IT for Education

The first week of ICT on my PGCE course has now happened. We kicked off with a look at a few utilities that might be useful as teaching aids. Hot Potatoes http://hotpot.uvic.ca/ Hot Potatoes is a suite of educational tools that let you generate web-based crosswords, word searches, quizzes and so forth. Judging from some of the feedback from the web it's quite highly regarded by teachers. It seems to be abandonware since 2009 though, so the UI feels very dated and the whole package is lacking in modern refinements we've rapidly come to expect. Still, there doesn't appear to be anything else available that could be a suitable replacement. Would I use it? Probably not. Undergraduate-age students are at that point where they've discovered their independence so solving a word maze might be seen as beneath them. Ironically, once you get to post-graduate ages you're more likely to find use for the tools as mature students have that bit more maturity so as not to sco...

One of the required blog entries in my assignment is to discuss the usefulness of reflective writing in effective teaching. I don't mention this because it is factually true, nor as an attempt to sound as if I'm answering like I'm doing a GCSE exam. I mention it because I think blogs - as a concept, if not always the execution - are an inherently reflective medium and communication format, so it's worth discussing why. Then I'll just segue into answering the question, all natural like. A blog is not long-form, 'one-shot' writing like a thesis or book. A blog communicates near instantly and favours ongoing, frequently updated topics. This lends itself well to reflective writing as it does to any introspective subject by capturing that self-analytical process in bite-sized chunks, unhindered by pesky academic guidelines that  expect you to be rational . I jest of course, and indeed blogging's greatest strength - democratisation of communication - is a...