Each year I make an effort to sign up for an ICT related summer course to keep up to date with the latest apps, websites and trends. This year, I was fortunate enough to sign up on time for INTO’s online course ‘Using ICT to Support Literacy and Numeracy for pupils with Special Educational Needs’. I say fortunate, as the course was just €25 and filled up extremely quickly!
This was genuinely a very worthwhile, informative course. I’ve been disappointed with some summer courses in the past, finding them too theoretical. I enjoy courses that provide you with an abundance of resources and ideas to try in the classroom, and this is exactly what I got with this course.
The course was broken up as follows:
- Module 1 provided users with the tools to make their own individualised resources – wordsearch makers, flashcard makers, cloze text generators and supplied links to popular literacy and numeracy websites. As a teacher who uses ICT quite a lot, I was familiar with most of the websites and links already, but having read replies from other teachers in the course forum; many found this module beneficial.
- Module 2 was titled ‘Using ICT to Support Reading. Geared towards younger classes; it covered talking books, online dictionaries, e-book generators and apps to support reading. Last year in Learning Support, I mostly dealt with older groups, so it was great to learn how ICT can be used with younger classes.
- Module 3 covered Scratch. I had already been trained in how to use Scratch previously, so I had no problems with this module. Personally, Scratch is something I’d advise teachers to learn on a face-to-face course as I like the idea of having someone to answer questions and teach the basic steps. However, the module had videos on how to basically start from scratch (pardon the pun!) and how to use Scratch in the classroom. Other teachers in the forum who hadn’t used Scratch before seemed impressed with the helpful video tutorials and managed to pick up the basics!
- Module 4 used ICT tools to support writing. Personally, I found this module absolutely brilliant. Geared towards older classes, it covered apps and websites that support writing development. I was amazed at the range of tools out there and I will definitely use them in the coming school year.
- Finally, Module 5 was named ‘Using ICT to create a digital literacy project’. It covered Prezi – something I’d heard of before but hadn’t actually used. In hindsight, I had a senior Learning Support group last year who would have loved using this resource. Definitely something I’ll be using in September!
Overall, I was delighted with this course. It covered a good mix of junior and senior classes and was excellent value at €25. I’m genuinely really looking forward to using these resources in Learning Support in September. I still prefer face-to-face courses – sometimes the online course forums can be quite time consuming to search through and you can be waiting quite a while on an answer to a question. Still though, I thoroughly enjoyed this course and would recommend it not only to support teachers, but to mainstream teachers also!
Múinteoir Nua 