Motivation

(Writing this blog pen and paper style, an hour an half wait at a train station so small that it doesn't even have a shop!)

As I have said on twitter before, doing the BEd primary teaching degree has motivated me so much, that it has changed my whole attitude to learning. Motivation probably means different things to different people, but for me it is what pushes me to get involved in trainee teacher life and enjoy every minute of it. At school I was the kind of person who just went along with everything, based my learning around exams and tended to avoid extra curricular activities. This attitude has completely changed, coming from that I am finally enjoying education and the course that I'm on!

Sometimes motivation arrives in bursts giving you an incentive to do something that you have been dreading or sometimes it can be what gets you out of bed and excited for the coming day.  From my perspective a lot of my motivation is personal, with help from friends, lecturers and the uni. So I decided to tweet to get a few responses from other people who might have different influences. One response I had got me thinking, from @mikemcsharry.

I really liked that what influenced him is how other people are benefited from what he is doing, and are appreciating what he has showed them. This made me think more in terms of when I am teaching, placement or eventually full time. My motivations won't completely rely on the selfish reasons that I am loving what I do, but as well the way that what I will do each day will hopefully impact children's learning and understanding.

Another response I received was from @missjbutt, taking a different angle:

Jennifer's views were based around what gets her going with assignments, and the group thing is quite interesting. Do some people's motivations come from seeing other people doing well around them? People around me can definitely be an influential factor, that's a good thing. Not in a jealous or bitter way of a person succeeding, but in a positive way that drives you to initiate the good qualities of that person in yourself.

My new found motivation since starting the degree has benefited my learning dramatically, giving me confidence to take advantage of opportunities and get on with my work, without seeing these as a waste of time. I think direction and focus are key factors in this because I seem to know what I want and what I want to do and these push me forward to take advantage of my whole university and trainee teacher experience.

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