ICT in School

Having finished my first placement in KS1 I'll just say a few words about the ICT I encountered whilst there.

The main uses of ICT are the interactive whiteboard (IWB), computers (there were 3 in our classroom and around 18 in the ICT suite), and digital cameras. I used all three of these mediums whilst teaching at school and found all of them to be useful items of equipment for learning.

The interactive whiteboard is used at least twice a day. In the morning and at the beginning of the afternoon, 'Wake Up, Shake Up' is played to the children. These are exercises to get children's 'blood pumping, oxygen to their brain and ready for the day'. The DVD shows a woman going through the exercises, the children watch it on the IWB and copy themselves. The IWB is also used in lessons, although mainly in numeracy lessons. I found that it was useful for activities such as sorting things into groups (which children can do themselves), showing visual activities like pictograms and hundred squares. Due to this, I found the IWB to be an invaluable piece of ICT equipment in the classroom, although I did find it was useful to have a 'normal' whiteboard to scribble things down on - I still haven't quite got the hang of writing neatly on the IWB!

The children in my class also use the computers in their classroom everyday. They play on games such as Dazzle (a painting program), Ace Monkey (literacy and numeracy) and various storybooks and internet games. The children are very competent at computer skills and when on a program or game they know well, can whizz through what they want to get done. However, often the learning content of the game is lost on them as some cannot read the games' instructions and so on. They tend to merely look at the pictures and the videos! Dazzle the painting program is also used a lot in lessons, for example, they were asked to draw pictures of a bonfire and fireworks when looking at light in science and this is the kind of activity they do a lot. I question whether working on the same program, doing the same kind of activity can really be constituted as real ICT work. Perhaps there need to be games that really are aimed at Year 1 pupils with minimal reading required but still a learning content. I wonder if this is possible? It's probably already been done!

Digital cameras were also a useful part of classroom life. When children were completing jobs where there was no written or drawn outcome, pictures were taken of their work and shown later, in the plenary, as feedback. This also gave children the opportunity to appraise other pupil's work and to take pride in their own work. I found this method of recording work and of assessment to be useful and it shows that learning does not necessarily mean writing something down.

Overall, although the available ICT equipment in school were used fairly regularly, I still don't think they are being used to their greatest effect. Teachers (and myself) are still unsure of just how to utilise ICT in a modern day classroom, especially when concentrating on the learning objectives given to us by the framework/national curriculum etc. Furthermore, schools just don't get the funding to give their pupils the newest ICT equipment (e.g. electronic books, Nintendo DS's etc) which leads to older methods being used. For example, although having 20 laptops at my placement school, all the batteries were dead and to buy 20 more would have been £1000. Schools just don't have the money to buy this kind of equipment and that, I think, is the main reason as to why ICT in schools is so far behind what it should be.