Well, here I am... back for another shot at this school 2.0 malarkey! sorry for not posting for so long! but lets hope I can make up for it over the next while.
I watched Ewan McIntosh's New Zealand presentation yesterday, and I must say it was genius. The main reason being his use of the technology he's talking about during the presentation... see if you can spot it yourself. There are numerous occasions during the presentation where he manages to quickly switch from the slides to simply demonstrate or back up his point by simply clicking on a bookmark or typing in a web address. I'm sure anyone who has seen the presentation will agree that it worked well, it kept the audience interested while involving them more with the points he was trying to make. And probably the best thing about it is, it's not difficult to do.
Lets switch to the classroom for a minute... now, you've got a teacher, standing at the front of, say a maths class with 20 students, and the teacher is trying to introduce them to algebra. Of course, the best way to do this is to walk them through an example on the board. Afterwards, he/she turns and asks the class if they understand it. You've then got a few who grasped it well first time, the majority who seem to have followed it, but a fair few who can't quite understand. Now, believe it or not the teacher has a choice. They can either choose the old "tried and tested" method of simply taking a different example and going through the exact same process as before, describing it in the exact same way and hoping that by this time it sinks in. Or, they could take a step back and try something a little bit different, after all, the computer sitting at every teachers desk isn't just for word documents, spreadsheets and powerpoints. It is these types of situations where a quick search on youtube for a little video might be useful, you can even bookmark it for later. Or why not hit google and find a little interactive game to play with the kids for 5 minutes. It's things like this that can sometimes make a big difference, for the main reason that it's setting a whole new perspective on this maths equation. It's still the same idea, it still relates back to what was written on that board, but it isn't just repetition of the explanation, it catches the pupils off guard in a sense, gets them involved, makes them more interested, and why? All because a teacher has just used a youtube video or a game as part of their lesson. It takes technologies that school pupils are already aware of, and are actively using and puts them into a completely new situation for them, making it relate more to them and sometimes making it that little bit easier for them to understand and follow.
Sean
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