ICT Staff Tutors

Tom Barrett, who has been exploring the use of Google Docs to encourage collaboration and sharing with his primary pupils, has been posting recently about introducing this way of working with his new Year 5 pupils. In Finding their voice he explains how he used questioning, hot seating and Voicethreads in literacy work. The class have been reading Alfred Noyes’ poem The Highwayman and exploring it through drama and discussion. They discussed characters, their motivation and feelings and then used Voicethreads to record, review and refine their comments and shared them with their peers. Tom says  

I have enjoyed using Voicethread in the classroom for a long time now and have always considered it to be a great tool to encourage quality speaking and listening. This was only the second session using the tool and I once again witnessed children recording, listening back and improving what they had done. The open and transparent nature of sharing their work seems to sharpen their attention to detail especially in voice recordings. I sat with a few boys who need considerable support with their literacy and they were just having a great time, big grins, listening and enjoying the comments from others in the class and recording their own. Finding their voice. When you work like this as a class there is a tangible sense of a community of use.
     

He then used Google Mail as a way of sharing responses to the lesson, allowing pupils to contribute their thoughts. We could do something similar more easily by making use of the Glow chat facility, and would have the added benefit of the transcript as a record. Tom Barrett feels that the pupils were able to think about their learning (and not just their ICT skills) by using these tools and that this method of reviewing the lesson encouraged everyone to participate and not just a few.

Why not let us know about the interesting ways you are using ICT in your classroom? By sharing our good practice we can enhance the learning experiences of all pupils.

E.Scott