This evening it was our 2017 AGM and I had to supply a report and photos about the computer room. I thought that I may as well add what I wrote here as a blogpost for future reference
Fiona Beal is our Grade 1 – 7 computer teacher. Fiona has been selected by Microsoft as a 2016/2017 Microsoft innovative Educator Expert in South Africa. She is also recognised as a Google Certified Innovator after being selected for and attending the Google Teacher Academy in New York a couple of years back. Fiona says, “In our computer lessons I try to keep the learners abreast of world trends in ICT. Consequently, we learn how to find our way around in Microsoft and Google products as well as on the Internet. Some of our recent highlights are:
In 2015 our Grade 5 class won the Global Virtual Classroom Award in a collaborative project with a school in Taiwan and a school in the USA. The three classes did a collaborative project on recycling and created a website together using Google Sites. The details can be viewed at: http://www.virtualclassroom.org/win14.html.
Since many countries are recognising the importance of introducing coding right from Grade 1 as a future required skill in our digital world, our Grades 2-4s participated in the worldwide Hour of Code in 2016 and received their Hour of Code certificates.
The Grade 7s learned to create e-books from their projects using both Microsoft and Google programs.
This year, in 2017, we have started participating in Mystery Skypes as a way of using Geography skills in live sessions to find out about classes in different parts of the world.
Learning about digital citizenship and online safety is always a priority. All our learners from Grade 5 – 7 have their own blogs as a way of learning about keeping safe online. We are planning to participate in the Edublogs Student blogging challenge which starts in March https://studentchallenge.edublogs.org/
I thank the Rock Academy board for ensuring that we have a good Internet connection.
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