A Podcast on Rhyming

This is a podcast that teaches rhyming as a tool for enhancing decoding skills.

My Reflections on ICT for Reading

I was looking forward to doing the ICT course because we are in the age of technology and it is important that teachers keep up with the "techno savvy" students. However, I remain with bitter sweet memories. I never imagined that the course would have been so intense and compact. Every week we were being taught a different form of technology which needed to be understood and practised. At times I felt so overwhelmed by all that UWI expected of me, the learner. Nevertheless, "giving up" is not a part of my vocabulary, and as Whitney Houston sang: " I was not built to break". We have come to the end of the course and the learning experience has been tremendous. Undoubtedly, I have acquired knowledge and skills to enhance teaching and learning because of the hardwork, dedication and competence of my tutors. Finally I wish to thank God and all those who have assisted me with this course. Many thanks and God bless!

Mmmm Delicious!

This form of social networking is an excellent resource tool for educators since access is gained to a wealth of information that contributes to effective teaching. According to Lee LeFever, there are over fifteen (15) billion web pages so Delicious, a social bookmarking website, makes it quite easy to remember important sites. Moreover, the websites can be assigned tags so that they can be easily found. Details can also be recorded to help in identifying the bookmarked websites. Furthermore, what makes Delicious so appetizing is the fact that it is public! In other words, educators like us can have access to a larger pool of information. Bon appétit!

The Beauty of Google Docs

Google Docs is an amazing resource tool for educators and students. It has the following advantages:

• Creation of documents, spreadsheets and presentations online without installing these programs on one's computer.
• One document is being updated therefore dispensing with numerous email attachments.
• Sharing and collaboration is made easier with one document.
• Control over who accesses the documents.
• Keeping track of each alteration of the document is made easy

This facility is ideal for group projects where for example students can work on creating a magazine or a school newsletter and can edit the documents under the supervision of the teacher. Thus the students will enhance their wrting skills and participate in collaborative learning. This is one way that the promised laptops to Form One students can be used productively.

Using Blogs to Teach Standard English

I was impressed by the use of blogs to help learn foreign languages, especially Spanish and French. The article "Adventures in the Blogosphere: from blog readers to blog writers” focussed on a year long project involving using blogs to help students learn German and French. Of course, the same project can be done with learners of Spanish in this nation. Students were able to practise communication in the language thus strengthening their writing, reading and grammar skills. They were also able to learn about another culture and ignite a friendship online. Additionally, they realized that although their nationalities were different, they still had some things in common. The project mentioned in the article can also be used in Trinidad and Tobago to help our nation's children learn Standard English since for most speakers of this country, Standard English is their second language, Creole being the first. Indeed, our children need to strengthen themselves in Standard English and blogging provides an opportunity for them to do so. They would have more practice reading and writing Standard English and thus become more familiar with grammatical structures in the language.

Graphic Organizers

The use of graphic organizers is an excellent way of presenting information. It is a great asset to the struggling reader who is overwhelmed by too much text but is more comfortable with a diagram which gives him or her a better understanding of what is being taught. It is also a great way of summarizing a lesson topic or any information that needs to be condensed. In addition, it caters for the visual learner who will benefit more from those pictorial representations. More so, Webspiration makes the creation of graphic organizers awesome because in addition to being user friendly, it provides a variety of template concept maps, which make the creation of the graphic organizers so simple.

TPACK: Keeping Us on Track

Hofer & Harris in the article "Instructional Planning Activity Types as Vehicles for Curriculum-based TPACK Development" has helped to put in perspective the integration of technology in education. Undoubtedly, it is important to keep abreast with technology and use it to enhance learning. However, as the authors have highlighted, the focus should be on the curriculum content and learning abilities of the students instead of the technology. I believe that this article is very timely and important because at no time must the educator become carried away with technology at the expense of the students' learning. The learning activity types are a great resource to educators as they seek to integrate technology with education.