marlyn.moffat

  It’s taken a week to have them able to calibrate the board for me every morning. (It gets moved by the cleaners.) But I am constantly amazed by how keenly they pick up the knowledge related to ICT. I wish I could see evidence of my teaching as clearly in other areas of the curriculum. (I did with the Activote pods.) Their keyboard skills are not yet good, but we have been working on Speedy Keys, (SEMERC) a great wee simple programme for this age group, and already see an increased speed. I have some children with various, but quite serious difficulties this year, and another terrific simple prog I’ve recently been using is ‘At the Cafe’ The wee booklet in the CD case has lots of cross curricular links that can be used by ASN assistants, for life skills and such. The most challenged of the children was able, today, to show his assistant how to log on to his account on “Letter Olympics.” (Great for bd reversals) A eureka moment!

The board and Activote pods (on loan from the authority) have now to go elsewhere, so I am back to my old film screen in class and sharing a board in the open area (timetabled). Integrated ICT I will always have, but when I had these tools in my class it was seamless. I’d like every teacher to have this at his/her disposal.

First lesson on laptops for new primary 3. 5 different systems and 9? different desktops. Wonder who changed them over the hols. Most hadn’t used a trackpad and to some double click was alien. I hadn’t set up all the machines, but would have done as many as possible if I could have. Children are so adaptable though and when they were convinced they could do nothing wrong, just explored using Kidpix today. I just love it when I hear the ooo’s and ‘Look at this!’ ‘See what I found!’ This can’t be easy for less confident teachers surely, so that’s why I do what I do.

Primary 3 in Castlehill Campbeltown.
Here’s what they were doing the week before the holidays. Real ICT enthusiasts, they’ve kept me learning, to keep them going.
I’ve been teaching since 1971, with a break when my son was young, and the last few years have been at this stage, although I do work at other stages to support in ICT related lessons. I campaign enthusiastically for ’seamless’ ICT and the ‘C’ therein, and to that end have been involved in several projects with other agencies and schools.
I am enthusiastic about what our children will be able to do with ICT in the future, though I worry about their use and my ability to prepare them sufficiently. So I always feel that I have to ‘get stuck in’ and explore anything new in this field. There will always be a use in the classroom.
I’ve been blogging on Blogspot, for myself and latterly with Morag, who was then at Tighnabruaich, with our talkingteds project in class, and found that it snuck into every area of the curriculum. I was interested to find the publication differences with edublogs. It’s lots easier after the first wee learning curve, though I could probably do with a spellchecker.