Managing Computers during the day

In the afternoon today I spent some time with Leonie Spencer and Lee Phillips in the Junior School at GSNS. They have a small bay off both of their rooms with some older Macs some running OX9 and some running OX10. There are lots of great games and programmes on the computers but the children don't use the area well and are often frustrated in there when they use the computers for independent activities. Both of these reflective teachers realised that this was because the students are missing many of the important skills to use these computers effectively to learn from. Because the computers are very different from the laptops that both of the teachers use, and they realised that they needed pictures on their help sheets for the students, we were not able to use MWSnap to take screenshots and make help sheets. We were able to take a picture with a camera of the screen launcer and then used a function on the camera which justifies a photo if it has been taken of a flat upright surface, like a whiteboard. This is how well it came out.


We got all of the other images for the help sheets from google image which you can use to make resources and get pictures of anything you could think of. It is particularly useful for making resources for juniors and special needs and ESOL students. A picture says a thousand words.
They are also planning to get new mice as they identified that they were a barrier to success for the children in the computer bay. They also plan to buy some headphones and a jack so that two students can listen in peace to stories on the computer at reading time.
Lots of their ideas came from the 'Managing Computers' section in the cluster wiki.

They have decided to record their Action Research through a series of videos taken through out the year of the children talking about how things are going in the computer bay. What an easy way to show progress without too much hassle. They are are using a digital camera and just filming short two minute interviews of the children.

One thing I was impressed with was how the two teachers listened to the complaints and feedback from the children to begin with to identify the issues in the computer bay.

I think the process they go through will really veld some great pointers for other teachers to apply to their own classroom.