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
