Samsung tablets in the classroom

In my place of work, we have all been given Samsung tablets (10.1) to use in the classroom. The children that the tablets are being piloted on are around 10-11 years old and are, of course, in love with technology, as am I. Advantages of the tablet; -we have an excellent system called Smart School on the tablet. This has been designed for Samsung only as far as I am aware and enables the teacher to prepare a lesson for the students to join into. Once all the students are in, you can see all of their 'boards' on the tablet and everything that they are doing, such as writing or doodling. It also lets you connect to a system called all share cast which connects your tablet to the smart board so all of the students can see whatever is on there. So far for English lessons, we have only really used it for vocabulary lessons and are still exploring other ways we can use it for teaching. You can disable interaction for one, some or all of the student's boards and it also hs a lockdown system where the students boards are paused and a sign comes up saying "Be quiet please!" or any other message you type into it. Great for off-task students. Disadvantages Being a piece of technology, it can be temperamental. If the internet goes off for even a split second, it stops the lesson, kicks you and all of the students out of the lesson and you're left with a class full of bewildered, confused students who hit the roof. Also, the students have found ways to disable school screen mode (when they join the student network at school, it only allows them access to whatever the school chooses and their normal screen disappears, stopping them from playing on facebook and playing games). I think these are minor hitches that are more to do with the internet server at work and they are looking into them as I write. Overall outcome This needs "to be continued" as I am curious about how it will play out in the long run. Will the students get tired of this expensive piece of technology? Will we? Will they hack the system no matter what and be able to get out of school screen mode? And will we find a decent course book that we can use on this £450 tablet? ....

Resources...to ICT or not to ICT...

Resources, resources, resources...endless, limitless, infinite resources. How nany resources can a teacher have and can a teacher have too many resources?

The thing I admit to struggling with the most are most definitely resources. The first question is Which one? Then How many? Then In what order....the list never ends. But the biggie is for sure...How many ICT resources do I use?

ICT resources can be split into two categries...one being the resources we get from the Internet, the other being the ICT resources we produce or use with the students.

I like to browse the net for ideas on what I can do with the children as an activity but I seem to spend to much time on actually looking and browsing than actually planning. This is a problem with the WWW. It can give us too much to look on and when one idea is better than the next!

Teachers spend a lot of time planning as well as assessing and marking and all the lovely time spent outside of the classroom. It`s not to say that tine is a waste of time, on the contrary we need that time to know what were doing inside the classroom but people often forget what work we drag home and God help the spouse and children of the teacher!

I think we should search for a limited amount of time and spend more time on the content of the lesson. We should also be able to define what we are looking for in the first place. Teachers look for resources to save time then spend hours googling the topic itself! We need to look for specific tags on Google rather than trawl through thousands of pages.

ICT is a necessity in the classroom in this day of age where technology is the source of our lifestyles. So how much needs to be used in the classroom???

We have a wide range of Smartboards, projectors, laptops, media and internet access in schools today yet some teachers never seem to be able to use them or don`t want to use them. The answer to this lies in the teacher. Some go with the old school manner, which is not to use ICT too much probably stemming from the lack of knowledge and ability to handle it themselves.

Other overuse ICT (if thats possible!) and do every songle thing on technology.

Personally I try to take a mix of old school, good old pen and paper, and ICT resources. I would like to use ICT more than I do at present but with all the paperwork needed I cant spend my entire life planning when not in the classroom!

So how do I achieve ICT based lessons in short and simple planning sessions?

Ive yet to find the answer myself so if you know, let me know!