Applying knowledge at Ravensbourne School

Ravensbourne School is has both PC and Mac computers. The children in the senior room are more familiar with the Mac computers and know many shortcut keys. Much of this knowledge is transferable to the PC, most shortcut keys are the same as Mac but instead of using the apple (command) key you use the control. The task I set the children was to make their own posters help-sheets on the PC computer with the shortcut keys for both computers in a t chart.

One thing I noticed, when observing the students making these posters about shortcut keys, was that some of them were not using the shortcut keys to their advantage in this task. I stopped them and pointed this out, there is no point having knowledge if you cannot or do not apply it when appropriate. For these students they realised why knowing the shortcut keys would benefit them and were worth remembering. I loved working with these students they were so enthusiastic and worked so well together.

Later I worked with the junior class and their teacher, taking digital photos with the cameras and learning to load these onto the computers in their classroom. We also did some work on comic life. The ideas was that there will be something the children can do independently with their pictures while the teacher is taking groups etc. Comic life lets students tell a story through images, perfect for New Entrant children who can attempt to write using the speech bubbles but their story is still obvious in the sequencing of the images.