“It is astonishing what a lot of odd minutes one can catch during the day, if one really sets about it.” Dinah Maria Mulock
It’s not always easy to involve colleagues in the latest teaching developments in ICT. Time is tight and many are actively involved at every spare minute with extra curricular activities.
I’ve set about trying every which way I can, to snatch busy teachers’ time and to prompt it with a response towards the use of engaging and innovative ICT. We have found that one of the simplest strategies has been to provide a very visual display of the tools and utilities we’re encouraging staff to try. The thinking was that not all teachers are as constantly bombarded with the applications which frequent ICT users are, and that the amount of time they would be accessing their computers each day would also be rather less. We came up with the idea to create large Motivator posters to display on the ICT board in the staff room. Next to these we have wall “pockets” complete with ScreenSteps instructions of “How to” and handouts on each application’s usefulness in the classroom. We have also printed out Tom Barretts “Interesting Ways” for use here as well. (One copy of each to peruse.) The posters are also to reinforce the skill, utility or web tool contained in the weekly Elearning bulletin. I thought I’d share some of the posters we (and largely our ICT teaching assistant Sam Culshaw-Robinson) have produced.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
There isn’t much new in the approach we’ve used, but there are several other strategies we’ve been using to increase the support for innovative use of ICT in the classroom:
- A weekly e – bulletin newsletter
- Meetings with the academic HOD & the whole department to discuss subject related software, ideas for ICT integration & the identification of specification opportunities for the use of ICT.
- Lunch time and after school ICT CPD which includes the use of basic application skills, web 2.0 tools and utilities to aid teaching, learning and organisation, and the use of basic hardware such as scanners, plotters and visualisers.
- Booking individual sessions with myself and the ICT Teaching Assistant to improve ICT skills and capabilities.
- Creating opportunities for a TeachMeet style ICT ‘show & tell’.
- Creating a questionnaire to identify needs for skills training and to highlight any strengths and weaknesses of IT resourcing.
- Expanding the use of the VLE.
- Ensuring that the skills taught in discrete ICT enable innovative use of ICT in teaching and learning.
(Acknowledgements to Russel Tarr for his Random Pupil Picker image)
Those posters are a great idea. Thanks! Would it be possible to do one for Primary Pad?
Of course! I could email you one if you wish. However, these were as easy as falling out of a tree. Motivator does it all for you. I used a screen capture tool and then saved the image as a jpeg and uploaded it into Motivator, which did the rest.
Those posters are a great idea. Thanks! Would it be possible to do one for Primary Pad?