Prezi is a free presentational application that serves a similar purpose to Microsoft PowerPoint. However, the two are very different. While PowerPoint has a linear format where you can only go from one slide to the next, with Prezi your presentation is based on a canvas which you can zoom in and out of any part of with ease. In my opinion, this makes it a lot easier to navigate than PowerPoint as you can quickly find things whereas with PowerPoint I have often had to trawl through slides to see what I am looking for. The zooming feature of Prezi is a lot more engaging than looking at PowerPoint slides to the extent that it might actually be distracting for students. Also, I did notice that too much zooming on Prezi is a bit nauseating which is clearly not the desired effect you want to have on your class. One thing I did like about Prezi is that it is free and internet based, and as such easy to set up on your school computer. I also liked the fact that it’s so easy to attach videos, images and links to your presentations in Prezi, whilst I have found on PowerPoint that it is more difficult to embed videos and edit images. I haven’t seen Prezi in the classroom yet and I haven’t used it my teaching, but I would like to in my second placement. It seems a lot more engaging and user friendly than PowerPoint although I don’t like the fact that you can’t use it offline unless you buy it. I think that both PowerPoint and Prezi should be used in the classroom and not necessarily one instead of the other, as they both clearly have their own strengths and weaknesses.
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At the school I was based at for my first placement, every class had their own blog. What was interesting was how certain classes contributed to their blogs significantly more than others.
Some teachers used their blogs a lot and wrote on them what the class homework was, said which students had worked particularly hard during the week and showed photos of good work done by the students. Other teachers started off their blogs in earnest in September but then did not return to them in months. I can imagine that it is quite hard to keep up with your blog if you are a busy class teacher but it has the potential to be a really useful resource for teachers, students and parents. Presenting students’ work on the blog incentivises students as well as keeps parents in the loop about what their children are doing in school and the progress they are making. Some teachers put websites and activities up on their blogs too which parents can use to bring their children’s learning along. Putting the details of any homework or other important information on the blog is also useful for students and parents, if the children forget what they were told in class, for example. Blogs can be a great resource for teachers, but to be successful, updating them needs to become part of the class routine. If not, they are easy to forget about and then everyone misses out. ![]() Audioboom Audioboom is a platform which enables its users to create and share audio content. Audioboom and early reading Audioboom can be used by students to help with their reading. Teachers can record their students reading aloud and then together they can listen to the recording and reflect on any issues the child may have had. The teacher can also record the student several months on and then show them the initial recording, highlighting the progress they have since made. Other uses for Audioboom in the classroom The fact that it is so quick and easy to use means that students can make podcasts during the class in response to what the teacher has said. For example, in a plenary the teacher may ask the students to summarise 3 things they have learned from the lesson which the student could record in their podcast. The teacher could then listen to these podcasts after the lesson and it could help them see which students had met the learning objectives. Students could also use Audioboom to record a podcast as part of a project or maybe at home in response to a question the teacher may have given as a piece of homework. The vast amount of podcasts already available on Audioboom means that it can also be used by students to independently research certain topics too. For example, when I searched for the Iron Age, lots of results came up for podcasts about the topic. Whilst doing normal internet searches appeals to the visual learners, conducting research like this has the added advantage of appealing to auditory learners, who often get forgotten. ![]() This blog entry will look at the different Ipad educational apps that I have seen being used in the primary classroom. Tellagami Tellagami enables students to create an animated character and record audio for that character to say. They can use the tellagamis to create their own speeches, pretending to be characters from a book or to narrate it, for example. In the lesson I observed the teacher had made a tellagami of a policeman who then told the students what his job was. I think Tellagami is a great app. Not only is it fun and engaging but it also enables those students with less confidence to pre-record what they want to say and then to share it in front of the class. This means that they can still share their opinions with their peers but they don’t have the pressure of having to stand up in front of the class to do it. ![]() Explain Everything Explain Everything is an interactive screencasting whiteboard and can be used by both students and teachers. I saw one teacher using it to screen grab parts of a text into one screen and record audio instructions for the students which he then shared with the class. The students could then turn on their ipads, access the file, listen to the teacher’s instructions and record a response. A real advantage here was that the students were able to work independently. Explain everything allows you to create slides to teach a learning point, but unlike Powerpoint and Smartnotebook, you can zoom further and further out in each slide meaning is an ‘infinite canvas’ which you can continue to add to. ![]() Aurasma Aurasma is an augmented reality app which allows teachers to bring the curriculum to life. The app allows you to create augmented reality experiences by pointing a mobile phone or tablet at a photo or object that acts like a trigger and plays an ‘aura’ attached to it. The aura could be an animation, video or an image. One teacher I observed had used Aurasma to make a Stone Age treasure hunt. The students were each given a list of questions which would lead them to auras he had placed around the school. Upon pointing their iPads at the photos or objects, which acted as the triggers, they would be shown a video, played a recording, shown an image or given a task to do. The students were really engaged and thoroughly enjoyed the activity. In another class the students were reading a book. To incentivise the students to read as well as to help them with difficult passages, the teacher had created auras for certain pages. The auras might ask the student a question to think about or show them a picture or a video to help them better understand the text. It worked well in engaging the students and keeping them on task. It is clear that Aurasma has unlimited potential in the classroom and is a great way of creating fun and engaging lessons which hook students in from the start. Instagrok
