As the summer holidays approach and the pupils in my class head off to different parts of the world and the country on their holidays the last thing they think about is maths! So over the last week we have being training up our Maths Eyes. So when they do leave I hope they will […]
At the moment in some Primary schools and Coder Dojo clubs there is raised interest in the new version of Scratch; this version can be accessed online at scratch.mit.edu. The new version has lots of wonderful features however the one major fault with is is that it is extremely difficult to use it on an
Anyone for Hopscotch? Read More »
As Spring comes to an end and the Easter holidays are upon us I have just finished teaching my sixth class pupils the SPHE strand Looking After My Body. The content objectives as taken from the excellent NCCA Planning Tool were: The child should be enabled to identify and discuss the physical and
SPHE – 5th & 6th Class – Knowing About My Body Read More »
This is the story of a digital storytelling project that I have undertaken with my class of 25 junior infant boys using ICT to enhance learning in Literacy in their first year in primary school. Having considered a number of possible technologies, I finally decided on Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2010. I selected this piece of content free software to
Digital Storytelling using Powerpoint 2010 in a Junior Infants Classroom Read More »
Spring is in the air and our school is taking part in the Greenwave project. As part of this project pupils record different signs of spring and upload them to the website. Pupils should take pictures of primroses, frog spawn, the Horse Chestnut tree, the Ash tree and the swallow. Videos and fact files are
ICT Tools for primary science & maths Read More »
ChronoZoom is another great free educational tool from Microsoft Research. It is an open source timeline tool that allows teachers and students to create interactive timelines.It is an online tool and opens directly into the Cosmos timeline. As the user zooms inwards. we pass through Earth, Life, Prehistory and Humanity segments. Within ChronoZoom, these segments
Microsoft ChronoZoom Read More »
As I settled into completing my plans for SESE for 2014 the gale force winds and rain hammered the windows of the house. The rain and the flooding got me to thinking of the floods surrounding our school in Harolds Cross, Dublin in 2011. I was wondering how I would acquire enough maps for the
Our school is very lucky, in that it has been very well resourced throughout the last few years. We have Interactive Whiteboards in every classroom, visualisers, a set of laptops and pride of place, our shiny new set of 12 iPads. We have received whole school training through NCTE, as well as in-house training delivered
Encouraging Use of IT Across the Whole School Read More »
For the last couple of years I’ve being out of the mainstream classroom and thus had fallen out of touch with using the IWB for whole class teaching. I soon got back into the swing of things and recalled how helpful Folens Online and CJFallon’s Digital Hub are in having the curriculum books available for
Whole class teaching using IWB Read More »
Roughly 80-90% of Irish primary classrooms have an Interactive Whiteboard, (IWB). However, now that they are part of the furniture in most Irish classrooms, what have we learned? When IWBs came out, I spent a lot of time reviewing them and finding out which board offered the best value and service. I was convinced that
IWBs – Time to dismantle the Trojan Horse? Read More »
