Time wasting ICTs?

Hi everyone!

I still regularly visit my grade six prac class from last semester. The school is currently trialling a BYOD scheme and as of next year every classroom will be a BYOD class. Today I went to visit the class and the kids were working on an investigation into ancient Rome. The teacher had provided the kids with a number of sources they could look up and find information for their investigation. Some of these were video’s and some interactive games. However, when the kids tried to access these sites, they could not access most of them because of a state wide block. The ones they could access, they were required to download Flash Player to get the site to work. The teacher was baffled why she was able to look up all of these sites on her own computer, which was connected to the schools network, however, the kids were unable to view them.

The lesson ended up being a time waster and the outcome which the teacher was hoping for was unable to be achieved. She said she will need to get the school “ICT guru” to come in and help her sort it out before she tries that again. This confirmed why some teachers just don’t use ICTs within their lessons, as many of them don’t know how to use them themselves. When situations like this occur, well planned lessons, can turn out to be a total time waster.

Until next time,

Kerrie