students the same information in a different formatt. Also found it useful for the students to use computers to conduct research and to create stuff, such as example billboards and phamplets. My problem with ICT in the classroom as I have found it to be very unreliable, for example last week I went to show my students a you tube clip but i was unable to get the speakers to work in the room, so unfortunately I had to change my lesson plan during the class to not incorporate ICT as it wouold not work effectively.

Comment on another blog

I commented on http://jacalynv.blogspot.com/2011/09/vels-statement.html

Saying "I too can struggle with ICT at times, but also believe its important to persist with technology as it is becoming increasingly more important over time, especially in the classroom.

Doing the same methods I have also seen how valuable ICT can be in a business classroom, currently my yr 11 accounting class is doing an assignment which requires them logging on to the ASX to do research."

VELS and ICT

VELS statement: ICT provides a rich and flexible learner-centred environment in which students can experiment and take risks when developing new understanding.

The ICT domain is organised into 3 dimensions, these dimensions are:

• ICT for visualising thinking
• ICT for creating
• ICT for communicating

The statement above fits into the first domain ICT for visualising thinking. This statement encourages teaches to use ICT in the classroom to help in showing students patterns in their work and to encourage students to code their work. This helps a student to have a more structured and clear understanding to be able to sort their work into section based up their allocated code. Another benefit in using ICT to visualise thinking is it aids students to create links between past and current topics.

For example in my Business method, I have observed and used ICT to educate students about given topics. Such as in my Year 11 Accounting class I have been teaching whilst on placement I used PowerPoint to introduce the new topic of Cash flow statements to the class, through the use of PowerPoint I was able to show students the structure of a Cash Flow Statement and relate Cash Flow statement to what they have previously studied. I then went on to in the class to use Microsoft excel to work with the students to do an example question; I found this helpful as it makes structuring the Cash Flow statement much easier and gave the students a clear example.

The other 2 domains, ICT for creating and ICT for communication encourage teachers to use ICT to solve problems and to aid students in the problem solving process. As ICT for communication encourages teaches to use ICT to communicate with other people to present ideas and knowledge. This can be helpful in especially in the business as there is a lot of content to cover in a short period especially during VCE. I also found using ICT for problem solving to be helpful as it allows you to work through a problem as a class and it gives the students a better understanding of the thinking you go through in the process of solving the different types of problems.

Wordle

After the block . . .

It is now after the block placement, during the block I used ICT whilst teaching my classes. Most commonly I used PowerPoint when teaching my students about a new topic and also Excel. Excel I found to be especially helpful in Accounting as it assists students in structuring and setting up their work in the correct manner. I also found Excel helpful in tracking Students and were they were up to with their work. I also used You Tube clips in class to help demonstrate and / or show students different items in class. I think ICT benefits the classroom as it helps students engage in the class and students to gain information.

Placement so far . . .

I have now been on placement for 4 days and during this time I have seen alot of use of ICT in the classroom. The year 8 and year 9's at my school all have laptops so it was interesting to observe there classes to see how the laptops were incorporated into the lessons. Also I am teaching year 11 and year 12 accounting both of which are held in the computer room. The students use Excel on the computers to complete there work, I also observed a Year 12 IT class in which they were completing a practice SAC on the computers. My mentor teacher is a big fan of ICT in the classroom and incorporates into all his lessons, I can see the benefits of ICT especially in the accounting class, as it makes completing and presenting the work much easier for students. This concludes my first blog.