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Cross-Curricular ICT
Padlet is a fantastic little tool to allow several people to collaborate at once when given a weblink to the page. The idea is both simple and brilliant, and has been around now for 5-6 years at least. Essentially you create a page that people can post 'sticky notes' onto as well as being able to add images, videos and hyperlinks to other web content. It's free to sign up and once you have you can send anyone a link to work from, or even put your links into a blog. Here's an example of Year 4 using it to talk about their great trip to DIbba! Click the image to open the links to each Padlet on the Year 4 blog
Have a look at what they've done by clicking the image of the Year 4 Blog post.
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What is a blog?
A blog, in this case, is a space where we can add 'posts' with a range of digital content quickly and share with anyone who has access to the internet, be it through a mobile device, a laptop or a good old PC.
I chose Weebly as at the time, it seemed to present the easiest tools for creating 'posts' quickly and efficiently and worked well on both PC and Mobile versions. In a blog the most recent post goes to the top, so people can see immediately what is new, and older news is archived, so each page is a living wall of content, not too dissimilar to how Facebook works. (only without pictures of our kids and meals/holidays etc) The Videos below (Created using a very simple recorder in school and uploaded to Vimeo, see this link!) highlight how to add basic content and how your blog can be populated, using your PC or your iPad. Adding Text and Images - The Basics
You can quickly add text and images to Weebly and re-arrange content to look how you want it to look. Think of it as a very structured Publisher document (or Word if you prefer..) that you can drag and drop elements into. The program does all the resizing and repositioning for you and you have to work especially hard for it not to look neat!
The video below will give you a basic idea on how to add these three elements to your 'blog'.
Spacing and Adding Different Content
PowerPoint, the staple diet of the teacher for presenting and sharing work. But how can we add more to the content of them to make them more interesting? How can we create original content and make them more interactive?
Year 3 are working on a few ways of doing that in a cross-curricular approach with Computing and ICT. Create a GIF
Add some audio!
Personalise the presentation with your voice and give extra or clearer information for those who may struggle to engage with the text.
Hyperlink - Web links or Pages
Another way of developing your presentation is to add a hyperlink to a website, you can even link pages in a Powerpoint together to help presenters navigate it with purpose and ease.
I set off the idea of creating a flat world on the iPads and played for about 5 min to create a river using some tools (water bucket and a pick axe) and was promptly, and quite smugly, told by my daughter that 'I told you Minecraft was useful, you thought it was silly...'
Anyway, I set the student an 'optional' homework task to create a flat world with a river and a few trees etc and most took it up with a huge level of enthusiasm and so was done very well. The next step will be to see if they can recreate an actual village using the iPads collaboratively, and if indeed, the wifi can handle the 5 groups of 5 working simultaneously.... watch this (soon to be updated) space! |
AuthorI've had a passion for ICT and its use in education over a number of years. With the exciting development of Moble Technology entering the classroom, it's a perfect opportunity to try new things out and enhance our pupils, and teachers, experiences! Archives
April 2016
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