Over the last number of years we have been working at improving different aspects of literacy in our school. In the area of writing, we have used First Steps Writing, in reading we have adopted First Steps Reading and have purchased subscriptions to Reading Eggspress for pupils in fourth to sixth class. To assist us […]
Vocabulary Spelling City Read More »
According to Wikipedia the term Web 2.0 was coined by Darcy DiNucci in 1999 and it was popularised by Tim O’Reilly at a conference in 2004. Teachers use Web 2.0 tools to engage pupils, to share their work with their peers and to present pupil work to a global audience. To a certain extent, Web
Exploring some cool Web 2.0 tools Read More »
Recently the OECD published their OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) results. A key product of the PIACC was the Survey of Adult Skills and it was designed to provide insights into the availability of some of the key skills in society and how they are used at work and at
Learning doesn’t stop when school finishes Read More »
Socrative (http://www.socrative.com) is a real-time response system that allows students to respond to questions seconds after they are posted by the teacher and will display the results for the teacher with the same rapidity. There are a number of points which make this an attractive piece of technology for education. Firstly, there is no need
Learning to code can be quite intimidating, especially for children, but visual tools can keep them engaged and learning. It’s for this reason that MIT Media Lab created and released Scratch back in 2006. It doesn’t require any lines of code to be written, and can be used by children as young as 8.
I love technology. It is constantly evolving and offering all of us new opportunities for learning and teaching. I admit that it’s sometimes very difficult to switch off my tech lust button but where possible I try to take a more pragmatic approach, my limited purchasing power dictating. Gadgets, despite their often seductive beauty, are
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 »
Last week saw the publication of the OFSTED report “The most able students: are they doing as well as they should in our non-selective secondary schools?” . It concluded that bright students in the UK were being failed by those secondary schools who chose not to stream students early according to ability. The report showed
Great Expectations Read More »
As more and more of my own reading material moves from traditional hardback and paperback texts to electronic format, one application that I make increasing use of is that of Calibre. Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) is a free, cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) application that allows you to view, convert, create and manage e-books. The software supports e-book
E-book Management, Conversion and Creation with Calibre Read More »
Everyone in education is talking about tablet computing. The days of comparing the various quirks of Interactive Whiteboards has ended and teachers are looking at the next big thing. At second level, tablets are an ideal technology resource, even if they simply just replace the textbook. However, at primary level, where we’re not so stuck
Tablets: Is the future Microsoft? Read More »
