An interesting article about I-Phones

This is a very interesting read which has widened my thinking on the use of I-Phones:

In this article, a father reports on the wondeful effects that he observed when his three -year old was given an I-Phone. His daughter was immediately absorbed in the various apps available: Letter Tracer, Kid Art, Voice Toddler cards. Her favourite app is Letter Tracer and this "device and screen provided the engagement that pen and paper hadn’t" (Hunt, P. 2010). This tool will help to develop the child's knowledge of letters and also her fine motor skills. I think this device would help to develop children's intelligence at a young age. This made me think about the game "Word Coach" for the Wii as it would have similar effects to the "Letter Tracer" App. If I-Phones were used in nurseries, children could use them in class and take it in turns to take the phone home. This would help to provides close links between parents and their children.

Children can learn to tell the time, take pictures and check the weather with an I-Phone. These are relevant skills that the children will use in every day life!

Before reading this article, I will admit that I had my doubts about using I-Phones with young children. However, I now realise that I-Phones can be used to motivate even the most disengaged children. At the end of the article the Dad asks if he is a "bad Dad?" I think he is a creative and forward thinker who we can learn from!

Life-casting on I-phones and storyboards

We were given Sharon's number to text any questions we had before the lesson started. This makes sure that we are learning what we want to learn, which is an effective method or personalising our learning. This would help to answer any questions pupils think of and ensure that those pupils who feel too shy to ask a question, are having their voices heard! We were told that only 5% of the class are answering 95% of the time. This should help to involve all pupils in the lesson.

Using the "Life-casting" App on the i-phones, we took five pictures of "21st century thinking" and added audio to this. Children would really enjoy this and would use their teamwork skills to work collaboratively effectively.

A further advantage of "Life-casting" is that it can we used to make the link between schools and parents, through posting the groups' work online. At first I thought this would be a great task for upper primary pupils, but after discussing this in class I have realised that nursery children could manage this task. Why not introduce four year-olds to technology as:

"The next generation is growing up online, rather than adapting to it in their mid adult years" (Micah Sifry, p120) (cited in "The world is flat" by Thomas L. Friedman

Just think of how much children will be able to do if they start using technology at a young age!

We used Storyboards which is an innovative method of creating a story. I think Primary three pupils upwards could manage to create a story which they could present to the class. The children can focus on their imaginative writing rather than having to draw pictures in their stories. I think pupils would be proud of their work and keen to share with their peers.
Storyboards could also be used with the early years as I could create a story to fit in with a current context in the nursery. I will definitely use this tool in the classroom!

We joined the website "Voices of the World". We will use this website to interact with others from various countries in the world. This will help to share good practise. We looked at inviting people from different countries to say a set sentence. This is letting the children hear a variety of languages and might spark an interest!

Feel free to comment on this!

ICT- Digital Moviemaking

We were shown the movies that the other Primary Education students produced and I immediately thought that this was an excellent activity for an upper primary class.

The advantages of using Digital Moviemaking are it gives the children the opportunity to be creative whilst using innovative technology. Children like to experience new things and with taking videos (on phones and cameras) being so popular in their lives, why not use this in the classroom?

Making a digital movie requires many skills: acting skills, technological skills, communication skils, teamswork. I think this will help to build confidence levels and it links Drama with ICT brilliantly.

The only disadvantage I can think of is that the group's might not work well together, leading to some pupils not getting the chance to learn new skills. However, it is important that children experience working in groups regularly as this helps to extend their own thinking (Alexander, R. 2008). To help to ensure that all members of the group are involved, I could give roles for the pupil's to choose from. This should result in all of the group contributing to the task.

I think Digital Movie-making would be enjoyable, very active and would be a good task to use Peer Assessment as the groups can learn from each other .

Alexander, R. (2008) Towards Dialogic Teaching. London: SAGE Publications Limited.