Week Three

Week Three

We are three weeks into this course now and I must admit I am starting to slowly get my head around some of the technological jargon and new ICT’s such as Google – sites, groups and reader, blogging and twitter that I have been exposed to.  Whilst I wouldn’t say I am an advanced user (particularly with twitter) I think I would now be able to explain the benefits of and how to use these to others – something I could not do a few weeks ago.  I also believe the variety of readings that Dr Zagami has made available have been extremely helpful; whilst some of them are not quite sinking in, others are definitely helping me reflect and question my own ICT knowledge and classroom ideals.

During the tutorial Dr Zagami linked us with Mrs M and the Year 2 GEMS.  What a wonderful teacher she is, and how engaged and ICT literate the students appear to be.  The knowledge and understanding that Mrs M is imparting on her students through their blogs is invaluable and something that other teachers could, and should aspire to.  I know I certainly do.

In my practicum classroom on Tuesday the students were required to search for specific information on the computers.  Prior to their ‘search activity’ the teacher spoke about reputable websites and told the students that Wikipedia was not reputable.  At that point I remembered Dr Zagami talking about this very topic in Monday’s Lecture and stating that in fact Wikipedia is quite a good reliable source of information.  (I pondered whether to say anything to my teacher but decided to keep my thoughts to myself).  Another interesting thing I noticed was that many of the students were able to search for simple facts which they copied from the computer to their worksheets, but when it came to searching for inferential or deeper information they became stuck and unable to think of how to gather this knowledge.  This reinforces the point to me that students need more than basic “googling” skills and should to be given learning opportunities and access to more in depth ICT activities than simply copying or cutting and pasting information from the computer to their worksheets. 

PS.      I think my personal growth thus far from this course has already been significant, and I look forward to what the future weeks hold.