Experiences and good practices in the integration of the ICT in the class. (Sociology)

           ICT

The Wednesday, 6^th April 2016, the whole class went to a meeting in which three teachers talked about their experiences in the integration of the ICT in their lessons. They talked about some programmes and applications that they use to teach children, and also to improve the communication between teachers and families.

These three teachers started teaching in a grouped rural centre (CRA). These types of schools don’t have many technological resources, for example they don’t have Internet. The students should develop a low performance and there is a lack of motivation. For that reason teachers started to search for information and formation in the use of ICT such as the digital board. It will cause a change in the methodology in the class. If teachers don’t change the methodology, the use of ICT won’t change the way of work in the class.

It is a good way to introduce the cooperative learning, investigation, work through projects…, new methodologies that become the student the object of his/her own learning.    

It’s important to keep in mind that using ICT is not use social networks or project on the blackboard.

Universities need subjects for future teachers to develop and learn how to use ICT, to prepare them to work in the class. It’s important to select the technique appropriate to our expectations and our purpose, what we want to achieve and also it has to be appropriated to our pupils.   

The first teacher who started to talk was a preschool teacher. She told us some of the programmes and applications that she normally uses with children during her lessons.

-QR codes à  these codes are as a kind of barcodes and permit the access to different types of information (in different formats such as text, video, image)   using different dispositives. Parents can use these kinds of codes to show their children’s works.

-Ideoceo à it is an app to control the class, absences, to control the reading, to plan the different lessons… “You have to pay to can use it, but it’s great!” she said. You can assess students according to all the standards; it’s impossible to do it by hand.

-Augmented Reality à it is so motivational for children. Using an application, you can download draws that can appear in three dimensions using a tablet. These draws can move and are so real. The students find it fascinating.

-Documents Camera à it permits project in the digital blackboard what we are working in class. The students can see better the contents, can do expositions easily, and they can do activities together.

-Classroom blog à you as a teacher can search the students’ works and projects, so their parents can see them. Also the students can see their projects and it is so motivational for them.

-Robotics à it is used to develop the spatial orientation. They use a bebot that has buttons to indicate the different directions, so the pupils have to program the travel of the bebot to reach a certain place, for example to a circle or to a QR code. They learn to program in an easy and motivational way.

The second teacher that continued talking was a primary English teacher. She told us that she uses also some ICTs in the development of her lessons, and also to improve the communication with families.

-Digital pack-back à in this way, students have digital books instead of paper books. They work through digital platforms and they have a chat to ask for doubts.

-Dropbox à she uses dropbox in a didactical way. She creates different folders, one per pupil for example, and they can see also those things in which they need to improve.

She said that it’s important for teachers to know what parents think about their child’s education, and also is important for parents to know that each child has a capacity and they can’t demand them a qualification, because all of them are totally different.

-Edmodo à it is a secure platform. The teacher can select who can see the information. It permits to have a close relationship with parents. You can do activities, send test to the students and activities with indications.

-ClassDojo à you as a teacher can assess your students positively or negatively. It is free and without limits. It permits that parents can see what their children are doing in class in a specific moment.

-Moviemaker à students can use this programme to make videos, for example to congratulate parents on Father’s Day. Also they can see themselves and their mates doing explanations about something.

-Jollyphonics à this program is very useful to practice the English pronunciation, starting with the pronunciation of each letter individually.

-Quizizz à it is a good idea to practice the studied content in a funny way. The objective is to ask questions to students and they have thirty seconds on each question.

She finally talked about the “White Pedagogy” which is related to homework; if students have to do a lot of homework or if homework isn’t useful to learn. She also talked about the development of a respectful education.

The last teacher that talked about ICT was a primary teacher. She explained some applications and programmes, but the majority of them were similar to others that the other teachers have been explained before. She said that we can use any programme to any grade adapting it to our class, obviously.

She talked about Scratch that is a digital programing tool. You can do different programming and it is so useful to control movements, sounds, conversations between cartoons, and you learn programing while you are having fun. 

I think that it was an interesting meeting because i could learn a lot about ICT which is necessary to the future, because I as a teacher will have to teach using technology and these programmes are ideal to do that. 

Maybe it could be a bit excessive the use of technology of these teachers, because they also answer emails to parents during the afternoon, and I think that it is important to disconect from our job, but it is only an opinion.