Activity 5.2.1 Dealing with the potential pitfalls (Core)

Watch the video clip from a school in Canada.
Make notes on the issues this teacher has encountered, and what she did about them.

5.2.1 Dealing with potential pitfalls - Canada

Pope Memorial Elementary School
Bury, Quebec, Canada
Eastern Townships School Board
Teacher: Jocelyn Bennett
URL: http://pope.etsb.qc.ca

Reading strategies .- Seeing pictures with iPad
Children went to internet
Are they just surfing around? Are they doing the work they’re supposed to?
Where to look and what information is good information
‘Know boxes’ Sheet of paper with grids
Sheet with boxes they could only use 5 or 6 words per box including the source (one box for each site)
They categorize information and put it in their own words. The strategies lets fall into copy-paste practice.

Select ‘which websites’.
Critical thinking ¿Where did that information come from? Specially form laptops and the internet. Education site. Ask questions from every site. Extensions, question the source, click on ‘about’ (when the site was born and who founded it).
Techniques used to attract attention.

Create a code of conduct for the computers. Children and teachers sign a document with the code of conduct. If they are searching for information and something inappropriate comes they have to close it and notify their teacher what they were doing and what happened. They won’t reveal that  to their fellow mates.

They don’t let students play games in class unless they prove useful for education.

Children become problem-solvers because they learn to use the tools. They send their work to the teacher through an app. One time they couldn’t play a video and a student gave the answer to make it play by putting it in a document so they solved problems together.


They chose Minecraft to play and build together to create things. They choose their own games.

Watch the short video from a school in Moscow.
Reflect on how difficult it would be to set up something similar in your own school.

Mmm... well, I found this option at kickstarter called the "Microbescope" at  £88.00 which, basically is a AAA size battery operated portable microscope to use with most smartphones and tablets which allows to share real time video of the specimens. It is expensive enough but certainly a lot more cheaper than the versions used in the Moscow school.

Try to identify pitfalls and obstacles you could meet in your own context (let’s try not to focus on the financial dimension) and on why a teacher says in the video from Bury “it hasn’t been an easy journey”. 

Regarding pitfalls, they can be simmilar to those reported in the Canadian school. The first one is still to convince teachers to combine ITC with their regular lessons.
The copy-paste issue can be present as much as activities stay in that design level. Developing alternatives to let students reformulate information in their own words would be an alternative.


Record your answers into your Course Journal.