Reflections of ICT on Practicum

My experience with ICT on my first practicum was very different to the experiences on my second practicum. My first mentor teacher was the ICT co-ordinator at the school so he was very comfortable with using ICT in his classroom. On my first day at the school the interactive whiteboard broke and was not fixed for the four weeks that I was there. Therefore I was limited in what I could show the students as a class and what I could do with in my focus group teaching. The classroom had four computers which the students used to type up stories and for mathletics. However in their free time the students also used the computers to make claymation films and websites such as build your wild self. The students absolutely loved build your wild self and it provided great entertainment during wet day timetables. It was fantastic to see this website firing their imaginations. My mentor teacher must have shown the students how to make short claymation films earlier in the year prior to my visit.

My second mentor teacher was not as comfortable with ICT and it was reflected in her teaching. The students on my second practicum used the four computers in the classroom to type up their narrative stories, to research different information and to do online testing that the school required them to undertake as part of a university study. The highlight of the students’ ICT use was the interactive whiteboard which they used to create stories using Aboriginal symbols and to draw aerial pictures of the Yarra River. These could have been really rich tasks if they were integrated with literacy but it felt as though they were not done to their full potential.
















However towards the end of my second practicum the students were given a design brief on bridges. The students had to base their bridge design on a Melbourne bridge and then decide what materials they were going to make the bridge out of to ensure it could hold at least 1 kilo in weight. The design brief stated the bridge was not to be more than 50cms long. The students conducted research about Melbourne's bridges before designing their own bridge and sourcing the materials to build it. This reminded me of the jumping frog design brief we had completed in one of our workshops. The students really enjoyed the bridge task and it really sparked their creativity as they began to work out what materials they could use. The students were told they were not allowed to buy any special things to build their bridges. Instead they had to think of things already in the classroom or things they could easily bring from home to build their bridges. It was so interesting to see what each pair of students came up with, no two bridges were remotely similar. Some of the materials the students chose to use included straws, toilet rolls, icy pole sticks and play doh. A couple of students even used clay that they had bought in from their holiday farms.