Darrel+-+Maungaraki

This is your space to put your goals for the use of ICT in teaching and learning. You can give everyone updates on how you are going throughout the year. At the end of the year, you can upload a short presentation showing the results of your work to this page. Have fun with this space!

Hi this is Darrel here typing on this wiki thing for the first time. I hope that this is how I'm meant to do it. This year I would like to better learn how to integrate ICT into what I am doing in the classroom rather than having it as it's own little sideshow which can often be the case! I would like to develop what I'm doing with programmes like Kid Pix so that I can incorporate it into my written language units. I'd also like to have a play around with Garage Band. I have been too busy to try this at this stage.

Hi Darrel, You did the wiki thing perfectly! I really enjoyed working with you last term. Are the kids liking their personal icons on their folders? Have you had a chance to become more familiar with Kidpix in order to build it into your written language? If so, perhaps you could share the results of that here. I see you have updated [|your blog] a few times - how are you finding using this?

My latest success I have had with my own ICT is an idea I got from Suzie for using cartoon icons for the children to save their work into. I have tried this in term 2 and it has worked wonders. Now rather than having the token messy and cluttered desktop with "michaelas writing" and "untitled doc1" all over the place now I have my children saving all their work into their own personalised folders. These look far more appealling than the standard folders and they each recognise their own picture. They all know how to use this now and every child has at least 1 or 2 things saved to their folder already. In the meantime I have taught them simply to save their work to the desktop and then to drag and drop it into their folder. There are probably better ways but this one seems very kid friendly. I will try to post some of the icons onto this site so that anyone can use them if they like but right now I am on my home computer and don't have access to them.

I am gradually getting the hang of the whole blogging thing although I still need regular help with this. I have now learned to hyperlink youtube videos (although I had a bad experience where one of my videos provided a link to a rather dodgy cartoon clip!! Always check the links that come up at the end of the youtube videos!!) I would like to teach the children to save their own work onto the blog although as I am still learning to do this myself it may take a little while. My top 2 reading groups produced some fantastic internet researches which I am hoping to put onto the blog when I can.