Day 51 - Quality

Learning objectives are specific and focus the mind whilst channelling the learning environment to ensure an aim is achievable. Is it important to always 'purposefully lead' the learner in the correct direction with appropriate resources, tools and presentation ideas? What happens if interpretation gets in the way? Who is to say taking a longer route to the end product isn't valid? Or is that just creativity? Usually time limits imposed by timetables takes care of the latter, but it is when understanding is shown in unexpected ways that I believe deeper learning takes place.

When a digital strategy is being introduced into a new environment or even when ideas are being refreshed a certain amount of follow my leader activities are used to give a flavour of the possibilities. This is true for both staff and pupils. However, transforming a learning environment into an autonomous decision making process; creativity and skills need to combine to allow learners to express themselves. Quality work that has grown and developed through refining and evaluating ideas, checking that the presentation is appropriate and communicates meaning clearly. This stage cannot be under estimated as it is through evaluation and timely but critical feedback that development happens.

What have I used in the classroom today? 

1) Numbers - Year 3/4 handling data task to interpret data. Taking the 24hour clock and combining graphical representations the task was to tally up one day's activity into hours which when added to a template table, set up with a formula to calculate a total, gave a picture of a whole day. Even with discussions on how many hours make a day, some pupils had forgotten that they only had 24 hours to work with! This demonstrates to me that understanding was lost, for some pupils, through using the technology. Or that this misunderstanding was intact highlighted through the error. Making it important that any feedback for these pupils focused on the mathematical knowledge.



2) I can Animate (Lite) https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/i-can-animate-lite/id950631539?mt=8 - in this activity I wanted to show that an activity is a culmination of steps. So building up the keywords as the volcano vocabulary was added to a cross section. The important part was the LO: recognising the vocabulary associated with a volcano but also the capturing of the steps. Through stop frame animation these steps can be captured and replayed as a mini movie clip which illustrates the layering of ideas. This was shared to photos and finally added back to the appropriate file in Showbie for assessment.

3) Skitch - Y5/6 were hunting out the features of persuasive devices in a promotional leaflet. So from the authentic text examples given the hunt was on to pinpoint and highlight the features. Annotating and drawing attention to the exact word formation and construction of the language was all important. This called for an app that would capture the text and easily add a note or caption for additional emphasis. I choose to introduce Skitch although other pdf annotation apps can do the same job. https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/skitch-snap.-mark-up.-send./id490505997?mt=8 What interested me was the just how difficult the pupils found it to identify the exact words and not to generalise too widely. The precise nature of the task made the learners focus and discount unnecessary information. A skill that is worthy in itself as a discerning digital citizen, being able to sift out extraneous text and images to clearly see meaning. The pursuit of quality is multi faceted and complex.