Changing Education

The current trend in education has been moving away from the pass or fail mentality. It is no longer enough to give a grade or a brief comment at the end of an assessment task and feel that the task is done. One thing that has been something that I have found to be something of a weakness in my teaching is giving effective feedback,  the sort of feedback where students will take note of it and act upon it. Feedback helps provide direction so that they can move forward and grow. It should also affirm our students towards the best achievement that they have within them, while also continuing to seek their engagement in the learning process. Communicating feedback requires a greater effort to reach our students and meet their needs. At a recent teach meet, the App "Explain Everything" was used  as a way of providing feedback to students. The way that the app was used was to annotate the work of the student, while recording the thoughts of the teacher as they were annotating.

Augmented Reality apps are making their way into education.They take something that is real and adds another dimension to the reality through the use of technology. Things come alive, videos start, people talk when a digital device is pointed at a real image. I came across Two Guys and an iPad website who are doing some wonderful things with integrating Augmented Reality apps into their curriculum. One app that they used was  colARapp . It is using simple colouring in sheets which the child can colour in. Using a digital device, the pages come to life. To integrate this into English, The Guys had their students write about the picture that they were colouring in. The students created a narrative about their picture. Other text types could be applied such as a description of the picture. We used it recently as part of our Book Week activity. The level of engagement with this App is immediate. The students engaged trying out the different colouring in sheets. This is