Mr Cornford's ICT Blog: 2012

Sunday 23 September 2012

New builds, trying to find new solutions.

There is currently a substantial expansion planned at my current school, developing new classrooms, ICT areas and a fuller learning resource centre. This means big thinking is required for the development and setup of ICT within these areas.

The main decision seems to be between the ever dwindling resources of Promethean/SMART or to use some newer technology in the form of ipads, apple TV and a stonking great plasma TV.
We were having a discussion about these very options at a meeting last week when it struck me, and it might seem rather simplistic, that ICT's role in the development of teaching and learning must be to provide the best resources possible to suit the particular teachers best teaching style.

The teacher in the classroom has to be the best resource in the classroom, regardless of the toys you chuck at them. The resources that ICT has to provide must be suited to their style of teaching - why would you invest 2.5k in a promethean/projector installation when all it will be used for is for displaying information? Why not spend 1.2k in a plasma/ipad combo which can be used in exactly the same way.

Equally we must ensure that for those teachers that create brilliant interactive content have the resources that they need to ensure their best quality teaching.

My thinking - and my thinking is not always correct - is that as the pupils increase in age they are less likely to require the more interactive style of teaching, so for older pupils we are looking like moving further towards the ipad/tv solution whilst staying with the IWB's for lower down the school.

The only question left is what to do with the cash we save? I'm sure we will manage.

Wednesday 12 September 2012

So... how good is #sumdog.com

That is a rhetorical question, because I know.

I used www.sumdog.com for the first time yesterday with my maths set, just to warm up their brains on some division questions. I decided that I liked the look of the junk pile game which involves answering questions and being given random objects to stack in a junk pile.

This continues my love (and the childrens) for games in learning. I think we all learn best when what we are learning has a bit of challenge and a bit fun thrown in to boot.... oooo blog post about this I think coming soon...

Once signed up (quick & free) I was able to access the training section to choose the types of question that I wanted to share with the children - this was the best part (for me), I was in control of the questions that came up, but didn't have to create all the questions myself.

We chose to play against a computer from the middle section and then clicked on play. The children swapped over when their junk pile fell down.

The best part for the children? The proper graphics. It felt like a proper game, with a proper budget and a proper level of detail. Some of the other maths games available achieve highly on the maths side but none of the children want to play them because of their graphics.

I know it must have been a success, the children wrote down the web address in their diaries and keep pestering me to sign them up...

Happy days. ICT makes another impact on learning.

Thursday 6 September 2012

New years and new roles

It has been some time since I really spent some significant time sharing with the world (or whoever would listen) my ICT ramblings. With the onset of two small children and faced with spending an hour and a half in the car everyday to get to the classroom it was kind of tricky to find to blog and share my classroom practice!

Still - here I am, at 9 at night, sat just 8 minutes away from my new school, I have more recognition (above and beyond being told how much I am appreciated - which is always lovely) and will be throwing myself headfirst into building redevelopments, a blank canvas on the ICT front and a brand new challenge - that I am loving!

So here goes... the blog is back on... hopefully with some more regular updates from all that is good to help children and teachers achieve the best they can each day.

Fingers crossed it helps someone... just one would be nice!

I found this on deviantart, which is my first recommendation of this blogging revival, a great site where you can search for user created digital art, most of which is amazing!
- complete credit to http://mushir.deviantart.com/ but it is now on my markbook.

#justsaying.

Wednesday 20 June 2012

Kodu Presentation for East Sussex ICT Conference