Week 2

This weeks lesson started with us discussing the legal and ethical implications of using ICT's. We talked about how we as future teachers have a responsibility to make ethical choices in what we put use in our classrooms in relation to using ICT's. It is important to remember that the things that we use especially when using the web must be both legal and ethical. Also when using the web remember that what goes on there is usually permanent and to make sure that we do not do anything that could come back to haunt us.

We also had a brief look at some ICT frameworks that we could use for our second assignment. These included TPACK, Learning engagement theory and the big six. We were asked to look at these and choose one that we would use for the second assignment. The big six is a good one to use as it is easy to link this to DOL and Blooms. It is easy to understand and I will be using it in my assignment.


We then went on and looked at the setting up and use of a wiki (http://www.wikispace.com/). This I found interesting as I can see how this would be very useful in a classroom. There are so many ways that a wiki could be used to help in the learning experience. For example the teacher can use it to deliver information to the students that they can use anywhere. The teachers can put information and links on the wiki so that the students can access them from home or anywhere that they have a computer. One use that would be really helpful to me in my future teaching is that, as I am hopefully going to teach history, I could put up links to specific sites that students will be able to find information on a particular topic instead of researching themselves and taking a long time just to find a website. It will cut down the research time in school time and allow the students to use the time more meaningfully.

Finally we looked at setting up a website (http://www.weebly.com/) which I found interesting and I am looking forward to when I have time to have a good look at setting up my own website. I believe that this would be a great assignment for students in history to set up a historical website and I will probably use it for an assignment in the future.

I am really enjoying this course so far and can see the benifits that ICT can deliver, not only in the classroom, but in day to day life as well.

Thanks for reading,
Darryn