Casual Teaching with Technology

This page is dedicated to ways that I have either used or seen technology being used within the classroom on my casual teaching days. I have been keeping a diary this year detailing every day of teaching, because I have learned so much from all the different schools.

Day 7- Singing Practice

I know it’s simple, but to see a grade sitting in front of the interactive whiteboard with song lyrics up for singing and playing the song through the speakers attached, was really exciting. Gone are the days of lugging around sheets of paper with words and a cd player, it can all be done through the laptop for all children to easily access.

Day 15- Literacy Groups

The children had to use a slate with the interactive whiteboard to play an English game, but I couldn’t get the slate to connect with the whiteboard. I allowed the children to use the wand instead and the teacher happened to walk in and got angry at them because they weren’t using the slate and they should have known they weren’t allowed to use the wand. It’s funny how something you don’t see as a problem can end up being so trivial.. But the slate thing is pretty cool!

Day 28- Literacy Groups

One group during literacy time worked on a joint construction of a fairy tale text using the interactive whiteboard. I found this worked really well as they took turns with the typing, and the whole group could stand and reflect upon the joint construction effort.

Day 31- Maths

We were discussing the concept of one minute, and I found a website with a digital and analogue clock which we used as a timer in doing a series of activities within a minute. I could have just as easily timed it myself and just told them to start and stop, but it seemed to work with classroom management as they were all aware of when to start and stop and I didn’t have to raise my voice or anything.

Day 44- End of term

3 teachers had a planning half day, so they allowed the students to watch a movie the whole morning. It took a while for us to figure out how to watch a movie on a Mac, but eventually got there. The movie finished with 15 minutes to lunch, so I suggested we play a game of musical statues as a grade. I simply looked on youtube for a song I knew was appropriate and just started and stopped the video clip so the kids could freeze as statues. I mean, usually you would have to sit the length of the clip and double check it is all ok etc, but for something quick it was great to be able to access any song I wanted with the click of a button.

Day 56- Computer Dramas

I came into a class today where they were working on Religion contracts, they had several tasks to do some with computers and some without. I was told they should be given time to work on the contracts, but they all seemed at a stage where they had finished the drawing tasks and writing tasks and now had to publish and gather information using computers. 15 computers for a class of 33 kids.. wow. I’ve never seen computers cause such a drama, and the kids who had finished the other tasks and now needed a computer, had nothing else to do. I somehow got through the mayhem but decided if I ever have some sort of contract like that with limited resources, I would set up a timetable.

Day 57- Computer Dramas 2

Quite funny being in the exact same situation as the day before, with the same year group at a different school.  This time the kids said they could go to other classrooms and use their computers, so in effect I was left with half the class (but some kids still couldn’t access a computer and they needed one). Luckily they had an art task to finish as well, but that reinforced the idea that with a timetable kids would know when they would have computer time and when they would need to do other set tasks.

Day 59- Interactive whiteboards to mark the roll

At this school they have three kindy classes, and two of them share one interactive whiteboard. It was cute to see with their morning routine that they go through the pictures of the children on the board and drag and drop them to their class spots, then it’s like a competition to see which class has the least number of children away. I thought it was a nice way to use technology to make a boring part of the day a bit more interesting.

Day 65- One resource- so many uses

This was my first day in a private school, and they had an interactive whiteboard in every room. I was so amazed as to how effectively they used them! First in the morning they used it in marking the roll and the kids were following along with their names being called out. Then they did an English activity where they had sentences relating to a topic and they had to put them together to make a paragraph (so they had to find a sentence that linked to the one before). Kids could drag and drop the sentences around to see if it made sense. Finally in the afternoon, they did art based on minibeasts. There was a slideshow with music based around insects that was playing as they did this, which was a great classroom management tool as they seemed less inclined to speak while the music was playing. Another cool thing about those whiteboards is that you can write on them with whiteboard marker too, I’d never seen that! It was great to see young teachers embracing the technology they have and using it in so many different ways.