I found the use of IT and the teaching of ICT quite interesting in my first placement.  All the classrooms had Smart IWBs, yet they seemed to be used only for powerpoint presentations.  This enabled the teacher to be at the front of the class and progress the presentation by simply touching the screen, however probably demonstrated a lack of confidence with the software available.

For teaching the ICT lessons, half the classes were developing the children’s use of Scratch to understand how to code.  The other lessons were on Semaphore, Morse code and ciphers to help children understand the history of codes and the basic concepts of input, output and language.

It was pleasing to see that the children were able to explore the world of ICT beyond simply creating their own games.

I particularly enjoyed this lesson regarding algorithms, the logical thinking processes are a mental challenge I particularly enjoy.  When asked to create an algorithm to work out the heaviest to lightest range of 8 items only using a pair of scales I was delighted that Miles thought I was alluding to Merge Theory.  It’s not something I have studied, but apparently it would be very affective in this circumstance.

I learnt quite a bit from the lecture.  I have saved the Smart notebook practice piece I started with Charlotte.

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