1. What policies govern your uses of ICT in your school setting?
Since I am a TOC and have no particular school to call home, this is difficult to answer. But, I did spend the last four months working as a TL in an elementary school in Surrey. To be honest, not much of anything went on in the way of ICT. Shortly after arriving, our entire iPad collection was stolen from the school. When I reserved time for my grade 4’s and 5’s to use the computer lab during library time (for reading ebooks and checking out other great websites I had highlighted for them), it nearly knocked their socks off. This was the first time they had used technology in the library, other than to look up information on the catalogue, or watch a movie on the projector.
2. What digital technological resources do you have available for teaching and learning in your school setting?
Again, no particular school to refer to. But, at my old school there was a class set of iPads (until it was stolen), smartboards in a few classrooms, projectors, and one of those camera things that can allow students to watch exactly what you are doing – I know I should know the name or more about it but I am drawing a blank.
3. Please provide an example of an exemplary use of digital technologies for teaching and learning that you have observed or experienced personally.
While at the private school I worked at for the two years previous to this, I learned many things about integrating technology into the classroom. The TLs and I collaborated on a student led book making project. We followed the lead of Hanoc Piven’s My Best Friend is as Sharp as a Pencil. He has a great app to go along with the story. We then worked with similes, creating pictures on the computer through photographs, collages, and other mediums, and then put it all together into a published Apple book. It was a great adventure and learning experience for all involved.
4. Please provide an example of a problematic use of digital technologies for teaching and learning that you have observed or experienced personally.
I was helping out a class of grade 6/7s in the computer lab while they did research for their projects on extreme environments. The teacher had me walk around and check for students who were just copy-pasting from Wikipedia and the likes. Welcome to plagiarism city! They were using the computers for research, but were just blindly putting down information. It was a poor/problematic use of technology, teaching, and learning.
5. Please provide a brief history of how you learned to use digital technologies (personally and professionally).
Working at the private school gave me plenty of opportunities to become quite competent with smartboards. My LIBE and LLED classes last summer were a great place to extend this knowledge. I learned about the “camera thingy” that I mentioned before, as well as many types of blogs and interesting sites and online resources I hadn’t heard of. I now use Prezi quite regularly and have created a number of blogs – most recently a summer reading blog for my old library. On my own as well, I have learnt about digital technologies simply through using them. I am currently in the market for an iPad, after having one with the library for the past four months. I also have an uncle who is a whiz of a techie, and a great teacher. He has taught me lots.
6. How would you rate your digital technological proficiency? 0 = low level of proficiency -> 10 = high level of proficiency? Why did you give yourself this rating?
6. I feel that I am aware of many technologies out there, but am not necessarily a competent user of them. I would definitely like to me more confident in this area.
7. What do you hope to accomplish in this course?
It would be great to bump that 6 up to maybe an 8 – to be more confident with digital technologies, to broaden my knowledge base of good technological options and to learn how to use them correctly, competently, and so that the students can gain the most from their learning experiences with them.
