Expanding teaching

Expanding teaching strategies with ICT

Watch a beginning teacher talk about the use of ICT in MyScience investigations.

Seamless use of ICT arises when there is a genuine benefit from the use of ICT in the context of the purpose of the learning. Essentially ICT supports small group work and differentiated learning that is a key component of the MyScience investigations. It might be worth visiting the level 1 pathway to review the use of ICT for communication between students, mentors and teachers when planning and conducting the MyScience investigations or for processing and publishing results. ICT also has application for student groups researching the background science to their investigations.

ICT can also be used in the early stages of planning a MyScience investigation by helping students to negotiate how to proceed with their investigation task and to expand their learning strategies. The CLAS web site has a tutorial that explains the benefits of, and steps involved in the use of the Intel Visual Ranking Tool. You could use this to promote discussion. Each student group and their mentor could eventually create their own list of potential investigations and then use this tool to establish a consensus.

When students and teachers have confidence and skills in the use of ICT, the final published product of a MyScience investigation can be a multimedia presentation that can more effectively cater for a wide range in audience. Generally, younger audiences require more interactive and visual communication. Students may need to be prepared to speak with parents and mentors using scientific terminology, but also need to be able to simplify some of the terms for their younger audience members. (See glossary or go to the Knowing and Thinking pathways.) Multimedia allows for flexibility in communication and so the different audiences are more easily addressed. Weeds attack! on TaLe is a multimedia resource that encourages students to produce a digital story to ‘Spread the News’ and even includes a digital story wizard. Adobe Presenter is one tool to assist creating high quality media presentations using PowerPoint as a starting point. Quizzes can be added and a branching pathway created depending on the responses of the participants. Adobe Connect Pro 7 provides the potential for online collaboration that could provide some alternatives to face-to-face meetings with mentors.

The Connected Classrooms Program and its Interactive Classrooms Project provide support for NSW DET teachers who are changing their teaching to seamlessly incorporate ICT. Learn what other classrooms are doing through the Connected Classrooms Project and its newsletters (DET only). One of the best ways to transform teaching methods is to make effective use of an interactive whiteboard (IWB). This link provides support for teachers learning to use the SMART Notebook to create resources for use on the interactive whiteboard. Non DET schools can access this link. An interactive whiteboard can be used for the initial brainstorming/mind mapping of a topic and the mind map can be saved. It can be re-visited in the final stages of the investigations when students are analysing the implications of their results. It is also useful for student presentations. Student groups have even used an interactive whiteboard in their investigation. One group investigated whether yawning was contagious and hence used the whiteboard to show clips of a person yawning and then assess the impact on the audience. An example of a simple activity (.notebook 196kB) for a class is to use the Smartboard to sequence the steps for constructing an Excel spreadsheet and then a chart. This example of a crossword (.notebook 276kB) puzzle on terms in scientific investigations, because it is generated using Smart Notebook, allows students to collaborate as they try to solve the puzzle.

Moodle is a tool for creating online dynamic web sites. Learn about Moodle here. NSW DET schools can investigate how Moodle has been used to change the instruction at a school.

If you want to learn more about the results of UK based BECTA research into the use of ICT and classroom organisation follow the link.