Edtechcc Assignment 1 – signs & symbols

My initial thoughts

The first assignment has been set and whilst reading the task, I initially thought of the signs that are around me everyday in school. Our school uses Boardmaker and there seems to be a sign for everything! The signs used in school are very intuitive and clearly depict what they are representing.

That’s the point of signs and symbols, they must be a good representation of whatever word, subject or concept they are portraying.

Looking beyond school and after staring at my iPhone screen for many hours a day. Every app that I have downloaded is a sign on my screen, which rarely use text and sometimes these signs don’t necessarily match up to the context of the app. Yet I still know by looking at the sign what app is represented. Some are simple and others more clever (well in my eyes).

Not having any design or graphics background, I wonder how a sign could be used to represent a primary school class? A mixture of subjects are taught, so what sign would represent this? Would you use something abstract? Or something that would clearly associate itself with a primary school?

I am looking forward to see what others design for their department/subject, as I continue to think about how signs are used everyday.

Hello and Welcome

After setting up my blog last week, I have finally sat down to write my first post. This is what my life has been like since August last year, busy, busy, busy. Since starting my first year of teaching I have come to fully appreciate time and the never ending to-do list.

So why sign up for the Educational Technology Creative Collective? 

Technology is something that I have always been interested in (and it now helps that I’m married to a software/web developer). During my PGDE my interest in using technology in the classroom developed and I was excited to see how looking beyond computers and the dreaded Word could be explored in the classroom. I was also disheartened by the reaction from some teachers when you ask about using the computers in school or even an IWB!

Since having my own class I have worked hard to develop their ICT skills and have got them fully involved in blogging using Glow.

By joining the Education Technology Creative Collective, I hope to try new ways to incorporate technology into my classroom and share my practice with other like minded teachers.

The cartoon below also expresses the importance of joining such a group, we need to keep learning so that technology interests our children.