Before I started my placement I did not think that ICT would be so predominant in a school; I knew that ICT and technology but did not realise that children are exposed to technology all the time. My placement school uses an interactive whiteboard every single day, using a programme called Notebook. Notebook is really useful because you can use hyperlinks and pictures and write on the pages during the lessons with the pens for the interactive whiteboard, and it will save what you have written. I had never used the programme Notebook before, but I asked my teacher if she could talk me through it and I found that it was a lot easier than I had originally thought.
The children in my class are learning how to programme ‘beebots’ and are being exposed to language such as ‘algorithms’ and ‘programming’. I was really anxious about teaching children about coding and programming because I was really unsure myself on how to do it; and wondered if I would be able to teach it effectively and in a way that would be beneficial for the children. After observing my teacher, teach ‘programming’ I felt less anxious as the language she used was really simple and the children understood straight away. I think that teaching children as young as 5 and 6 about coding and programming is a good idea because they are learning from such a small age it will become second nature to them.

In our second session of ICT we talked about the importance of e-safety. With technology being so important now-a-days, and how frequently children use the internet; e-safety is becoming a bigger issue than it was in the past.

It shocked me that we have to start teaching children about how to be safe on computers from such a young age. I had thought that you would have to start teaching children about this in Year 5 or Year 6 not at Key Stage 1. Before the session, I was a bit unsure about how to address this issue with young children, however during the lesson we talked about how to warn children the dangers of the internet and discovered that there are specific websites that can help you.

I think that it is important to teach children about the dangers of the internet but also how to deal with issues that may happen, for example talking to someone and knowing the right person to talk to.

Before the session of ICT I thought that I had a broad knowledge of interactive whiteboards as I have used them in the classroom before. When our lecturer was talking about the different programmes I quickly realised that I didn’t know as much as I thought I had.
When the lecturer was talking about the particular software, I found it really interesting and quite easy to follow. We were asked to create our own PowerPoint on the software within groups. My group decided that we where going to create a task where the children had to put the different animals in the correct place on the food-chain. If the animal was put in the wrong place then it should bounce back; this is a great way for children to get involved.
However when we were trying to create this particular task we couldn’t get the animals to bounce back, after some time we decided to ask the lecturer because we were stuck.
I think that with some time and practice with the software I would be able to use it and work out how to use it to its full potential within the classroom.

Rosemary (Rosie) Collins

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