Showing posts with label mimios. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mimios. Show all posts
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Lifting Student Achievement with Technology
This is a presentation created by a teacher to present to the Board of Trustees. This teacher is a self confessed Luddite who two years ago did not like working with computers in her classroom. Now she is totally sold. What is so wonderful about this presentation is the evidence the teacher has to how computers and the use of the 'mimio' have 'significantly' lifted student achievement in her class.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
Teaching Experience time 'Maths'
The next few blog posts are going to concentrate on single curriculum areas and how I developed the management and organisation of the teaching and learning time.
Maths was an interesting one, I decided I wanted to teach a particular strand rather than 'Number' so I chose Measurement concentrating on Perimeter, Area and Volume. I wanted the children to become self managing and responsible about their learning so the unit I developed revolved around this idea. You can see the unit by Ctrl clicking (or Command click) on this link. Several years ago I had previously developed a statistics unit where everyday I would start off with whole class teaching session of around 5-10 minutes where I would demonstrate how to create the different types of graphs (laptop connected to a TV set). Students would then work independently through the large number of tasks while I targeted the children who needed help. This worked really well! I had no projector or IWB at this time. So my new challenge was how could I use the mimio to its full potential. And that is when I came up with the idea of the workshops. I created three different workshops; Perimeter, Area and Volume. I designed them so that the students could run it themselves using the mimio.
The daily session would start off with the Class Activity (One slide per day, the example below shows an example of 3 days with answers). If students got any of the problems wrong on the page then they had to attend the Workshop. Students could also choose to be present at the workshop if they wished. I overheard some children saying that they wanted to go to the workshop even though they got the class activity all correct. On observation it was apparent that they enjoyed the collegial working atmosphere.
At the very first Workshop on Perimeter, I lead for the first 5 minutes and then it was obvious that the children could take over themselves, I put one person in charge telling them to make sure that everybody has a turn recording using the mimio pen.
While the students were working on the workshop I was able to move around the room talking to individuals or groups if they had created their own group. Sometimes you would find a group of 2 or 3 at the Wii. Quite often children would work in pairs, but there was also several that liked to work alone. It was interesting to note each day that most children liked to work in the same pattern, either in a social group or on their own. The same children also volunteered for the workshop (they liked playing teacher I think!)
All of the maths websites were bookmarked on the Class Delicious site and all of the computers, Wii, PSP and iPod Touch internet browsers opened to the Class Delicious page as a Home page. With the Workshops being so visible due to them being projected on the screen with the students using the mimio, I was able to keep an eye on what the students were doing and if they needed any help.
Maths was an interesting one, I decided I wanted to teach a particular strand rather than 'Number' so I chose Measurement concentrating on Perimeter, Area and Volume. I wanted the children to become self managing and responsible about their learning so the unit I developed revolved around this idea. You can see the unit by Ctrl clicking (or Command click) on this link. Several years ago I had previously developed a statistics unit where everyday I would start off with whole class teaching session of around 5-10 minutes where I would demonstrate how to create the different types of graphs (laptop connected to a TV set). Students would then work independently through the large number of tasks while I targeted the children who needed help. This worked really well! I had no projector or IWB at this time. So my new challenge was how could I use the mimio to its full potential. And that is when I came up with the idea of the workshops. I created three different workshops; Perimeter, Area and Volume. I designed them so that the students could run it themselves using the mimio.
The daily session would start off with the Class Activity (One slide per day, the example below shows an example of 3 days with answers). If students got any of the problems wrong on the page then they had to attend the Workshop. Students could also choose to be present at the workshop if they wished. I overheard some children saying that they wanted to go to the workshop even though they got the class activity all correct. On observation it was apparent that they enjoyed the collegial working atmosphere.
Class Activity
View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp.
At the very first Workshop on Perimeter, I lead for the first 5 minutes and then it was obvious that the children could take over themselves, I put one person in charge telling them to make sure that everybody has a turn recording using the mimio pen.
Perimeter workshop
On page 8 of this slideshow is a link to the very excellent bbc.co.uk site on perimeter. This was a perfect activity for children to do collaboratively and individually as it gives them the answers and totals at the end. Without any prompting from me the students went back and redid the quizzes they got wrong!View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp.
While the students were working on the workshop I was able to move around the room talking to individuals or groups if they had created their own group. Sometimes you would find a group of 2 or 3 at the Wii. Quite often children would work in pairs, but there was also several that liked to work alone. It was interesting to note each day that most children liked to work in the same pattern, either in a social group or on their own. The same children also volunteered for the workshop (they liked playing teacher I think!)
Area Workshop
Over half of the class were able to organise their time without my intervention, and most (particularly the girls) were able to keep up with the recording of what they were doing. A lot of the boys liked doing the fun stuff with computers, Wii, PSP and iTouch, so they needed a bit of a push in the direction of covering some of the book tasks.View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp.
