Discuss your schools current level of ICT. Make reference to teacher use, student use, hardware, digital content and school emphasis on integrating ICTs into teaching and learning. Is your school equipped for Minecraft education and how might you introduce it.
Our school currently has 15 Laptops on a trolley. I run the afterschool computer club and have a huge interest in IT and it’s importance in schools.
While the Digital learning Framework is not implemented in my school, I did undertake the process myself as part of an assignment I was doing on a college course and I found it very valuable. Initially I sought to gather information from the staff members but there was little buy in. To be fair schools are often initiative overloaded so this was a contributing factor. With a deadline looming I changed my focus to the other stakeholders in the school, the children. The were incredible and really embraced the exercise. I integrated it in my maths lesson on Data and they helped me to outline the various stages of gathering and collecting data. The children really enjoyed putting the questionnaire together and asking the other classes to participate in the survey. The feedback was great and the children really wanted to see a greater use of and training in IT in the school. I found the experience to be very enlightening and rewarding. True it was to fulfil a college task but I got so much for experiencing implementing the Digital Learning Framework and I really saw the benefit of involving the children because sometimes they really do know best.
Broadband was a big issue for us but it has improved. Hopefully now that Covid has driven us to online learning, we will invest more in the school with IT. While we have a limited number of laptops we do have very good ICT equipment in the school and IWB’s. I hope to bring back my learning experience and show the school the possibly of using Minecraft in our school. I am sure I will be supported with this.