My background is kind of mixed, I only became a teacher 3 years ago, before that I was a commercial pilot and veterinarian in Canada.I am teaching in a Grammar School in WA, emphasis on ICT is fairly high, programmes typically accessed include TLF, PIPS, and ZIPTALES. We are currently using Ziptales to prepare year 3 students for NAPLAN (May 2008) in a few weeks. I have also uses PIPS for assessmemt purposes. I have taught from PP( 5 year olds in WA) to Year 3 (8 year olds). My interest lies in ICT as a support tool in learning, as well as ICT as an assessment tool. Concerns include the contextual and developmental appropriateness of educational software, teacher confidence in the use of ICT, and to a point "means of censoring" what children should acsess. It seems whenever given opportunity, children would rather play games on the computer rather than using it for educational purposes. Perhaps we should look at games as educational? Pedagological philosophies in Early Childhood dictate that learning should be play based, is playing on the computer learning?
The following are personal concerns and thoughts.
-Teacher trainning, is it adequate regarding ICT?
-Teacher confidence in using ICT, are we confident?
-Teacher familiarity with digital cameras, interactive whiteboards, do we use these appropriately? Digital cameras being an excellent tool as a window for parents to view an early childhood classroom.
-Teacher to student ratio 1:25 is too high in most cases when working with ICT (our school has a interactive white board which helps, do most schools ?)
-Time allocated to ICT, is it enough to integrate ICT learning as a part of curriculum? or is it just an adjunct to learning?
-Who goes on the computer when? at our school we try to partner a stronger student with a weaker one, if not closely supervised sometimes the stronger student controls the computer.
-Is the software contextually appropriate? we have used PIPS software for assessment purposes, and found significant numbers of students
demonstrating difficulties with some of the vocabulary.
-Is the population of students from culturally different countries (Iran/ Iraq/ Pakistan etc) significant that we have to consider what is on the software?
Talking about Christianity can be offensive to some students. We have to differentiate curriculum. Is this significant, probably not with the big picture.
-Do Early Childhood students have adequate language and phonic skills to interact individually with ICT, example do 3/4 years old have adequate alphabet awareness to enter a web site eg www.cbbc.co.uk/kids
-Curriculum dictates we differentiate our teaching to accommodate all students. Will current computer software allow us to do this?
My background is kind of mixed, I only became a teacher 3 years ago, before that I was a commercial pilot and veterinarian in Canada.I am teaching in a Grammar School in WA, emphasis on ICT is fairly high, programmes typically accessed include TLF, PIPS, and ZIPTALES. We are currently using Ziptales to prepare year 3 students for NAPLAN (May 2008) in a few weeks. I have also uses PIPS for assessmemt purposes. I have taught from PP( 5 year olds in WA) to Year 3 (8 year olds). My interest lies in ICT as a support tool in learning, as well as ICT as an assessment tool. Concerns include the contextual and developmental appropriateness of educational software, teacher confidence in the use of ICT, and to a point "means of censoring" what children should acsess. It seems whenever given opportunity, children would rather play games on the computer rather than using it for educational purposes. Perhaps we should look at games as educational? Pedagological philosophies in Early Childhood dictate that learning should be play based, is playing on the computer learning?
The following are personal concerns and thoughts.
-Teacher trainning, is it adequate regarding ICT?
-Teacher confidence in using ICT, are we confident?
-Teacher familiarity with digital cameras, interactive whiteboards, do we use these appropriately? Digital cameras being an excellent tool as a window for parents to view an early childhood classroom.
-Teacher to student ratio 1:25 is too high in most cases when working with ICT (our school has a interactive white board which helps, do most schools ?)
-Time allocated to ICT, is it enough to integrate ICT learning as a part of curriculum? or is it just an adjunct to learning?
-Who goes on the computer when? at our school we try to partner a stronger student with a weaker one, if not closely supervised sometimes the stronger student controls the computer.
-Is the software contextually appropriate? we have used PIPS software for assessment purposes, and found significant numbers of students
demonstrating difficulties with some of the vocabulary.
-Is the population of students from culturally different countries (Iran/ Iraq/ Pakistan etc) significant that we have to consider what is on the software?
Talking about Christianity can be offensive to some students. We have to differentiate curriculum. Is this significant, probably not with the big picture.
-Do Early Childhood students have adequate language and phonic skills to interact individually with ICT, example do 3/4 years old have adequate alphabet awareness to enter a web site eg www.cbbc.co.uk/kids
-Curriculum dictates we differentiate our teaching to accommodate all students. Will current computer software allow us to do this?