Hands up who got the job as the IT coordinator?
Well it’s technically the Computing leader now, or whatever, it’s always changing. Anyway, that’s me! I like many others were volunteered to be the Computing leader in school. It started off so simple, I showed a PowerPoint presentation in a staff meeting as an NQT and used animations. The ‘Ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’ from the head told me that I was about to be asked a certain question
‘How would you like to be the IT coordinator?’
Couldn’t say no really. I was desperate for the PE gig, I had studied that as part of my degree at university. Unfortunately, that role had been bagged already and the teacher in question was doing a sterling job, still is as far as I’m aware. So it was up to me to take on the dreaded computing role.
First job was to sort through what we had. What a nightmare, CD-ROMs all over the shop and computers that barely printed let alone log onto the internet.
Fast forward 8 years and I’m now in the same role in a different school. Fair to say things have changed dramatically. No longer is it known as IT, now it is Computing (Coding, Digital Literacy, Information Technology). And there are these things called iPads, you may have heard of these! It’s fair to say technology has changed a vast amount in the past ten years. The world we live in is very different. Everything is online, children learn how to use a tablet before they can spell their own name. Our job as teacher’s is to prepare children for this world. We’ve all heard the classic line of ‘We are teaching children to be ready for jobs that don’t exist yet.’ (side note: if this is the case, why are we still making children sit hand written tests in silence. That’s a whole other arguement). Well it is true, not many can predict what the world will be in ten years time, so we have to move with it.
Like many other schools across the country, we invested in ipads. 13 to be precise (although that figure is now 12, thanks to an incident with an excitable child in my class a two years ago). Being an Apple geek, I relished setting these up, loading them up with apps and starting to use them in school. That came easy to me. I used apple stuff all the time but soon realised others don’t. Our iPads were soon going to become a very expensive golden time resource which the children would use to ‘google stuff’.
My job this year has been to get us as a staff to use these more effectively in school. It’s hard. Lot’s of teachers across the country are used to doing things in a certain way and it’s hard to suddenly incorporate these shiny new devices that the children seem to be better at using than the teachers, into our daily practise.
On Friday I was very lucky to be able to attend some training led by Lee Parkinson (@ICT_MrP) creator of the brilliant blog http://mrparkinsonict.blogspot.co.uk/ . His training was outstanding. I don’t say that very often. I’ve been on a lot of courses where I spent the whole day wishing I was in class. The day filled me with brilliant ideas not only to use in my teaching but also as a leader in computing. He touched upon some of the more recent news reports criticising the use of tech in the classroom. Interestingly he questioned whether those stats, quoted in the reports, would look the same had we spent as much money on training as the resources themselves. He had a great point. We’ve had the iPads for three years and I’ve only just been on some training. Thankfully my head is on board and we’ve booked Lee to come to our school next year. I urge you to pester your head to do the same.
Anyway back to my task, ‘Promoting the use of technology across the curriculum’. I’m a keen user of twitter and blogs and have found both to be brilliant free CPD. I stumbled across a guy called the Urban Teacher (https://twitter.com/urban_teacher) who created the tech challenge for 2015 (google it!). Anyway it had loads of simple ideas for teachers to make small changes and simple tweaks to their practise to start including technology. Most of the challenge’s were aimed at secondary level, so I had a go at making my own;
Raynsford Academy Tech Challenge 2015
I was given a staff meeting where I launched the idea and talked my colleagues through each challenge. I managed to convince one colleague to join Twitter, which was a start! The challenge seemed to go down well, I like to think it didn’t come across as condescending but my colleagues may disagree (they’re too nice to tell me anyway).
In the last week of term. I’m leading a staff meeting on using the iPads more effectively. Thanks to Mr P’s course and my own prep, I’m confident it will be a useful session. Seeing as it’s in the last week of term, the week after the Christmas productions, my plan is to make it fun and practical.
Next term, I’m planning on trying some more of Mr P’s advice and starting a drop in session for staff to come and have a play around with the tech we have. I’m looking forward to it!
In conclusion, If we spent as much time and money on training as well as resources, I’m fairly sure technology can and will have a massive impact on children’s learning. If you want proof, check out Davyhulme Primary School’s blog (http://davyhulme.primaryblogger.co.uk/) . Try and tell me this kid’s aren’t inspired and learning with technology!
Mr B
boydytheteacher 