Technology Survival Kit for New Teachers

I was asked to do a presentation this evening at the University of Plymouth’s first ever Teachmeet for new teachers and those currently working towards being a teacher by completing a teaching degree. You can see the Teachmeet site here: http://www.teachmeet.org.uk/

So as the audience is mostly new or new to be teachers and the theme was “Learn something new, be amazed, amused and enthused. This is an informal gathering of those curious about teaching and technology. Anyone can share great ideas they’ve trialled in their classrooms, ask important questions or simply sign up to take part in learning conversations. Would be good to see and hear both Primary and Secondary Teachers.” I decided to approach this from a top tips point of view as a survival kit for any teachers not just new ones!

technology survival kit

So here it is – if you are looking at this after attending the session please let me know what you thought of it and what bits you may use if any? Also if you haven’t attended it but have some comments then please let me know.

I put this list together after seeking advice on twitter so thank you to everyone who may have contributed! This is not a complete list just what I could communicate about in a 7 minute presentation – Also it is in no paticular order:

1) Use an electronic timer that can be displayed on your whiteboard – There are simply hundreds of free examples of this but helps in sticking to timed activities that students are working on. Also adds an element of fun if you have the added sound effects. Just search to find the one that you like.

2) Get on Twitter – This is an essential part of your CPD – it is a great way to get support, get ideas and just share good practice. The best thing is it is free & you can get answers to questions that you have almost immediately.

3) Be open and honest – No one expects you to know everything about ICT and new technologies so don’t pretend you do to other teachers or at worst the kids. Be honest and open to get support from ‘digital friends’ which can be other teachers in your school (or on Twitter) or even better still from the kids. Many of my digital friends are the kids I teach, we share bits about technology to each other and find it is a great journey of discovery doing it together.

4) Sign up to the Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Network – At the moment there are over one and a half million other teachers signed up on there from 59 different countries. It is a site for teachers to share good practice and free resources, an excellent place to get ideas and to have the resources to literally lift them into your lessons. In addition there are several great tools that are free to download once you join! The best ones in my opinion at the moment is autocollage – A great way top generate displays and other learning materials for your classroom by automatically formating any pictures you have, Community clips – a great screen recording software built into office products to help you record how to videos and share these with other teachers and finally songsmith which is absolutely awesome – you can read a post I did here: http://bit.ly/dzu5Qh

5) Download one of the sorting hat kits – this basically randomly generates the names of your class and picks out one or pairs of students to answer questions etc – It is a great way to avoid doing things like put your hand up etc in a fair way! One version that is free can be found here: http://www.harmonyhollow.net/hat.shtml

6) All teachers should blog – it is a great vehicle for autonomous learning and metacognition. It is essential for teachers to reflect on their practice through blogging they can gain insight from the readers who can comment and discuss the ways forward. There are so many free bloggoing tools out there just give it a go!

7) Need the right kit – Make sure that in every lesson you have the capability to record evidence of the learning that is taking place, be able to record audio, images, video etc. Make sure you have a different devices for this or at least one that will do them all – better still allow your students to do this (this must be within the framework of the school and their policies). So it is essential to have a netbook/laptop, a video camera e.g. flip camera, a EasySpeak to record sounds, or just a cheap webcam!

8) Finally make sure you are clued up on how to communicate to your students and other teachers – you are in the 21st century now and things like messages in a bottle or carrier pigeon are not even retro anymore just sad! So make sure you have accounts and know how to use things like Skype, MSN, Facebook, Xbox live, Twitter etc.

I leave you with a question – What will the learning experience be like in your classroom?

3 Comments

on “Technology Survival Kit for New Teachers
3 Comments on “Technology Survival Kit for New Teachers
  1. Great post. So many of the best ways of technology assisting learning in a classroom are simple. People get intimidated by the idea that technology is difficult or expensive – they could not be more wrong. Most of what you suggest are free and are examples of what would take our profession forward at a pace. Fingers crossed more people begin to use such simple measures and share their experiences. I’m going to start with one I haven’t used, ‘sharing hats kit’

  2. Heard from this on twitter – awesome tips!. I’m a teacher in germany and also have my own website (www.medienistik.de) and blog. I use moodle in order to show parents what we do and to Tell them the homework. We only have one digital whiteboard so I rarely use it, but I’d like to use technologies like twitter and blogs to open the classroom to the world and to help my pupils to make contacts to kids from other countries. If you’d like to do the same, just contact me.

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