ICT’s in the classroom – My View

I am very comfortable with the idea of using digital technologies in the classroom. My views and my practices as an up and coming teacher align with Bianca Hewe’s views in the “Emerging Professional Practice: A Teacher's Perspective” YouTube video. What struck me most from watching this video was her approach in utilising digital technology to enhance and transform learning. Using technology in the classroom requires a different approach to pedagogy. It requires moving away from teacher centred approach to a more student centred style of learning. This in turn empowers the students to be more in control of their learning.

During my time in placement, I was astounded by the number of teachers afraid to use ICTs in their classroom. Some of the then did not use any form of ICTs, even at the basic level such as interactive whiteboards. Others merely used the interactive white boards (IWB) as a projector screens. However, during my recent experiences in the classroom, I have witnessed a teacher who did utilise digital technology from simple wordle activities to help with spelling to full blown project based activities.

Like Bianca, my pedagogy and use of technology support the development of the ICT capability as required by ACARA. For example, I tried to make the most of the digital technologies available to me such as using Microsoft Excel in Algebra lessons. In these lessons, I taught students how to create simple formulas from algebraic expressions, create tables from these values, and then charts to represent the table. Interesting enough, they were more engaged by doing this rather than the traditional method of manually drawing a table and chart in their exercise books. They thoroughly enjoyed personalising their charts with their favourite colours or changing the values of the table to see the effect of those values in the charts. This was so much easier and less time consuming than manually drawing up a different table of values and a new chart each time!

For each lesson during the Algebra unit, these students knew that I would use a computer. They would eagerly sit in their chair until I gave them the go ahead to move over to the computers. When I did, they literally got up and ran to the computers knocking their friends over in the process!

I am comfortable with the students using digital technologies such as google or iPhone apps to help with their research and collaboration. Digital technologies will also be used to help with their designing, refining of work and to communicate and reach an audience in and outside of the four walls of the classroom.