March 2017 – Josh Linfoot

Session 6: Prep Reading – Buckingham (2007) Blog 9

In this blog I will be reflecting on the Buckingham (2007) reading before visiting BETT next week. From reading Chapter 1 it is clear there are two sides to BETT: the great opportunity to support and progress learning on for the benefit of the children using technology and the darker side that unless you pay big money for the latest educational tool, your children are going to suffer.

Advantages (The Light Side of BETT):

After this reading it is so inspiring to hear how far technology has come and the standard of teaching may be hugely improved from spending money. This might not be the full truth but take a child with EAL needs; being able to use technology to support and communicate with them is such a huge advantage.

Government spending to support schools get more tech-friendly is another good thing. Over the last decade the government is betting extra technology will have a positive impact on children’s test results. True figures and studies will need to be done before this claim can be proven fully.

Companies are investing a lot of money to fund educational tools and certain hardware and software is being created that we could not even dreamed of in the past is now becoming a reality.

Disadvantages (The Dark Side of BETT):

The main disadvantage I can see already is the sales pitch of how if I do not spend all the ICT budget on the right piece of equipment, the children’s learning in my school will suffer or stagnate. This is a lot of responsibility for ICT Coordinators or whomever is at BETT looking to spend money. It highlights how much pressure there is to impact our pupils in the right way and how important a career in teaching really is. Tell that to the office workers who believe we work so little from 9am until 3pm!

Education was solidly in the public sector, times are changing and the amount of money going round and through profitable companies needs to be focused on. Unfortunately, call it human nature or whatever you like, if money can be made from something like education, or the NHS at the moment, then there are always going to be profit made from these kinds of companies. Some people call it paranoia when others say Google is spying on us and collecting our information. But one look on a shopping website, next thing you see when you open facebook is that same product being advertised and you realise how much of a footprint your internet history leaves.

The loud hustle of bustle of BETT is not something I believe I will not enjoy, but an open mind is what I am focusing on and at least I want to look to see what type of technologies could be inside the classroom when I am teaching myself in the near future.

I have a feeling as I am a student walking into BETT the sales teams will look at me and ask how much money I have to spend. The raw fact I am not there to spend money is likely to result in an abrupt end to our conversation. Time will tell…

Session 4: Follow-Up – The teacher as an e-moderator? (Salmon Reading, Blog 7)

This blog is a follow-up reading by Salmon (2002) and the focus of this blog is how teachers act like e-moderators to the children. This 5 Step Model, shown above, is the focus of the chapter and is one method of teaching online learning within the classroom.

For our VLE learning resource I believe the teacher using our resource will act as an e-moderator. The main basis of this is due to the young age of the children who will be completing the phonics programme. Most of the children will be starting at Stage 1 and building on their limited knowledge. As shown in the diagram, Stage 1 will have the e-moderator “Welcoming and encouraging”. Based on my experience of working with similarly aged children on my last BSE placement, most of the time technology is still new to them, meaning motivation should not be an issue. This is because they engage in a lot of playing time with technology such as tablets and laptops at home and when using them in school, have a great interest in using them.

Overall, when looking through the model I would suggest the teachers would be aiming to move the children onto Stage 2. The social constructivism approach Sian and I took will need children to be comfortable talking and commenting on each other’s work in the Google Classroom. As the children are young and only need to use technology for basic tasks, some children might be able to progress onto Stage 2 and work there co-dependently. However, as the Google Classroom is only 6 weeks of work, there are likely to be a few children who stay at Stage 1, but this is to be expected. And as the teacher I would not be rushing these children onto Stage 2 without the solid foundation of Stage 1. The role of the e-moderator for Stage 2 is to “familiarise and provide bridges between cultural, social and learning environments”, which means the teacher will be supporting the children create their online persona and how to safely communicate with others, including those from other cultures. For Sian and I, our resource at the moment is not going to be used or open to the world. Children and their teacher/s will be given logins which if the parents/carers too want to see the resource can login using their child’s details.

Session 4: Prep Work – Well Designed and Poorly Designed Websites (Blog 6)

Well Designed –

This is the school I went to as a child and then the school I worked as teaching assistant before university. The old website was dreadful so I was pleasantly surprised how much it had changed, including having a look which staff have left! The simplicity is what made me think how well designed it is. It was photos with text to find the most popular links and the navigation bar can be used to find other parts of the website. Like any good website the layout stays uniform throughout so finding the navigation bar when moving onto another page, it is easy to find and get back to where the homepage is.

Purpose – I believe the website works well for its purpose to be read by children and adults. The ease of navigation is a great advantage. I particularly like the integration of class blogs as many schools are still playing catch up and have not recognised the importance of blogging for the children and parents/carers to see what their children are doing.

Communication – The quick links to newsletters and the preview feature for the newsletter pages allows you to read it quickly or click to download it to then read which I really like.

General Layout and Text/Colour – The grid format makes the information easy to look at and to scan the website to find the link you want. The text is an easy font to read and the colours are based on the school badge (which I still can picture in my mind) and is used well throughout. The colour contrast nicely so it is nice to look at.

Poorly Designed –

This is the school website of the placement school I was in first year. I chose this website because it is too busy and hard to read colour scheme wise in my opinion. Being totally honest I found it difficult to find a badly designed website and I would say mostly I can navigate it fine, however the busy look and hard to read colour scheme is a pet peeve of mine.

Purpose – It is quite fit for purpose however for children to be navigating the website I think they would struggle. Other users like parents/carers, especially those are not used to navigating websites, could have difficulties of finding the information they want.

Communication – I believe the busy look does not give a great impression of the school. There’s too much information: the twitter feed, news, images, videos, text everywhere across the page, the scrolling text, calendar dates. That much information is FAR too much to process, especially on the homepage!

General Layout and Text/Colour – With text everywhere, scrolling and static with images, it is not great. There is a navigation bar which does appear on each page and quick links of “Admissions” and “Ofsted” are useful too. The text/colour is not optimal because the background is blue, so is the text. The two main colours are yellow and blue, which would fine with it did not clash with each other due to the mass of information. A more simplistic view would be more beneficial to children wanting to use the website, as well as those less-experienced with navigating websites.

Conclusion –

From looking at various school websites before choosing these two, I could see how children may be wanting to use the websites as well as parents/carers. Because of this simplicity is key, even as an adult and very experienced with navigating websites, finding the information you want needs to be easy and not scanning across huge amounts of information, especially on the homepage. The homepage is the first thing you see and it gives the vital first impression of the whole website. If something is cluttered then I would think the school is the same, throwing vast information at you and it is hard to take it all in. First impressions are key because as most schools have a website, potential parents with children could be looking at the school’s website before sending their child there.