Instagrok is a search engine for education. It allows you to research with interactive concept maps which you can customise and share. Unlike Google searches, the ‘groks’ are dynamic and allow students to explore different aspects of a topic whilst just staying on the same web page. Look at the image below to see what options were available to me when I searched for the Tudors. Instagrok seems like a great application and I would like to use it in the classroom. I have observed several classes where the students have been asked to research a topic and within a matter of seconds they end up on Wikipedia and within minutes many are bored or disengaged. Whilst Wikipedia is text heavy, Instagrok displays the key facts, images and videos related to a topic and then allows the student to explore other related areas. Instagrok seems a lot more engaging than just using Google for research, and more structured too. I would like to use it in my teaching and will seek out opportunities to do so during my second placement. Class Dojo is a behaviour management programme for the classroom. Every student in the class is given their own profile and avatar and teachers can award and take away points from the student’s avatar for making the right or wrong choices in class. The points are saved and so the teacher can use the same avatars throughout the year. Parents are also able to access their child’s Class Dojo account through their email. During my guided placement my school used Class Dojo. These were my impressions of Class Dojo: The positives Class Dojo is very visual. My students were able to see how many points they had compared to their peers and developed an element of competition to do better than their classmates. This was good in the sense that the students became incentivised to make the right choices in class. Furthermore, when I used Class Dojo with the interactive whiteboard the students were able to come up to the front of the class and give or take away points from themselves (on my behalf). I liked this element of Class Dojo as it encouraged students to regulate their own behaviour and reinforced the notion that they were ultimately responsible for how many points they got. The negatives I thought that the students in my class became too dependent on Class Dojo. When I praised them for making the right choices, they would often ask me: “Can I have a Dojo point?”. Praise lost its effectiveness as the students seemed largely motivated by getting Dojo points. I thought that quite a few of the students had become extrinsically opposed to intrinsically motivated to make the right choices in class. The problem here is that this is unsustainable, unless the person is continually rewarded for good behaviour throughout the rest of their life. Conclusion On the whole I do think Class Dojo is a great tool for classroom management but it should be used in moderation. During my guided placement I have used an interactive whiteboard a lot during my classes and the accompanying software that the school had downloaded- Smart Notebook. I have come to realise that there are important advantages and disadvantages of both which I will explore here.
Advantages One of the main advantages of using interactive whiteboards was that they were very visual. I was able to hook the students in straight away by showing them a picture or a video. The students seemed to be naturally engaged when I was using the interactive whiteboard and because it was touch sensitive they were able to come up and use it too. I found the Smart Notebook software invaluable. There were so many more options and ways of manipulating the text than I had ever found with Powerpoint. For example, you could take photos of your screen and hide pieces of text and have different pieces of text and pictures formatted in completely different ways together on the same page. I have never found this many options in Powerpoint. A real advantage of using the software with an interactive whiteboard, as opposed to just a whiteboard that it had been projected on to, was that I could manipulate the slides whilst standing up and I didn’t have to go back to my computer. In the past when I have had to go back to the computer to change slides or open browsers my lessons have not been as smooth and at times students have lost focus. Using an interactive whiteboard meant this did not happen. Disadvantages A weakness I found in using the interactive whiteboard was that it frequently stopped working. I often had to close the programme and restart it which DID make my lessons disjointed. I also found it difficult writing with the interactive pens on the board and my writing was not as clear as it usually is. Another issue was that I found using the interactive whiteboard often excluded students. For example, if I was playing an interactive game, only one student at a time could actually come up and use the whiteboard. The students that were not directly involved in the white board activities often got distracted and lost interest. Finally, the interactive whiteboard is clearly mainly focused around visual learners and I noticed that the kinaesthetic learners in my class, especially, were not as engaged when I was using it. Conclusion Although it has its strengths and weaknesses, my overall impression of using the interactive whiteboard and Smart Notebook was largely positive. ![]() As Programming has become such an integral part of the new Primary Computing curriculum, the following blog will explore different elements of programming that I have tried to date. Scratch Scratch is one type of programming language used extensively by primary schools. It involves writing code for a sprite (two dimensional image or animation) that is a cat called Scratch. One of the main advantages of using Scratch is that it is very visual and you can see how the different bits of code fit together. Moreover, the programme allows you to experiment with sequences, selections, repetition and variables which are the core elements of programming. It is clear that Scratch has considerable scope for students to build on their games in a fun and engaging way too. Nevertheless, this could be seen as a disadvantage too as I for one initially found the amount of options slightly overwhelming. Overall, a really great programme. Hour of Code
During my Key Stage 3 placement I completed the “Hour of Code” course. The Hour of Code is a project that has been set up by the non-profit-organisation Code.org to encourage students to learn computer science. On the Hour of Code website students can try to write code for different themed projects from Star Wars to Frozen to Minecraft. The student is taken through the project through progressively more difficult steps until all centred on their chosen theme. The programme works in much the same way as Scratch as students have to put the blocks of code together to make it work. It was great fun trying out the Hour of Code and I think I prefer it to Scratch. For starters, the steps are progressively more difficult and you feel like you are gaining confidence all the time but are not overwhelmed at the start (which could be the case with Scratch). Also, the different themes like Star Wars are very engaging and in my eyes a better way of hooking students in than Scratch’s approach which is much more student led. |
Paul LArchives
January 2016
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