ICT & VELS

“ICT supports knowledge-building among teams and enables team members to collaborate, inquire, interact and integrate prior knowledge with new understanding.” (VELS, 2009)

Today my blog will be looking to address the above statement in regards to Information and Communication Technology and L.O.T.E (Spanish). So far throughout the blog [first time blogging experience], I have been talking about various new activities that I have come across and have randomly thought about. Although this block placement I am not teaching Spanish, my interest with ICT is in regards to Spanish. So a lot of this blog is a reflection based on last semester, thinking about all the different things I could have done. However this hasn’t stopped me looking at other L.O.T.E classes and seeing how they experience language and ICT. Also generally I have kept a keen eye out to see if I could merge ICT activities from other subjects into a L.O.T.E classroom environment.

The ICT activities were extremely diverse and often the end product was fairly fantastic. One assignment of note was assessment for a year 8 science class which had the students create a video about sound and music. Not only was the final product amazing and quite humorous, it was also very detailed and covered the content required on the topic of sound. This assignment required that students work in teams. When watching the video that the students had created, one could visibly see the enjoyment they had making it. It was also obvious based on the content that they were learning, but they were just having so much fun doing it! They drew upon their own prior knowledge of sound and music by choosing their favourite songs, but then they explored how sound travels through different densities. Overall it was just a fantastic team assignment that really involved everyone in the group. Also viewing one of the classes in the computer lab to see the students working on their video editing, not only were they discussing key concepts like density and sound travel. The students were also enhancing their knowledge for ICT, needing to save and file different types of files. There also appeared to be a high use of file sharing and emailing which further encourages the idea of team collaboration. The music videos also required the students to add text and information, because they didn’t speak at all during the clip. I honestly couldn’t believe year 8s created such a task. Amazing!

This activity, now seeing the results, is definitely I could see adapting to a language class. I could perhaps have the students create a music video for a Spanish song, in which they have to listen and interpret the lyrics and create the right scene out for the song. This is definitely something that could turn out to be very fun, all the while students taking in new vocabulary, new verb structures and so forth. It is just amazing to see how much team work and enjoyment occurs when using ICT activities. These sorts of activities also encourage students to take risks and be as creative as possible, because their imagination is limitless and this is what you want to encourage in a Spanish class or any class. The reason why it is particularly useful in a Spanish class is because that sense of flexibility and informal manner of assessment allows students to use the language without fear (Harmer, 2007). This is highly important because it is a big issue in language classes trying to get confidence in the students to speak/use the language (Hamer, 2007).

Overall the idea that ICT supports knowledge-building among teams and enables team members to collaborate, inquire, interact and integrate prior knowledge with new understanding couldn’t be any clearer. This type of assessment proves this point. Not only this, but ICT explores student development in many more different aspects. This could be shown through the use of ICT creating confidence in students to use language where other forms of assessment may seem intimidating. Allowing students to be flexible, creative and working in teams creates a fun and enjoyable learning environment. So as the students are having fun, they are also learning the subject matter and all things ICT.

Honestly, in terms of ICT and how interlinks with many other learning areas in VELS I could go on about it forever and how it impacts each area. However, I have got assignments to correct! Life of a teacher.

I’ll see if I can find the assignment the students created, as apparently they uploaded it onto youtube! Might be a great resource for all you science teachers!

Harmer, J. (2007) Speaking (Chapter 20). In, The Practice of English language teaching -4^th ed. (pp.343-363). London: Longman.

VELS (2009), Domains, Information Communication Technology. Revised edition October 2009.

[Still haven't worked out how to comment on other people's blogs. It keeps doing this weird "try logging in again" thing. *Sigh* sometimes techonology refuses to be friendly!]