Reflecting on our Presentation

Both our presentation and choice of ICTs received positive feedback from the
tutor and students. The ICT that received the most positive feedback from our
peers review was Kahoot. Our movie making ICT Animoto was also very well
received. The skating program, however, was too specific to our teaching area to
really be considered useful.
In our demonstration Kahoot was used as a revision tool to reinforce the previous
lesson. This ICT could also be used effectively as a pre-test to ascertain the
students prior knowledge on a subject or as a test at the end of a lesson to
assess whether or not the class has gained an understanding of what has been
taught. Interestingly, the post-lesson discussion on our presentation revealed the
potential usefulness of the competitive characteristic of this ICT. This was a
potential

facet

of

the

program

that

we

were

previously

cautious

of

demonstrating.
The second of our ICTs Energy skate park (by PhET interactive simulations)
allows students to innovatively interact with and manipulate the relationship
between kinetic and potential energy. This ICT allows students to explore the
energy concept scientifically, but has limited applications in other learning areas.
While using this program we also discovered the limitations of using adobe flash
software as it is not supported by iOS devices (iPhone, iPod touch and iPad). To us
this highlighted the broader importance of ICT competency. Teachers should have
a general understanding of software to hardware compatibility. To put it plainly, a
teacher should check which systems will be used in the classroom before they
write their lesson plan and ensure that the software they plan on using will work
with those devices!
Our third ICT, Animoto, produces short videos from screen capture images. The
class feedback on usability of this program was good. We were impressed with
how quickly the class navigated through the software and published their short
video. Like Kahoot the class agreed that this could be used in a wide variety of
learning areas, many preferring this program to others they had tried to use.
Feedback on our blog suggested that Animoto was quite limited in the free
version, which is undoubtedly a strong drawback. If a short video is all that is

required, as was the case for us, then we feel that the free version was sufficient
and useful.
For at least one of us, the class presentation seemed a daunting task. The
concern lied, not in the stressful nature of public presentations, but in our
confidence to use ICTs efficiently and appropriately. The end result was highly
successful, rewarding and uplifting.