librarians

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ICT in Education

I have already discussed the growth in the number of MOOCs available for people to engage with, especially courses that link to the work within the education field.  I am currently working through some new courses that might be of Interest and they are

Web 2.0 Tools                             University of Houston       USA

ICT in  Primary Education        Institute of Education    London

Both of these can be found on the Coursera website and are aimed at teachers and librarians, as well as other interested parties.

The Web 2.0 course looks at a huge range of ‘Tools’ that you can put in your digital toolbox and divides the materials into a series of segments such as

  • Collaboration,
  • Communication,
  • Creativity and
  • Lifelong Learning.
  •  Whilst it dealt with some tools that I had come across before it also introduced me to many that I had never seen.  It also gave me ideas about how they can be used in the classroom.

With this course one of the great finds was a tool called Jing, linked with Screencast.com.  this is on my dashboard and enables me to highlight an image  or piece of text and then copy and paste to a file.  It has already proved invaluable as it is so easy to use.

The ICT in Primary Education is particularly good as it is from a UK based institution and more examples relate to our experience. Subject areas include

  • 21st century school                                                                             2015-05-07 09.21.24
  • ICT making a difference
  • Pedagogical changes through ICT
  • Technology Opportunities
  • Inspiring examples and implementation concerns

I am currently only part of the way in to this but it is proving very  useful.  What I am finding is that the more courses I do about modern technologies the more they start to overlap and I get to use a particular tool in different ways. One of the real discoveries was a package called ThingLink.  This enables you to take a picture and then pinpoint areas of interest which can have information, links to websites, video or photos attached to them.  Unfortunately  I cannot have the software on this site as it is a third party software, however there is great potential for a whole range of topics.

Futurelearn is just finishing a course on

Cyber security                 Open University

and will soon start a course on

Childhood in the Digital age, also run by the Open University.

The former was really intended for adults and there was an emphasis on personal and business security.  However the information is relevant to all of us and I think that elements would be extremely useful for teens as they start to use the web in a different way, e.g. online banking, in the workplace.

The forthcoming course look at the effects of technology on young people and asks what the benefit and dangers are.  It also looks at the world of education and how much should the digital impact on the classroom.  It should make for a fascinating follow on to the previous courses.  I am looking forward to starting in a couple of weeks.

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Hello world!

Welcome to my blog about schools and reading.  The aim is to help signpost what is happening in the book and education worlds, but mainly to inform schools and librarians about the help that is available to them.

So many School Library Services have been closed in the last few years and it is becoming increasingly difficult for schools to find advice that has a local focus.  I hope to link with those that I have worked with over the years in the South West, whilst also highlighting colleagues who are able to provide services elsewhere, including where a SLS still exists.

This is very much a work in progress and I hope to increase the range of things I discuss as they crop up in conversations with people.  I am off to the School Library Association Conference at the end of the month and I am sure that will give me a huge amount of information to feed back to people.