Week 3 - Filming

Today we began work on our 'People Who Help Us' film for premier at Strictly Come Movies next week. As one member of the group had an appointment later tonight we decided to start working on our storyboard an hour before the class, allowing her to get away early for her appointment. By the end of the lesson we realised that it had not been of benefit to us.
We were given a camera and left the building to go to our setting, although we tested our camera before leaving the classroom when we tried to use it it did not work. This meant us returning to Dalhousie and then waiting on another group finishing with their camera. This showed us that we cannot always rely on technology to work.
From this example, I would always plan another way of completing the same ICT lesson to allow for failure of the equipment. As this resulted in us sitting around for a long time when we could have been working. I would always ensure I knew exactly how to use the equipment and test every piece thoroughly before starting the lesson with children.
By the time we got a working camera the groups morale was very low and none of us were motivated to complete the task anymore. This highlighted to me the importance of pupil motivation within lessons. After having experienced both motivation and lack of motivation for the same lesson I have gained a much better understanding of the need for children to enjoy what they are learning and to want to complete it the best they can. This links with Maslow's thinking that certain needs in children need to be met to allow them to want to move on with their learning and development. The children need to meet their lower needs (including Esteem needs which are lower down in his heirarchy than achievement needs), therefore (according to Maslow) children need to be motivated before they can achieve with their work.

We used Flip Cameras to carry out the filming today and they were very easy to use. It was the first time I had ever seen one and the controls were very simple to use and within seconds of looking at the camera I was able to figure out exactly how to use it. On watching back some of the footage, I noticed that the cameras produce a very clear picture of the scene and also pick up sound very well. I think these would be a good ICT tool in the classroom as the children could easily pick one up to record something they have made/produced or they could use them to make movies similar to the ones we have made.

Week 2 - Bear Exchange

On Thursday we chose where we would like to make a link with and packed our bear up to send him over. We sent Tessie to a group of students at a ITE in Germany. We will receive one back from them and through these two bears we can experience another culture and a new place in the world, hopefully making links with these students that will help us in our future careers.
I am excited for this exchange and hope that it will match up to what I am expecting, fingers crossed through this we will learn how student teachers are taught in Germany to make some comparisons with how we are taught at Dundee.

This is Tessie, she is Nessie's cousin and she lives in the River Tay. She is now on a long journey to Germany for a visit.

Week 2 - Voices of the World

Our Favourite Sports

This is our group's task for May's Voices of the World task.

Voices of the World Instructions

• Children to draw/create scenes of the sports mentioned (no children included in photos) and put on to a PowerPoint with the names written on each slide.

• Using Audacity record children naming the sports in your native language.

• Upload the two different files (sound and visual) onto myPlick.com and email to Sharon.

Learning about the how Sharon organises Voices of the World has been very interesting. I think the idea of children everywhere doing the same thing to enable others to hear their language is a really good idea, it will promote children's vision into the differences around the world.


During the input today my group worked well together and we all fell into jobs which needed done to create the above example for Voices of the World. Using the software proved more difficult, mainly due to human error than to the applications being hard to use. This resulted in our recording of the sports using Audacity taking longer than was anticipated. Towards the end of the input when we were uploading the slides to myplick.com we began to get slightly frustrated, the audio was taking a long time to upload, meaning we could not sync it with the slides. This caused some annoyance and I feel I allowed that to get in the way of my communication with my group. For future use of this software we should definitely remember that it takes longer to upload audio and not allow it to effect our group.

Week 2 - Animation, People Who Help Us

Today we worked on animation, which we have previously attempted in first year. We worked as a group of four, this was useful to start off with as we gained a lot of ideas and were then able to make the models we required quicker than if there were less people, but when it came to actually recording the animation it was a case of  "too many cooks spoil the broth" as there was not enough set jobs for us all. Better communication was needed between the memebers of the group that were moving the scene and clicking the camera, this is something that we would need to set out before we started any filming next time.
The actual equipment was simple to use and we all knew roughly how to go about it from past experience in first year. Below is the finished animation (with a few hands here and there).

ICT Elective - Week 1

This week has confused me slightly with what the tasks that we will be carrying out actually are, especially with the collaboration the ML elective. I was very confused as to how the work that both electives had to complete (ICT for assessment) was going to help either one of us. This has become clearer over the week and I can see how the groups will be able to work together to achieve an end product (a movie/video clip) and in the process will build on the desired skills. (Although now I am in a group of all ICT elective students).

I am very excited to begin the exchange with another university and I think that doing it in a way that we could also use with children will help us to experience it as both a learner and as a teacher.The input regarding the Bear Exchange was very motivating and from just hearing the idea already feel that it is something I would definitely use with classes during my teaching career.

 My previous experience of ICT through university inputs intrigued me to how these things could be used in a classroom setting, but I would not have had the knowledge or confidence to attempt to implement these with a placement class. I'm hoping that over the course of this elective I will gain more knowledge in the delivery of teaching these aspects of ICT and it will give me the confidence to try some out with a class.