ULearn Reflection - Amber Sanson

Wow!!! Another great conference and a fabulous opportunity to learn new skills and gain motivation for integrating ICT into a new term at school. I attended 6 breakouts and I enjoyed the two practical workshops the most. They were targeted to junior children and were presented in such a way that I thought "YES I CAN DO THAT". So on Monday I was keen as mustard to get stuck into it. I have introduced 4 new ICT/thinking processes in my class already. The most influential idea I have come away with is to "let go" let the children have more independence with ICT and give them the opportunity to play - figure out - and experience each tool. This week I have let the children loose with the camera to record blend sound pictures for blend posters - each week I will assign a group of children to create a blend poster using the camera, comic life and word. The children talked about and wrote about their holiday expereicences and then using the camera they took pictures of each other posing to show what they did in the holidays. We have cut the photos out and will be using them for art work. For reading each child used a question matrix to ask question about the front cover of a book that they will read next week. This has been a great exercise as I have been able to read their ideas, prior knowlegde and wonderings. We can also use their questions to find answers as a reading response activity. We have also used a question matrix for oral news.