ACTIVITY 6 REFLECTION

Im glad that I did the activity 6 readings, now I am more aware of the UK and USA experiences, I am more concerned with the roles the teacher must now take in order to ensure ICT in the classroom is effective. I loved the way students as early as age 8 can be engaged in writing to penpals in other countries and gaining so much insight in their culture and language. I really wish that our educational system can be as developed so schools in a district can setup  TV/Monitors so collaboration can be done within classrooms and among schools. I think that the teacher must now change their roles, we must now act as facilitators and as a guide so we can allow students to collaborate and develop autonomy, however we must be able to help the students with setting up equipment, monitoring students progress and assessment of students progress.

This is another important piece of document with is very enlightening.

Module 5 reflection

These readings were quite a mouthful, but from these reading I gathered a lot of information about the integrated approach compared to what is 'taught' as computer literacy.

My eyes were opened to what we term as computer literacy and what computer literacy should be. The integrated approach is definitely the way to go because children are not just learning computer skills for use in the future but they are engaging in meaning full learning.

After this reading it makes me think about the ways I present my lessons, even teaching Information Technology as a subject. So I am now thinking of ways to use the integrated approach given the adequate resources are set up at my school.

General Activity 4 reflection

Activity 4 was quite a mouthful, seemed like a lot of reading but very beneficial to any educator.
I've got to understand from both spontaneous learning and the experiments conducted by Dr Mitra that students actively construct their knowledge in a context, rather than simply absorbing ideas spoken at them by teachers. Children invent their ideas and they also assimilate new information to simple, pre-existing notions, and modify their understanding in light of new data. so sometimes we as teachers need to simply be a guide and allow students to construct knowledge based on observation, discovery through play with concrete objects and collaboration with other students. I also learned that it is the role of educators to decide what knowledge should be passed on to learners, how to pass on the knowledge, and at what stage a learner should undertake the learning but educators should learn to link scientific concepts with real world experiences and students will have a better learning experience

Self activity 4

My Niece lives with me and she is 4 years old and have began primary school last September, here is a list of some of the things that she knew prior to attending primary school.

1. Identifying animals by their sounds and pictures

2. Counting numbers and reciting parts of the alphabet.

3. Knowing the names of everyone she lives with and names of all friends that visited the family.

4. Identifying some colours

5. Having an idea of size

6. Turning on my PC/ using the directional keypad on the keyboard to navigate through pictures on Facebook

7. Play/Stop/Pause videos on you tube

8. Using my iPad, navigating to games and playing some

9. Using the remote and typing the number for the cartoon network

10. Turning off and on the radio/TV and knowing the name of items throughout the house

and the list goes on.

she learnt these behaviours through:

1. Playing with educational toys/ other objects
2. Asking questions
3. Modelling and observing
4. Early teaching from parents(memorizing numbers)
5. Television - educational children shows.

Activity 3

I have just completed activity 3 and I must say that I had a hard time finding my way around but in the end it was for my own good. The online brainstorming/mindmapping activity using Mindmeister opened my eyes about how teachers and students can work together on a single topic and bring together a wealth of ideas.

The online collaborative document was as effective as the brainstorming activity. I enjoyed reading the comments of my colleagues, then I made my input on the topic and when we have all made comments I know this would be one great collaborative document with the most smart ideas that one can think of :)

I look forward to more interesting interactive activities in the future of this course.

Activity 2

After reading Silvia Ferrero's argument, I must conclude that there is no generation divide amongst teachers but more so an implementation divide; This is because we (younger teachers) find that ICT integration  is somewhat boring because it is most of what we know and what we were taught, but when we look at older teachers, most are willing and ready to embrace technology simply because it is a new learning experience for then and a new way to look at pedagogy. Older teachers in my opinion are quite willing to use ICT in the classroom just as long as they are getting enough technical support at home and at school along with readily available resources to make lessons fun and highly interactive.

My School's current situation

At the Buccament Bay Secondary School, we have one computer lab and a smart board set up in the library but it is not fully functional at the moment. Our lab is mainly used for the teaching of the subject ICT but when not in use, other teachers use it to aid and enhance teaching and learning  mainly through internet research. Each classroom has two electrical outlets so even thought students bring their netbooks to class, the ones with weak or dead batteries are usually left out which makes it a challenge for me planning a lesson which incorporates their netbooks. nb each student of the lower school was given a netbook from the government.

In a country like St.Vincent and the Grenadines, it is difficult to compete with larger developed countries in the field of ICT integration  but I must say it is not impossible. We would get where we want to go slowly but I believe we would achieve our ICT integration goals ie the rationales.

when it comes to the use of ICT in schools, i firmly believe that once teachers use whatever resources are available and focus on integrating ICT in each subject area then each student can become computer literate even thought they are not enrolled in the ICT class.