Teacher Survey Outcome & Resource Example

Week 2:
Teacher Survey Outcome

I found this task very useful for expanding my knowledge within classroom activity when using technology and new media. From my survey, I was surprised with the positive use of the 'Bug Club' within the school, who's teacher I was interviewing. They subscribe to Pearson's Bug Club which enables children to read e-books either at home or school, that are at their current reading level. The children are able to access a variety of books (narrative, non-fiction, plays and comics). The teacher I interviewed expressed her enthusiasm for the resource as it helps to develop comprehension and provides written assessment of the children's comprehension.

The implications of this particular resource being used more widely within schools, and particularly within my own practice, is that children will loose the love of being able to read from a physical book. I personally love being able to hold a book and feel the progression as I make my way through it.
Medwell (2012) et al offer an interesting perspective on the use of electronic texts, such as the 'Bug Club'. Although I personally prefer a printed text, their views on the use of electronic texts are useful for particular aspects within the classroom. They state that "electronic texts can be programmed to adapt to an individual reader's needs and interests during reading, which may in turn affect the strategies that readers use to read and comprehend texts" (Medwell et al, 2012:199). This perception on the use of electronic texts, could be very useful within my future practice to enable new ways to encourage reading for reluctant learners, children with dyslexia or any other additional learning abilities.

Bibliography
Medwell, J. Moore, G. Wray, D. Griffith, V. (2012) Electronic Texts. Primary English Knowledge and Understanding. London: Learning Matters (p196-202)


Text Examples:

One resource website that I found particularly useful was: http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html 
I liked this website because it would be an effective resource for classroom displays and children's summaries of work. Children could use the different shapes to create a cover page for a key topic, or even use it for digital literacy within writing poems etc. Here is an example of one I made within our session based on ICT: 

I feel that this resource would be beneficial to introducing children to key topics and allowing them to be creative when applying any previous knowledge to the beginning of a topic. I would use these resource to assess where children's understanding currently be and allow them to be creative within this process.