Domain: Professional Practice
Standard four: create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments.
Specifically 4.5 Use ICT safely, responsibly and ethically.
Reflective Commentary
I found that some of my students were not able to write about their own chosen topic, so more often than not, I would try to provoke their imagination with a series of story starters, or a picture of a scenic shot on the IWB. I was also surprised by what little amount they wrote in a thirty minute time frame. I wanted them to be able be involved in their writing tasks and take some creative initative. To connect to them in a quick way I asked them all to read some newspaper comics and then draw their own comic with just two or three characters. Those students who disliked writing were immediately into the task and their drawing was fantastic. From that point I told them they would need to act out their comic in person and then we would take photos with the Ipad and drop them into an app called Strip Design. I found this was a way to engage my students in creative literacy and keep them on task. Two of my students who would only write one paragraph for a story were deemed the best comic creators in the class. It gave them kudos with their fellow students and they were proud of themselves. I found this was an outlet for them to tell their stories with the feeling of success. With that in mind I built on that for my lower end students when they had to begin a creative writing task. It made a big difference to them putting pen to paper.
From that I went into Poetry as this was another exercise that can begin small and as the results showed my students ended up writing with passion and performed with the grace. The connections they made to their lives through Poetry Slam was sometimes very emotional for all those involved.
While taking my students on a journey through Poetry we began to look at Poetry Slam.
(A poetry slam is a competition at which poets read or recite original work) While viewing many of the examples on the net, I had identified that some of these were going to be mis-interpreted by my students as a way to speak about violence in a violent manner. I wanted them to be able to write a poem about something they felt strongly about that had a connection to them. I had viewed hours of poetry slam and found much of it, is not be applicable for classroom use due to swearing or in appropriate topics. This school in particular was keen to take the violence out of most of the daily language and this was promoted to the teachers and students at school on a weekly basis. With that in mind I was very conscious of not going too far out of the square and also taking the step of reading the departments "Statements of Learning for Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) 2008."
I was keen to reiterate to this class the appropriate use and access of the net to download photos that they would be using in a PowerPoint presentation to back up their poetry slam. I confirmed with the students what steps to take if they do Google something appropriately and inadvertently something else comes up on the screen. I also became aware that several students in the class were not literate in producing a PowerPoint. At year six I had assumed they would all be able to do this as. My student with special needs was very tech savvy, so I suggested to him that he mentor those not proficient in PowerPoint. It was a great situation and he received many thanks from his fellow classmates. It was a great example of Peer Learning.
The poetry slam was a success and while three students did begin with what I would term slightly inappropriate topics (gangs and a plane crash) they were able to explain the connection to themselves and all their photographs were screened for appropriateness and only one in the plane crash was deemed not applicable and so the student was requested to change that image. I was impressed with the depth and language they connected to the pictures in their slideshow. I recorded a few of the students via voice thread as they were not able to be present on the day of the Poetry Slam.
Action Plan
As a keen teacher of integrating technology in a daily basis, I am aware that legal and ethical issues that accompany this are ongoing and I would begin by some professional development via the department online as regularly listening to podcasts (ed Tech crew – via tunes) on technology in the classroom and attending conferences on technology when they are available just like the recent one in Perth (ACEC2012).
