We have heavily invested in developing the use of ICT in the school this year. This investment hasn’t only been in the purchase of 10 new iPads and 10 new PCs which will be arriving in the next few weeks. The investment has also been the time and energy of all our teachers and pupils in actively engaging in training to learn how to use them properly!
In addition to the new devices, our broadband has also been doubled in speed. We have also invested in Chromecasts so that our new purchases can be used with the Interactive Whiteboards. This means that our pupils can show their work on their iPad to everyone in the class by casting their screen onto the whiteboard.
We plan to use the PCs to work on coding projects such as Scratch and Minecraft, learning to use multimedia software to present our work, to engage in editing and production of audio and video and to learn how to create and develop our own websites.
We will continue to use the tablets as we have been to do basic programming such as Scratch Jr; to research; to capture images and video; to create content such as with the use of iMovie, Green Screen technology and stop motion animation to create film to demonstrate our learning. We plan to continue to use the tablets to create a portfolio of our work and the Junior classroom will be learning how to use Seesaw to save their work and so that everyone at home can see what we are up to!
Technology is a vital part of daily life and so it should be used effectively to best meet the needs of all learners. In Scoil Mhuire we encourage our pupils to be engaged thinkers, active learners and knowledge constructors, to respectfully communicate and collaborate and we use ICT to its full potential to achieve this aim.
We believe that using technology enables teaching to be student-centred and that pupils are more motivated in their approach to learning because of this. We invest in, and use ICT to enable our pupils meet their full potential.