My experiences with ICT

At the beginning of the year I had very limited ideas about what it means to use ICT in the classroom as a teaching and learning tool. In school we had smart boards in most classrooms but from what I had experienced they were a very expensive projector – this is how teachers had used them at that stage. I can now realise that ICT has unlimited possibilities with regards to improving educational outcomes when teachers embrace and continually develop and explore the various applications of ICT. I found it difficult at the start of the year to see how ICT could be applied in practical physical education classes. How could it be used to enhance students learning in that environment.  It was a lot easier to see the value of ICT in theory classes for health and physical education classes.

In my first semester placement the physical education department had not embraced ICT and I didn’t see the application of ICT in any of the practical classes I saw. The physical education staff were not open to the exploring the many uses of ICT and as a result their students were denied the opportunity to expand their learning through different teaching platforms. As I was exposed to the idea of integrating ICT during classes at uni I gained an interest and desire to experiment with various applications, both in theory and practical classes. I started out quite cautious and conservative with my exploration of ICT, I hadn’t seen it used effectively before and wasn’t sure if I could make integrate it and maintain the focus and objectives of the content to be taught. I created interactive presentations using both prezi and powerpoint and incorporated the skills learnt in ICT to enhance the presentations.

 I created a photo slideshow for one of the online tutorials and really enjoyed putting experiences and thoughts into pictures. I decided to try this with my students at my second semester placement! These students each had a laptop so it was important to make sure that these were integrated into every lesson in a valuable way. Sometimes the use of laptops took a major role in student learning and other times they did not offer the best learning experience for students so they took a back seat role. In my year 9 health class I had the students use their laptops in a concluding activity in every lesson. Students were given the last 5 minutes of every lesson to search for and document a minimum of 3 pictures/photos that demonstrated what they had learnt for the lesson. At the end of the topic these photos were collated and a topic photo slideshow was created. Students loved this activity and it was an interesting reflection on the different learning that took place for each student.

Placement provided a great opportunity to share ideas and resources with other teaching candidates and staff members. I was exposed to many different approaches to integrating ICT in the classroom and in practical classes. It was really interesting to finally understand and to experience applications of ICT in practical classes because it had been a hard concept for me to apply at the beginning! I saw teachers using cameras to take videos and photos of students performing various skills and then using this data to analyse technique and movement patterns. It was amazing to see students make the connect between what they knew they should be doing when performing particular skills to what they were actually doing. This provided students with the knowledge and motivation to continually assess, adjust and improve their skill level.

ICT has been a valuable subject and the skills/knowledge that I have learnt during the semester have allowed me to  develop an understanding of why ICT is so important in teaching and highlighted the need for me to embrace it in my future teaching. I have so much more to learn about the integration of ICT to enhance student learning and I look forward to exploring it further in the future

Exploration of ICT in physical educatoin

As an assessment task in ICT we were required to explore the applications of ICT in our teaching methods. For this assessment I worked with a group of physical education teaching students, we had all faced similar challenges in incorporating ICT in practical classes. It was interesting to discuss and reflect on our different experiences with ICT in the schools we had been to and that we had taught in this year. Collectively we were able to come up with several different applications that we had seen, some were familiar ideas and some were new ideas.

It was a really valuable task as it facilitated the sharing of resources and ideas for ICT in practical setting - something we had found difficult to come across! The use of smart phone applications, websites and instructional videos were all discussed and I am sure I will take each of these methods and use them at some stage in my teaching career!

To view the blog and explore the ideas discussed simply click on the following link:
ICT in Physical Education

The following video was used as an instructional video in a class I saw during my placement. I think it's a great  way of making the teaching of 'dance' units achievable for all teachers and therefore accessible to all students!

There are some physical education teachers who are not comfortable with or have limited experience in teaching dance and the use of instructional videos can help to bridge any gaps in knowledge and enhance the teaching of those who are experienced. The following video shows a physical education teacher who appears to have many years of experience in dance presenting his choreography to a group of physical education teachers in an informal professional development session. He is clearly highly skilled and and rumored to have had a career in back up dancing prior to studying teaching but I believe that even for an experienced teacher ICT will enhance the delivery.

Interesting Blogs

 I have come across some interesting blogs during the course of the year and have included the link to the comments I have made on these blogs:



Meg's Teaching: Trust and Rapport

ICT supports knowledge-building among teams and enables team members to collaborate, inquire, interact and integrate prior knowledge with new understanding.

ICT supports knowledge-building among teams and enables team members to collaborate, inquire, interact and integrate prior knowledge with new understanding.

In the classroom there are many opportunities to integrate ICT in order to enrich students' learning experiences. When ICT is effectively integrated and incorporated within a lesson it supports knowledge-building among teams and enables team members to collaborate, inquire, interact and integrate prior knowledge with new understanding.

In the health classroom ICT can be particularly valuable as it supports learning in teams, a key skill that should be incorporated in every health class. With the use of ICT students' can be given the responsibility to perform guided research in teams. An effective means of executing an ICT based health lesson involves the use of 'expert groups'. Expert groups are formed when the teacher delegates a particular issue or topic to each group who will then report back to the class on their 'expert' area. Expert groups are popular amongst health educators as they encourage the students to collaborate, inquire, interact and integrate prior knowledge with new understanding.

The teacher will provide students with a base level of understanding for each topic and then guide students in their research. The execution of tasks can vary, one method is having students perform their research using a laptop. Students might be allocated a specific time to complete the research and then the task can progress to setting up a presentation that outlines the groups research/findings to present to the rest of the class. There are many different ways of presenting using ICT, for example; powerpoint, webpage, prezzi.
These sorts of task, and those with a similar structure, are a really effective way of engaging students in learning with ICT because they are given a level of independence and responsibility over their learning. Students are not always given this opportunity and will often rise to the challenge with surprising results! ICT promotes inquiry based learning and it is my belief that this form of learning will foster a greater interest and engagement with topics when compared to teacher directed learning.

It is easy for students’ to passively participate when group tasks are involved and it is important, as teachers, that we ensure that each student is engaged and benefiting from the lesson. This can be achieved by allocating tasks to group members – each student has a clear role within the group! This gives each student in the group a sense of responsibility and ownership over the task and really enforces the concept of working as a team.

I have discussed one method of intergrating ICT in the health classroom enrich students’ learning and to foster team work. There are many other ways of integrating ICT within the classroom and there is no doubt  that with careful consideration and planning it can be a powerful learning tool that should be understood and utilised by all teachers.