Volume workshop
This was a great way to teach as I was able to oversee the whole class and work with the students who needed it the most. There was a relaxed, calm feel about the class as everyone got on with what they needed to do. I think the students liked knowing what they were going to be doing as soon as they came into the room as they had done the planning and thinking about it.View more presentations from Jacqui Sharp.
All of the maths websites were bookmarked on the Class Delicious site and all of the computers, Wii, PSP and iPod Touch internet browsers opened to the Class Delicious page as a Home page. With the Workshops being so visible due to them being projected on the screen with the students using the mimio, I was able to keep an eye on what the students were doing and if they needed any help.
Sunday, 14 September 2008
Activboards versus Mimio...some thoughts
There are many types of Interactive Whiteboards and Mimios out in schools. A lot of teachers are not using them to their full potential, mostly because of technical issues of calibration, software and hardware conflicts, setting up problems and most of all lack of professional development. Then there is the issue of 'Which should we buy for our school?' This blog entry makes suggestions for and against both.
I have had the opportunity of seeing both Activboards and Mimios in action in one school. The Activboard has the projector attached to the screen. (Big tick here, no projector or wires hanging from ceilings or sitting precariously on tables).
The screen can be moved up and down according to the child's height. The screen is large and can be seen by the whole class right to the back of the room. Teachers have very little problems calibrating because the projector is fixed to the screen. There is a wireless keyboard that children or teacher can use anywhere in the classroom. The only down was maybe the clarity, the room needed to be darker or the projector needed to have higher lumens, but it was a minor point as it made no difference to the children.
The Mimio is attached to a LCD TV. This works well with small groups or the whole class on the mat in front of the TV. The mimio image was TV quality.
I have had the opportunity of seeing both Activboards and Mimios in action in one school. The Activboard has the projector attached to the screen. (Big tick here, no projector or wires hanging from ceilings or sitting precariously on tables).
The screen can be moved up and down according to the child's height. The screen is large and can be seen by the whole class right to the back of the room. Teachers have very little problems calibrating because the projector is fixed to the screen. There is a wireless keyboard that children or teacher can use anywhere in the classroom. The only down was maybe the clarity, the room needed to be darker or the projector needed to have higher lumens, but it was a minor point as it made no difference to the children.
The Mimio is attached to a LCD TV. This works well with small groups or the whole class on the mat in front of the TV. The mimio image was TV quality.
So far my evaluation of this equipment is that the Activboard works well in the Senior School because it can be seen from the back of the room and when you have big children sitting in a classroom with all your furniture, there is not a lot of room for sitting up the front. I also liked how you could direct student's attention to it while they are working at their desks and they could all easily see it.
I would use the Mimio more in the Junior school. It is least distacting for the whole class as it is smaller and could be used unobtrusively with small groups.
See my new blog dedicated to mimios and IWB http://mimioiwb.blogspot.com/
I would use the Mimio more in the Junior school. It is least distacting for the whole class as it is smaller and could be used unobtrusively with small groups.
See my new blog dedicated to mimios and IWB http://mimioiwb.blogspot.com/
Proofreading and Interactive Whiteboards
- Choose a student's story that has been drafted on the computer and use that as a proof reading model at the beginning or end of a writing session
- Have the whole class or maybe a targeted group discuss what changes need to be made and let the children take charge of the proofreading
- use an example of drafted writing as a proofreading activity to be completed while waiting to conference (several children can be working on this activity at one time)
- have a child drafting using the IWB instead of in their books
- have two children drafting on the IWB creating a collaborative story, print out and they can proofread, edit and publish on their own
- use the IWB as one of the activities on your developmental circuit
Tuesday, 1 July 2008
Planning, linking, websites and Interactive Whiteboards
With Interactive Whiteboards comes a huge amount of activities already created for you. Plus there are all the other activities that are teacher made in Kidspiration, Inspiration, Word, PowerPoint etc. And then I see that teachers have found all these wonderful websites but are not fully utilising them to their full potential. How can we manage all these websites and activities we may have stored on our computers?
Answer: Incorporate it into your planning. Hyperlink the activities, websites, or teaching resources into your planning and launch the sites from there. This is a perfect way of managing all of these links and it is all in one place plus you are able to see what resources you are mainly using. In this example I have colour coded the activities, red for Flip charts, orange for PowerPoint, green for Inspiration, blue for websites and black for book work.
See my new blog dedicated to mimios and IWB http://mimioiwb.blogspot.com/
Answer: Incorporate it into your planning. Hyperlink the activities, websites, or teaching resources into your planning and launch the sites from there. This is a perfect way of managing all of these links and it is all in one place plus you are able to see what resources you are mainly using. In this example I have colour coded the activities, red for Flip charts, orange for PowerPoint, green for Inspiration, blue for websites and black for book work.
See my new blog dedicated to mimios and IWB http://mimioiwb.blogspot.com/
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