Pictures of Practice in Schools
Examples of how teachers and students are using ICT to support and enhance learning.
I am often asked by teachers for sources of copyright-friendly images (photos and clip art) that they can use with their students.
Sources:
Collections such as Pics4learning or
the Phillip Martin clip art collection 
are designed specifically for education and are a good place to begin and are suitable for students to search directly.
Some other collections (such as Classroom clipart) 
come with ‘freebies’ and advertising that can be a nuisance, but if you can block or ignore them, they are a useful resource.
The image collection in the eCentre Resource Centre provides a good collection of Tasmanian photos, drawings and diagrams. e.g. try the key word “bridge”. Note: access to this collection is limited to Tasmanian teachers and students with a VKey login.
At this time of the year teachers have usually spent a significant amount of time setting up their classroom/s and organising resources as well as establishing processes, routines and expectations with their students… but what about the online classroom?
The literature around learning in the 21st century abounds with references to removing the walls of the classroom and “engaging students in ways not previously possible, creating new learning and teaching possibilities, enhancing achievement and extending interactions with local and global communities.”
Learning in an online World – Contemporary Learning MCEETYA.
This can be a daunting prospect for we ‘digital immigrant’ teachers to include in our thinking about our classrooms and how they operate … where to start? … what’s available that suits my students’ needs?… how can I learn about it ?… how will I manage it?
Here are details about three great examples of teachers in our schools who are moving into this territory by implementing an online presence for their students this year.
I recently had the opportunity to visit a middle school (grade 8 ) classroom at Claremont High School, where many of the resources and technologies featured in this blog recently are being used every day.
An interactive whiteboard was installed in the classroom at the beginning of the year, and the teacher, Kirsty Sing, uses it constantly with her students. There are four desktop computers in the classroom, augmented by two banks of 10 wireless laptops that can be booked when needed, making it possible for students to individually follow-up collaborative work done on the interactive whiteboard.
Kirsty makes extensive use of online resources and makes them easily accessible to her students. She says, “I tend to now present most of my major tasks on a webpage made with Microsoft Word. The students can view it on the large screen but can also re-visit it later if they want to re-read instructions or follow links. It’s also useful for students who have been absent. I am now playing with edublog as a way to present this work online (instead of being stored on a school drive).
There are some learning objects from The Learning Federation that I have used during whole class instruction. One of the students will have control of the pen while the remainder of the class help solve the problem an/or work through the object. This is also the case for some of the objects on Shodor and the Virtual Manipulatives site. ”
Kirsty uses the online resources in a range of ways, e.g. she has downloaded and printed resources from the Writing Fun site and put them in a folder for student reference so they can be used offline, as well as online. She says’ “This is an excellent site. I use it for teaching text types and constantly revisit it to help students structure their writing better.”
As well as using a range of free online resources, the school is considering subscribing to online materials; in particular the animated movies on the Brainpop web site. “It is a website made of 3-5 minute cartoon movies that explain concepts easily for students in an interesting and engaging way. I have shown many of these to my classes – some topics include “Simile and Metaphor”, “Fibonacci Sequence”, “The Periodic Table”. There are hundreds of topics to choose from. A free trial can be gained from the site for 5 days. “
To quote the current Tasmanian Curriculum document for English-literacy:”In addition to making meaning from traditional spoken, written and visual texts, and learning language skills, students now need to understand and use new and emerging text forms, including those made possible by information and communication technologies (ICT)”. (page 5)
Teachers in our schools are addressing this aspect of literacy learning in a variety of ways, and highlighting a few examples can be useful in identifying some of the possibilities for us all.
Kindergarten digital book
Last year, a kindergarten teacher doing some work with her class to explore the idea that ‘Numbers are everywhere’, identified one of her learning objectives as: “To illustrate to the children that there are other ways of making and reading a “book” other than the paper page variety.” Further detail is available in the planning: numbers-are-everywhere.doc
She and her students used a digital camera to record how numbers are used in familiar environments (classroom, home, playground) and then worked together using Photo Story 3 (a free download) to create an electronic book that captured their shared understanding.
The finished product (see below; slightly edited for the web) was able to be shared with the class and the school (… and now the world through this blog! ) and the teacher reported that “Viewing was enthusiastically undertaken as the children had ownership of the story and it related to their recent experiences of number hunting. Most importantly they came away from the experience with a more heightened awareness of the differences between numbers and letters.”
With two weeks’ well-earned holiday just around the corner, I thought it might be useful to share a couple of online presentations that I was sent recently and personally found very inspirational and thought-provoking. They both relate to how we educate students in the 21st Century.
The first is an interview with Greg Whitby, nominated by The Bulletin Magazine as “Australia’s smartest, most innovative and creative person working in education today“. That is a very tall order indeed, and he was recently interviewed on ABC radio’s ‘The Conversation hour” to talk about the work he has done to earn this title.
To listen to the audio recording of the one hour interview with Greg, you can play it directly from the website on your computer by clicking on one of the links under the photo of Greg on the right of ‘The Conversation hour web page (it may take a few moments to download to your computer). Alternatively, do a right-click on the MP3 link and choose ‘Save target as’ from the menu and download a copy of the file to your portable MP3 player (it is around 11 MB) Then you can listen to the interview while you stroll along the beach … enjoy a refreshing drink … sit in the shade … whatever … I will think of you! 
The other presentation is a video on YouTube that shows Ken Robinson addressing the question “Do schools kill creativity?” It is entertaining and thought provoking … well worth the 20 minute time investment!
Enjoy a relaxing holiday; I look forward to working further with you all in term 3 
