Hi all
We have three locations for teaching aged care - one in Ulladulla (a town 70kms to our south), one classroom converted into a skills room, and one new classroom which was purpose-built and has both desks and an area for skills practice.
The above photo is of the new room, with 3 manikins, all in bed after a long day of students working with them!
And then you can see the area where the students practice assisting with transfers, toileting, showering etc.
on this side of the room are the student desks - you can also see the interactive whiteboard for the teachers who love to use technology, and a normal whiteboard for others. We have only had the Interactive whiteboards for about 10 years, and in fact don't have them in all rooms, but they are great for showing DVDs and videoclips, checking out internet sites on the big screen etc. Not all our teachers like to use them, though! They can be very frustrating when they don't work perfectly. We would be interested to hear about whether you use a similar sort of technology?
We have just received an interactive Smartboard. The teachers have received a 2-hour training which is far too little. We are trying to learn from, mathematics teachers for they are skilled at using such boards. We can use the Smartoard to, for example, to view the body in 3D so it will probably be useful when we have learned to use it. There are a variety of ready-made lesson material in several different subjects including medicin. It is possible to make similar programs in Power Point but in this program, you can write on the Smartboard and save it in the current document and then print it to the students
ReplyDeleteYes, our initial training was way too short too. And then because we don't have them in every classroom, teacher's don't get enough time to practice. We recently had our clerical assistant's husband (who is a principal in one of the local primary school) come over and give us a refresher on them, which was helpful. For me, I have needed to treat them as a giant TV screen before I feel I know them well enough to do much else, but I am getting slowly better!
ReplyDeleteAt the school where I practiced you just brought your lap top to the class room and connected to the internet and could show pieces from the internet or from a DVD on a screen like yours on the wall for everybody to see. Teachers very often used power point presentations - maybe a little too much - the sound from the projector makes the students sleepy.
ReplyDeleteI laughed when I read what you said about using too much powerpoint, Evalena. Because it looks so neat and tidy, people do tend to over-use it. Sometimes we call that sleepiness "death by powerpoint" :).
ReplyDeleteWe use a learning platform called Fronter. There the teacher publish the power point presentations used in the classroom and other complimentary materials for teh students tom seek information. It is also used by the students ta hand in their tests and written work. With your long distances between locations do you use some kind of learning platform?
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