ICT teaching session

On Tuesday I taught a short session on Intercultural Awareness to the rest of my class. It was a chance to show off certain skills that I had learnt in the ICT module to hopefully enhance the learning experience for everyone involved. I chose to use PowerPoint for the session as this is the software that I felt most comfortable and confident with. I made sure that the presentation I created was interactive and informative through reinforcing the information I gave by having members of the class come to the board to complete tasks. I think that the session went relatively well and that the students did actually learn something from it. It was discussed that in future I should maybe opt for a different coloured background to my slides as white can cause a glare so in future, if I was still looking to keep the slides simple, i would use a pastel colour.

What is learning?

Today we discussed what learning is and what it means to people. We looked at what learning helps you achieve and why it is important as well as reading and discussing academic, written definitions. I did find the exercises that were undertaken today to be helpful, although it did show me that 'learning' is an awkward thing to define as it has so many different meanings to so many different people. In some ways I feel even further from understanding what exactly learning is now than I did at the beginning of the day.

Looking at 'Heather on her travels'

'Heather on her travels' is a blog created by a lady to document her travels across the world. She gives information on areas such as places to visit, foods to eat and the testing of equipment. She updates pictures as well as the written information for each post and destination. I found the blog enjoyable to look through due to the use of lots of pictures and the detailed information. It would come in very useful to anyone travelling to the same destinations as her and wanting more, in depth information but also to anyone that is wanting to expand their general geographic knowledge.

Interactive white boards

On Friday, we had a look at interactive whiteboards and how they can be used in the classroom. We looked at both the Promethean and Smart board software. The main differences between the two that I noticed were that the Smart board can be navigated around with the touch of any object (including your hand), where as the Promethean board works only with their given pens. I enjoyed Promethean's online resources and think that they will come in very handy to myself when planning lessons and coming up with activities. However, I do prefer using the Smart board as I enjoyed they interactivity of it more. One of the main areas of using interactive white boards that i have always thought to be slightly annoying was that when writing on them, your handwriting would always end up looking scruffy and child like. However, with one of the tools in the Smart software, it manipulates your handwriting into a very presentable and aesthetically pleasing font. I found this to be very enjoyable to use and would also be a great aid in the classroom environment, enabling everyone in the room to clearly read the students handwriting.

Explain Everything

Explain Everything is an interactive tool (app) that has been created to primarily aid in helping individuals learn through allowing the user to annotate, animate, narrate, import, and export. It has shown to be a handy tool when used by teachers as they can provide their students with a more interactive and lively form of learning. My own experience of the app didn't go completely to plan although my time using it was rater limited. I found that it took a little while to become familiar with its functions but I could see the potential it possessed. I now know that a little more planning and fore thought before diving in to using the app is required to produce a satisfactory end product.

Mobile Technologies

Mobile technologies have become a huge part of everyday life for many people. I believe this to be due to the fact that they are convenient, stylish and fun. As their popularity has grown, they have even started to make their way into the classroom. This was first brought to my attention when, after my final exam last summer, my lecturer asked the class how we felt about the exam being done on ipads the following year. Although I wasn't completely open to the idea, it did open my eyes to how the times were changing. With all of the apps that are being created today, it was inevitable that there would be some created to aid in education. My own experience with such apps and mobile technologies are limited but I am sure that they can be used, in certain scenarios, to help in aiding academic development.

Microsoft applications

I would like to think that I am a competent user of the majority of Microsoft applications. 'Word' would probably be the application that I use the most as I type up all of my University assignments with it. It has also helped me to transform my work into neat and presentable documents for handing in to the lecturer. I have used 'PowerPoint' on many occasions when creating slideshows for presentations and find it to be a very useful tool. My experience with 'Excel' and 'Publisher' has been limited, although I do enjoy the use of both when needed.

Reflecting on my learning experience so far .....

So far the main skills I have learnt in my ICT lessons have been to create and edit my own personal blog as well as how to assess information online. I found the tasks to have been relatively simple so far although I did come across some issues when trying to follow the blogs created by my classmates. The main reason I found this to be an issue was because of the constant harassment from Google+ to create a profile with them even though I solely wanted to use Blogger throughout. Today we also looked at how social networking can have both a negative and positive effect on the learning experience. When applying the task to my given subject (Facebook), I found it difficult to distinguish clearly between the pros and cons as most ideas tended to overlap into each category. I think this was due to the fact that Facebook is always looked at in a negative light when thought of in terms of education.

Reflective learning mind map

1st blog as a blogger blogging

About Me

I am originally from Devon in England but have spent my last 3 years in Swansea studying International Tourism Management at Swansea Metropolitan University.  In between leaving school and starting my time at university, I lived in France for a year. I decided to do the PCET course because I have always been drawn to teaching. One experience that really concreted the idea in my mind was when I went out to America for three months as a football coach. Although I’m not completely sure of what I want to do with the PCET qualification once I leave University, I hope that it will help towards whatever I decide to do in the future as well as being a positive and informative experience.