Thursday 2 February 2012

ICT: Completely Cross Curricular

One of the great things about my Primary ICT specialism at Plymouth Uni is how we have learnt to use technology to benefit learning across the curriculum. Before starting my degree I was still under the assumption that this would be my subject, however in my learning already I have seen the huge variety of resources available to impact children throughout the classroom, in all lessons. Watching the live stream of #TMRoehampton last night at the university I saw some really interesting presentations, one in particular by Mary Farmer @ebd35. She spoke about the challenges of traditional literacy, especially within her SEN setting, 'literacy doesn't have to be about pen and paper'. This was great in demonstrating the ways multimedia resources can assist learning in other subjects, such as literacy. The children found that the different ways to tell stories were making a huge difference to their lessons, through video recording and animation to build their confidence.

Through the many ways technology can benefit learning I have grown a new love for geography, thanks to my module that started about three weeks ago. If I'm honest I was dreading the seminar as I've never taken a huge interest in the subject. The furthest I have probably gone with geography since I was fourteen has been downloading an app that quizzes you on capitals and flags, and that is about it!


The sessions started off in non technological way but this definitely got me engaged as it was all to do with getting the children to think and make inferences. We were shown this through developing a picture of a certain area (Dawlish in this case) through photographs, postcards and maps, and through this were asked to think around these to work out more about the town. Through the process of inferring more about the area we looked at geograph.org.uk, a great website dedicated to getting a photograph on every grid square in the UK and Ireland. I thought this was great as the pictures were very useful as they hadn't been put up for advertising. This would be lovely to use in the classroom as it gives the children an opportunity to explore different places around the county.

Another thing that interested me in a different seminar was Barnaby Bear, which I hadn't ever come across before. So many opportunities to link to ICT and new technologies! The idea originated from the idea of having a class bear  that children can take away with them over holidays or weekends to share to the rest of the class about where Barnaby has travelled to, allowed children to compare contrasting localities.

This session then showed us all the ways that we could adapt Barnaby bear. It made me think too of ideas that could benefit children, one of which could be to have a class blog alongside the activity, instead of the class scrap book. This would allow children to upload more about Barnaby's travels while on their adventures or holidays, meaning that other people in the class could follow along too. Or being able to upload lots of pictures, videos or multimedia about the locations they had been visiting!

Another idea we explored was geocaching and travel bugs, all accessible through their websites and GPS, allowing children to become completely involved with geography. I didn't had much experience with either of these, only knowing a little bit about geocaching. I thought this was a great idea, especially if there was a local box to the school that the children have a look for, through GPS and grid referencing. 

Travel bugs linked perfectly Barnaby bear again, but in a different way. The idea of having a bear (or any other object really!) that had a tracking number on it, then each time it was found by geocachers exploring an area they would log the location to the number, and then move it on to the next location they visited. This idea would work fantastically in a classroom as the children are able to follow the bear online through the map and see all of the places it was visiting. Our lecturer's class had worked its way over to Australia! So a really great way of getting the class interested in a particular town, city or country and it's geography. 

So yeah, geography is just one example of how ICT is a completely cross curricular but this has really excited me in learning and finding out about all the ways it links effectively into other subjects. 
@HannahSheltonTT

4 comments:

  1. Some great reflections on your practice here Hannah - keep up the good work!

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  2. Hi Hannah-glad you liked the presentation. Another added bonus is that this approach encourages a great deal more talk which I feel can often be missed out.

    Feel free to get in touch anytime if you have any questions.
    Mary

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  3. An interesting take on how your thoughts have shifted in terms of ICT as a subject to as a cross curricular tool. I have been teaching on the Geography course you describe. My first degree is in History, and one of the things that I considered more deeply through teaching on that course was the nature of the discipline of Geography. I really understood the discipline of History and the ways of thinking it contains due to my previous studies, and to prepare for teaching Geography I felt I needed to revisit the discipline of Geography to make sure I was communicating it's ways of thinking to the group I was teaching.

    My question is this; do you think by working in a cross curricular way we can sometimes miss out on the discipline of a subject.

    Is your subject, ICT, a discipline and a way of thinking, and does this suffer the same by being integrated across the curriculum?

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  4. Steve and Mary: Thank you for reading, great to here from people!

    Oliver: Ah thank you, that's really interesting about the 'disciplines' of subjects. In reply to your question I think if there is too much emphasise in working cross curricular this may be the case, however if these links come naturally to back up what is being taught then they are an effective tool. In the case of my geography seminars the online resources simply support the teaching around the studies, giving a better explanation and more understanding to the children. If I'm honest I hadn't really thought of ICT as a discipline or a particular way of thinking before, although I suppose it is really as it allows you to find and benefit from so much technology or online resources.

    Originally ICT might have suffered from being integrated across the curriculum, but now that a huge amount of these skills are already being used frequently by children there may be less need for ICT to be taught as a lone subject. If ICT was to have more of an individual focus again I think that it could go into more programming or coding skills maybe?

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