This is a podcast that we made for the 4th year part of our Computing elective.

Our Podcast

Well It's been a long long while since I last wrote this blog, or any blog infact! Since the last post I have been on placement and enjoyed a fun filled busy summer.

Now I am back at university in my final year! FINAL YEAR! Scary stuff, although it is always exciting to think that this time next year I will have my own little class of kids, (nevermind the fact that I'll be getting paid a decent salary!). But before then I have to write my dissertation. I now have a title and aims for my dissertation! I thought I'd just write a little bit about my dissertation incase anybody has useful resources of handy hints for me!

Project Title: Children's Perceptions of The Use of ICT For Writing in The Home and The Classroom.

Basic Aims: What are p3 children's comparative perceptions and experiences of ICT in the home and in the classroom and can this be used to boost attainment in language?

Methodologies: I am going to be conducting some semi-structured interviews with groups if children in my final placement class, carrying out some class surveys and keeping my own reflective diary as well as observational field notes.


Im really interested in my topic and can't wait to start finding out what the kids actually think and trying to put that into practice to help with their writing skills, it's just the getting to that point that is dragging me down. I think I feel as though I've got loads of work to do, so if I don't do it, it will go away, But it doesn't! I just need to get into the reading and start writing.

Dissertation!
The proposal date for our dissertations is looming, and as good BEd3 Students we are all completely on top of it and know exactly what we are doing... or not!

I know that i want to do something on the use of ICT in the classroom, however I dont want to to be tied to my practice during my Fourth Year placement as I feel that I will have more than enough work to be getting on with during that placement. I think I will do something along the lines of 'Using ICT to aid cross-curricular integration'.

In it I will be hoping to look at what ICT is, what the benefits are, if there are any health risks, and then go on to give examples of cross curricular ICT work in the early years, infant classroom and middle/upper years. There may be a slight focus on blogs and the use of blogs to aid learning as blogs are becoming more and more popular (my dad even has a blog now!!) I don't think i will focus the whole thing on blogs as i think that would be quite restricting! Im now off to find some more books, articles etc to put into my proposal form!

Garageband!
At one of our Computers and Education classes we spent some time using the Apple Package called Garageband. It's basically a programme where you can use the samples, provided on the package, to make up your own songs. You can also link a Midi keyboard or other instruments to the computer to make up your own samples. When mixing to make a song you can repeat the samples and add your voice on top. It was a very straightforward programme to use and children (of all ages!) would have a great time playing with it. Here it is on Apple's website.

A friend of mine, Alastair, has used Garageband to make up his own song. The Fajita Song includes drum samples made using Garageband, and a recorded voice over the mix of samples.

Robert Burns once said “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, Gang aft a-gley.” And that's whats happened again. Although this time I have a good reason!
The other week I met with my tutor and explained that I was having trouble keeping up with writing the reflective 'blog'. She then explained to me that it takes a certain kind of person to write reflectively, like in a diary, but that people have different ways of writing reflectively. After discussing this, we decided that the way in which I do my reflective thinking, is through writing 'to do lists'. Through this I think about what I need to get done, and then with the next 'to do list' I think about what I have completed from the list and what I still have to do, or new things that I have to do. So from now on I shall just be writing paper copies of my 'to do lists' and filing them away as my reflective writings.

However, for one of my 3rd and 4th year options, I chose computers and eductaion. As part of the module in 3rd year, we are required to set up a blog and occassionaly write about what we've been doing. From now on this is what this blog will be used for.

New Year, New resolutions.
As can be seen below, I have not kept to my word and updated this blog every two weeks.
I feel that not updating this blog has been an organisational and laziness problem. However i shall endevour to keep up to date in 2007, as i know that this blog will benefit myself in giving me somewhere to write thoughts on my classes, teaching and current issues.

I have just finished writing an assignment on digital literacy, looking at how new technologies could be used in the classroom. In a few of the articles, the writers spoke of blogs and the benefits that they could have for children in giving them an authentic audience to write to. One of the articles that i found particularly interesting was by Victoria Carrington called
The Uncanny, Digital Texts and Literacy. (It can be found at http://www.multilingual-matters.net/le/019/0467/le0190467.pdf ) In the article she spoke of the unfamiliarity that some adults and teachers have with new technology, technology that children and young people are using well and with increasing confidence on a daily basis.

After researching and reading lots of newspaper and journal articles, as well as book chapters, i found that ICT and its impact on classroom practice is something that I would like to look into in more detail. I think that for my fourth year project, dissertation, I will definately look at some aspect of ICT.

The reason behind this blog.

At the end of the first year of my teachign degree we had to make up an action plan. As part of that action plan I decided that I would write a reflective diary every week. About 9 months late (near the end of second year) we had to analyse how well we had done in meeting our targets, having only written 1 or 2 reflective diary entries, I wrote of how I did not meet that target. The end of second year again brought the chance to make up an action plan. I decided once again to try and write a reflective diary, however i changed my method of doing it. I felt that once a week is not a timescale that I would stick to, but that once a fortnight would be more manageable. I also decided that instead of handwriting a diary entry, I would type it. Having kept a blog for about a year, i decided that doing a blog of my reflective diary entries would be the best method for me. It would mean that the date of publishing the entry would be present and it would be easy for a tutor to simply go online to read the entries.

Now at the end of week 4 of third year I am seeing similarities between my action targets last year and this year. I have not yet published a reflective diary entry due to various reasons, however from now i shall try and keep up to date on my diary entries.