Time for show and tell as teachers embrace classroom technology

THE TECHNOLOGY world has been a whirlwind of change over the past few years, with cloud computing becoming standard, smartphones dominating and tablet devices coming into their own.

Last weekend educators from across Ireland gathered at the 2011 Computers in Education Society of Ireland (CESI) conference to see what impact the changing landscape is having on the teaching and learning process in first-, second- and third-level.

There was barely a mention of an interactive whiteboard as teachers – and a smattering of lecturers – got their teeth into topics as varied as using Microsoft’s Kinect for digital storytelling to the finer details of deploying Google Apps in the classroom.

Keynote speaker Tom Barrett, an ICT educator based in the UK, gave a demonstration of how to engage children with maths by using Google Maps. He has several lesson plans online that challenge students to virtually visit cities such as Edinburgh or Adelaide.

Touchscreen technology was in no short supply. The iPod touch made an entrance with a twist: a group of teachers was given a workshop by the third-class pupils from Ransboro National School in Sligo, who tapped, swiped and pinched their way through apps that showed these educators how to navigate, type and even use Google Docs to get work done online.

Twitter was mention of course, with many teachers tweeting their thoughts from the Portlaoise conference. Secondary teachers Humphrey Jones and Julian Girdham from St Columba’s in Dublin talked about how they built up and developed their popular blogs, the Frog Blog and SCC English. This extended into how well Twitter worked as a development tool.

Jones said the Junior Certificate science curriculum was “incredibly boring” while the news element of the Frog Blog showed that science was a dynamic evolving field with new discoveries every day.

Girdham told how Twitter, podcasting and even online book publishing were added to the mix and said having a Facebook page for a school or department could help bridge the home-school divide.

One teacher said he knew of some colleagues who still refused to get an e-mail address while another said he was still showing co- workers how to do something as simple as create a new desktop folder. The turnout at the conference, though, suggests such teachers may be a dying breed.