My new Budd:e

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When we got our first computer with internet in year 8, I was extremely excited but also worried. My parents had lectured me that being online is just like being in the city by myself and that there may be lots of security problems that we don’t know about yet. So when I set up my first email account, I ensured that I would use the highest security settings, just in case.
 This attitude has not really changed and to this day I’m always very conscious of what information I put on the internet, and joining facebook was a huge discussion for me as I was worried about sharing all my information with potential strangers.

So internet security has always been very important to me, and now that technology is becoming so big, I’m faced with being responsible for my future students’  internet security. Up until today, this was a huge concern for me.

But there is an answer. Like my fellow students Miss Kate, I have now discovered Budd:e, a site that teaches students how to use the internet safely. And I must say, after going through it, it has actually taught e a few things too.

Budd:e is a fantastic site that is very user friendly and engaging for primary school children. If this is used appropriately during my lessons, I think I might have a chance of making my students aware of safe internet usage.

 I just hope that they will take it on board!

Copyright

Sitting in class, we are discussiong copyright in schools. The question is
You are a teacher, your small budget has been cut. you have one piece of software and it needs to go to the five computers you have for thirty kids. It's against the law to copy it. What would you do?


This is really tricky, as I believe that it is my duty to educate children, so I would be really tempted to copy it.
But now I realised that there are actually spot checks in schools. I did not know that. This makes me a little more inclined to obey the law as I obviously don't want to get found out. But wow,
this is a really challenging question!

Thanks

10 days later and still kicking!

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It is surprising, I know, but I survived my 10 days at prac and I have learned sooo much. I had the best time, being lucky enough to have had a very supportive teacher who believed in me.

During my prac, I have been able to teach all subjects, often with the use of the interactive smartboard. After initial trouble, especially during handwriting lessons, my self esteem was low. I was worried that I would never be able to use it effectively, but I was wrong... I have been able to explore and practise with it, refining my skills as I did so.

My students often spotted me in the classroom, half an hour before school started, practising extremely hard and amazingly, they came inside and helped me.
The next time I wanted to use technology, I wanted my students to create a digital story on " Living things". I had only created one digital story so far, and teaching it was a bit scary, but I decided to practise a bit at home, write down necessary hints and then just go for it.
With a few problems at hand, my students helped me out quickly.
 Here I was thinking that I would have to teach them everything and that I had to be perfect at using the smart board. But I was very wrong. My students seemed to really enjoy helping me and taught me many things, even before my lessons. So Thank you, 2H, for all your patience and help!

Living things go digital

After a very promising first week on prac, my teacher asked me to create a unit of work relating to “living things” in science.

I was very excited as I had never had the chance to do anything like this before, but I was also very nervous.

So I returned home and sat down, thinking of how o start this unit. I remembered the website skwirk.com that we had analysed in our previous assignment and I recalled that it had some great introductory videos for all sorts of subjects.

So I tried my luck to see if I was able to find anything on the subject. I was unsuccessful at first as I didn’t have a password, but as soon as I asked my teacher, she provided me with her details so I could have a look.... and of course, it had the perfect video.

I used this as my starting point and created a variety of lessons on the topic. As my focus was technology on this prac, I also decided to incorporate this into my lessons. At the end, I asked my students to take photos and create a digital photo story.

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Who would have thought... that I, as a technology Neanderthal, (and a little help from my students) would be able to get my year 2 students to create a digital photo story on living things? And even more so, be successful at doing this!

I must admit, it was a behaviour management lesson more so than anything else, but my year 2 students created a wonderful digital story on their "excursion"  out into the school grounds on their search for living things.
What a success!!!

Handwriting on and interactive whiteboard- almost a complete disaster

My first week on prac... oh well it has been an exciting, but very exhausting week. I was allocated a year two class with 23 lovely students and a brand new interactive whiteboard!

Everyone is very excited by this new technology in the classroom and my cooperating teacher is using it for most lessons, so I was asked to incorporate it into my lessons too.

Great! I had just learned so much about some fantastic interactive websites and surely that would be a great addition. And it was, I used it for maths and science without any complications, but then I had to teach “Handwriting”!

Oh dear, I’m still struggling to write in the NSW foundation handwriting on paper and a whiteboard, but ah well, how different could it be on the interactive whiteboard?!? So when I go home, I got my own whiteboard our and practised writing the letter H and the sentence that goes along with it.

After a good half an hour of practise, I felt confident with my handwriting for the practised words.

The next morning I woke up early so I decided to go into school a bit earlier than usual just to practise once or twice on the interactive whiteboard. When I got there and set up for the lesson, I began to write.

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OH NO! The pen wasn’t lined up properly with the whiteboard. There was at least a cm between where I started to write and where the writing showed up. And the whole point of a handwriting lessons is that I need to show the students exactly where to stop and start within the lines. AND my writing looked like that of a child’s. It was all wobbly. I went over to the whiteboard and checked that I could still write like a practised the night before, and there, it looked fine. Just on the interactive whiteboard it didn’t!

I was so glad that I had come in so much early than I thought necessary so that I had now time to practise on the interactive whiteboard.

By the end I had managed to compensate for the difference in writing and the lesson went well. But I will definitely continue practising my handwriting on the interactive whiteboard!