F O R J A I M I FITTALL ’S E - P O R T F O L I O

ICT Resources in the Classroom

F I V E O F B E S T T H E I C T R E S O U R C E S W H I C H I E M P L O Y E D D U R I N G M Y P R O F E S S I O N A L

P R A C T I C E B L O C K A N D I N T E R N S H I P

Resources Used

Solar System Scopehttp://www.solarsystemscope.com/

Solar System Scope is an interactive website which provides a model of our Solar System.

I used Solar System Scope during my first professional practice block when teaching year 8 Geography, and create numerous low and high level activities around it.

Gallipoli: The First Dayhttp://www.abc.net.au/innovation/

gallipoli/gallipoli2.htm

Gallipoli: The First Day is an interactive website about the Gallipoli landings.

I used Gallipoli: The First Day during my final professional practice block when teaching year 9 History (World War I elaboration from the Australian Curriculum).

Students created a flow chart whilst watching the ANZAC Landing in 3D, and later used other aspects of the websites when completing a webquest.

GoogleMaps: Streetviewhttp://maps.google.com.au/intl/en/

help/maps/streetview/

See image to the right for a description of Streetview’sfunctions.

I stumbled across the potential of Streetview courtesy of a student on my first practicum. The year 8 class I was teaching was completing an assignment on National Parks, and one of the students was viewing a national park on Streetview. I then decided to have all the students view their national park on Streetview, and take screenshots to annotate the features of the national park.

Streetview also has numerous other uses when teaching Geography, such as getting students to apply their knowledge of direction, and identifying topographic features.

Vote Compasshttp://www.abc.net.au/votecompas

s/

See image to the right for a description of Vote Compass’s functions.

I used Vote Compass when teaching year 9 Politics & Law.

After students completed the Vote Compass questionnaire, I then had students complete a four (in this case – 3) corners activity where they split up according their voting preferences.

I then asked a couple of students from each group whether their result was different from what they expected (and why), and what issues did they weight the most (and why).

Finally, once the students returned to their seats, as a class we discussed what would influence people’s voting preferences and the weight they gave to certain issues.

Quizlethttp://quizlet.com/

Quizlet is a website which allows students to create flash cards.

I used Quizlet as a study skills tool with all of my classes during my final professional practice block.

For example, with a year 8 Geography class, I had them complete a silent card shuffle in groups and then taught them how to put their vocab list onto quizlet to study at home.

F I V E O F T H E B E S T I C T R E S O U R C E S W H I C H I P L A N U S I N G I N T H E F U T U R E

Resources To Be Used

MyHistrohttp://www.myhistro.com/

MyHistro is a fantastic tool that I wish I had known about during my professional practice blocks.

In the future, I will both have my students view timelines which have been created by other people, and also have them create their own.

The brilliance of MyHistrois that it transform a fairly low level task into a multimodal activity with potential for students to perform higher level tasks such placing an explanation why certain events on the timeline were significant.

EduBlogshttp://www.edublogs.org

Next year I plan on creating a communal blog for each of my classes, and possible get my students to create their own individual blog for specific tasks such as reflections

With a communal class blog, one student per lesson will be responsible for posting an entry which summarises what was covered in the lesson, and every week students must comment on one entry.

Voice Threadhttp://voicethread.com/

I believe Voice Thread would be an effective tool for …

I would upload an image or a prompt pertaining to the topic that the students were studying, and then provide an open ended opinion-type question for students to respond to.

Then, in class, I would place students into groups based

Glogsterhttp://www.glogster.com/

Glogster is a platform which I plan on using in the classroom, and is very adaptable.

I would have students read a variety of texts on a topic, and then have them present that information via Glogster.

One of the strengths of Glogster is that is multimodal, and can be used for higher order tasks.

Fakebookhttp://www.classtools.net/FB/home

-page

Fakebook could be a useful tool in teaching History, as it allows students to present the relationship between different events and historical figures in a creative form which is familiar to their context.

The use of the Fakebooksite also circumvents the ethical issues of using the real Facebookplatform in the classroom.