Why Use ICTs?
Why it's important to integrate technology into your child's learning.
Skype is one such program that will be implemented into the classroom this school year. This technology will be able to enhance the quality of learning in the following ways;
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Providing students with the opportunity to interract with professional speakers from all over the world, connecting them with resources that would otherwise be impossible for the school to attain due to geographic constraints.
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Building connections with members from the wider community.
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Making connections with other school students from other areas of the region and across the globe.
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Boost students' confidence to ask questions and seek answers and enhance their cultural awareness.
There are a number of schools who have already integrated this technology into the classroom environment, and one such example is provided in the short video.
Quadray is an award winning, free computer game that enables students to develop important life skills while also relating to real life issues covered within the Sose syllabus. It requires students to build upon their decision making skills to make ethical and informed choices.
According to research conducted by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, gaming was one of the top three activities that students of this age group lliked to do for fun. Implementing this program into our Sose class will boost the quality of learning and maintain interest, combining education and entertainment.
Quality of Learning
Technology in the classroom is proven to be instrumental in enhancing the quality of learning. According to a survey conducted in 2012 by the Pearson Foundation students think that technology can have a very valuable role in the classroom. Due to students of this class regularly becoming easily distracted from activities the integration of ICTs into their learning would help maintain focus during lessons. Each class member has acknowledged that they regularly use a number of different technologies in their free time, integrating some of these into the learning environment would not only ensure that school technologies become interesting, but also relevant to students' lives.
Twitter will also be integrated into the classroom this year. It is hoped that this social networking site will become an important communication tool to enhance student participation and engage proactive learning. Every student in this Sose class has acknowledged that they participate in social media outside of school, and so this technology would definitly be something very real and relevant to the everyday lives of students.
Twitter will be used for the purposes of studies in Sose in the following ways;
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Providing updates on assessment dates
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Students will be able to communicate in an informal manner to staff in order to ask questions about relevant study material.
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Absent students will be able to access resources that they have missed that day (ie. a photograph of the whiteboard, videos watched in class, links to documents etc.)
There are a number of different schools that are beginning to integrate social media into the classroom and the following video provides valuable information on the impact that this is having on students of Roosevelt High School.