August 27th e-diary entry

August 27, 2011

Assignment 1 e-diary entry

My summary table for Assignment 1:

DOCUMENT #	ROLE OF EDUCATOR	APPLICATION	FILE NAME
1	Assessor	MS Excel	Marksheet.xls
2	Interpreter	MS Excel	Equations.xls
3	Pastoral	MS Word	Letter.doc
4	Assessor	MS Word	Dec11Exam.doc
5	Learning Area Specialist	MS Powerpoint	Lesson1Intro.ppt
6	Interpreter	MS Word	Work Outline.doc

The challenges I face are challenges I can overcome and I have outline them below:

1)      Not all students have laptops/personal computers.

2)      Among those with laptops/ personal computers students were not properly exposed to ICT by their teachers.

3)      Some colleagues may be reluctant and unwilling to change their methods.

4)      Some colleagues may be ignorant of just how beneficial ICT can be.

5)      Some students may not have Internet access.

6)      Other stakeholders (parents, wider community) might not be familiar with the methods to be used and may not recognise the contribution ICT can make towards learning.

To overcome these and change my practice in order to increase the impact of ICT on my roles as an educator I intend to:

1)      Create opportunities to engage my students meaningfully and motivate them by methods such as the pastoral document which uses a competition as a forum for creating a poster/flyer.

2)      Create worksheets using ICT for my students to complete on the computer (which I can access via synchroneyes for example and documents which can be saved on the Student Share folder) and which they can submit via CD/flashdrive or online.

3)      Place documents on the Staff Share folder for my colleagues to access and show them how to use software to document marks (e.g. MS Excel) and create Administrative Documents, Assessor Documents and Worksheets among others.

4)      Create an online community where those with internet access can share their ideas and access site resources or create opportunities for them to work on collaborative documents.

5)      Create a database of students beginning initially with students I teach and eventually extending throughout the school with and without Internet access and obtaining e-mail addresses of students with e-mail addresses.

6)      Engage in correspondence with students and parents and ask parents to monitor and engage in online/computer related and ICT activities students are doing.

7)      Encourage parents to find ways to get their lessons done via computer and show parents just how useful it can be (possible options: accessing computers and/or internet access in the library and cybercafe for example).