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Cecily Wright's blog

 
Monday Nov 09, 2009

Integrating ICT in Learning

The Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEETYA Dec 2008) places strong emphasis on using ICT across the curriculum.
 "Rapid and continuing advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) are changing the ways people share, use, develop and process information and technology.  In this digital age, young people need to be highly skilled in the use of ICT.  Whilst schools already employ these technologies in learning, there is a need to increase their effectiveness significantly over the next decade."

"Successful learners have the essential skills in literacy and numeracy and are creative and productive users of technology, especially ICT, as a foundation for success in all learning areas."

The question being posed in this blog is

How can teachers add value to the learning by integrating ICT?

Value is added when students are engaged and motivated by the use of interactive methods of learning which promote communication and allow collaboration.  Providing opportunities for work to be shared is also important as it means that the student has a purpose or audience for the work.  The use of ICT also caters for students with various learning styles e.g. visual, auditory and kinaesthetic.

The range of tools to assist in integrating ICT is endless.  There are tools to write online stories and poetry and to present news reports .  Experiment findings and case studies can be recorded and shared in online environments such as Moodle.  The Moodle online classroom environment also provides students with the opportunity to contribute to shared glossaries, thus collaboratively creating lists of words on a topic being studied.  Read Write Think provides a collection of online tools to support literacy learning in the K-12 classroom.

Students can demonstrate their understanding of a concept or topic by creating online quizzes and puzzles for other students to complete.  Quizzes and puzzles are also a useful way for students to practise basic skills in the early years of literacy and numeracy development.  They can even compete in fun, educational games against other kids from all over the world on the Tutpup website.

Some tools for integrating ICT provide an embed code so that the quiz or puzzle created can be embedded in a web page such as this blog, a wiki or a web page in Moodle. e.g. Alien Abduction Word game.  Other tools provide a link or number so that the created resource can be accessed by clicking on the link e.g. http://voicethread.com/share/334997/ or going to the website and entering the number in the search. e.g. Go to What2learn and search for game 16398. 

Some resources created using freely available online tools can be downloaded and saved to your own computer.  These are the most accessible resources because students are not having to rely on an interent connection and navigating the complexities of blocked sites and filters to use the resource.

edna theme pages are a useful place to start to find online resources and activities.  The Early Years theme pages are listed at http://www.edna.edu.au/edna/go/ece/pid/2633.  The Schools section of the edna website has a theme page specifically for online games and activities.  There is also an Interactive Whiteboard theme page.

Here is a list of tools to explore.  Some of them include examples of how the tool has been used.

Glogster allows users to create a digital poster by using characters from a gallery or by adding you own video or photographs.  In this example Jessica has embedded her Glogster poster in her Wikispaces wiki.
e.g.http://jesseportfolio.wikispaces.com/

Voice Thread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents and videos and allows other voicethread users to leave comments
e.g. http://voicethread.com/#q.b334997.i2521076 

bubbl.us is an online brainstorming tool.  You can freely create mind maps and save them as images.  You can also embed them in a blog or website.

Karoobatar is an online tool for making avatars.

Build your Wildself lets you select difference animal parts to create an avatar.  Great for encouraging descriptive language.

Jigsaw Puzzle 2 is free to download.  You can then make any image (making sure that copyright is taken into consideration) into a jigsaw puzzle.  Excellent for an iwb .
e.g. http://url.edna.edu.au/XwP7

Content Generator and Eclipse Crossword are free programmes you download to make a file which you can then use as you wish.  Files can then be uploaded to projects in Moodle .
e.g. http://url.edna.edu.au/3GUQ
e.g. http://url.edna.edu.au/rTtv 

What2learn is an online game and quiz maker which creates an embed code. It also gives you a quiz number so you can go to the website and search for the game using the given number. e.g. http://url.edna.edu.au/dejp

Please share your ideas and thoughts about how these tools and resources could be used to enhance student learning. 

Talk to other teachers, join the OzProjects Teachers' Space and share your ideas in an online forum or write a comment on this blog.

 

 

 

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Tags: ict information and communication technologies interactive resources port macquarie web 2.0
Posted at 03:08PM Nov 09, 2009 by Cecily Wright  |  Comments[2]

Cecily Wright

I am currently working part time at Education Services Australia as a coordinator of Global Education and OzProjects. I am responsible for the AusAID...
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