Safer Internet Day
At the start of the academic year I make sure to plan several e-safety lessons for students from 7 years and up. This is a logical topic to start with because it outlines the behaviours that students should follow online.…
Will Fastiggi
The best iPad apps to facilitate Talk for Writing
I recently attended a series of workshops on Talk for Writing, a strategy for teaching children to write. Developed by the English educational writer and poet, Pie Corbett, Talk for Writing is based on the principle that before children can…
Augmented Reality in the Classroom
Augmented Reality (AR) is a type of virtual reality that blends the real scene viewed by the user with a virtual scene generated by the computer. This composite view is designed to enhance the user’s sensory perception of the real…
Lego Mindstorm – a practical approach to learn programming
Lego Mindstorm is a robotics construction set that provides learners with a fun, practical approach to learning computer programming. Included in each set (whichever version you get) is a ‘brick’ computer that controls the system, a set of sensors and…
Introducing the topic of website reliability
One of the things that we should continually be doing as teachers is to think critically and help our students do the same. In a world of ever increasing amounts of information, it becomes important to find strategies that encourage…
Collecting Digital Stories Made by Students
Once a video is made by students, it is important that they can showcase this work and teachers can quickly access it. I have found Google Drive to be an efficient system for collecting, organising and showcasing student videos. For…
An Introduction to Digital Storytelling
According to Riessman (2008, pp. 12), narrative is the basic human way of making sense of the world because we all lead ‘storied lives’. This has been true throughout history and across cultures. Technology, therefore, can certainly add an interesting…
Creating a Scratch Project from Scratch!
In her book, Teaching as a Design Science, Diana Laurillard (2012, pp. 2) states that ‘too often technologies are key drivers of education, though their development is rarely driven by education’. And that’s one of the reasons I like Scratch…
A fun way to start learning about spreadsheets
[accordion] [item title=”Designing a Theme Park Using Spreadsheets”] [embeddoc url=”https://technologyforlearners.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Theme-Park-Template_Building-Materials-Costs-Analysis-.xlsx”] [embeddoc url=”https://technologyforlearners.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/CostofBuildingMaterialsforThemePark.docx”] [/item] [/accordion] Spreadsheets are an important part of any ICT curriculum. They can, however, be quite a dull topic for students – unless they’re introduced creatively. One of…
Stick it Where it Counts!
I have written before about assessment of learning, which is carried out for the purpose of grading and reporting. Research, however, has shown that one of the most powerful ways of improving learning and raising standards is through the use…
