I believe there is merit in using ICT for substitution and augmentation. For substitution, it is good practice to allow the student to become more technology literate and comfortable. As the student becomes more confident through practice he/she can start the process of using the features offered to enhance their learning such as correction and insertion of accents and inverted punctuation in documents. 

I can see myself using ICT more meaningfully in the future by incorporating videos and audios in classes and encouraging students to create their own videos to share with their peers. I can become a more reflective practitioner by using blogs to record my experiences and share with fellow practitioners in my school and worldwide. Additionally, I can also gain knowledge from what others may share from their classrooms. I can see myself encouraging my students to be more creative and learn outside the classroom setting and use their devices to its maximum potential to amplify their enjoyment of learning a foreign language and sharing their findings online.

With respect to learners of special needs today’s session greatly helped me to design lessons that involves ICT. The use of ICT today helped me to reach out to students with differentiated learning styles, as well as students who are visually and aurally impaired. By using devices such as the laptop I was able to activate the Narrator and Speech Recognition for the hearing impaired. Additionally, I was able to use the Magnifier which can assist the visually impaired. What I learned to do today:

Mind mapping/concept mapping using https://bubbl.us

Games building using https://kahoot.com. This game building tool can appeal to the kinesthetic learner.

I believe I can assist students with special needs by using ICT as a tool in the classroom. I can allow them to listen to the Foreign Language on their devices. They can listen to the Spanish texts being read out loud to them for the reading comprehension activity. They can use voice recognition to give their answers from speech to text. Schools can assist such students by allowing these students to be assessed through technology. If schools can recognize these forms of assessments as valid and reliable then learners with special needs can feel included in the educational experience and progress along with their classmates. Eventually, we can all echo the sentiment of the Ministry of Education of Trinidad and Tobago: “Education for all”.

Podcast challenge: Lack of knowledge in knowing how to navigate and use the tools on the devices can be a challenge to teachers. Through practice and some coaching this activity was overcome. However, for teachers who are attempting this alone, as is always the case, it can be confusing on how to edit and store correctly the recordings. Additionally, a major challenge was devices not equipped with microphones to do recordings.  

Collaborative spaces/ Weebly and SharePoint Challenges: These spaces are very lucrative for students who would like to upload and share their ideas and creations online for public viewing. Teachers can monitor group work, project submissions and students' comments. However, there may be challenges with privacy. Teachers may not always be able to edit the content posted by students for groups to view, thus, decreasing the teacher's authority in an online classroom. Additionally, the online group submissions may make it harder for teachers to closely monitor individual student input. There is a lack of direct teacher-student connectivity, as well as personal interaction. Personal intervention and immediate correction are not present on a group space. Internet connectivity must be present and all persons in the group with the teacher must be online together to achieve this relation. 

Generally, I think that the ICT Teacher Professional Development Programme is a good strategy to assist teachers to be more technologically competent in the classrooms. As a teacher it was eye-opening to my lack of use and knowledge to the many websites and tools in my subject area.  I learnt how the use of Office tools and the incorporation of ICT in lessons in a more engaging student-oriented manner and to deliver lessons more effectively can be achieved. 

I felt that the most significant areas in my teaching and learning strategies are: 

1.      SAMR model (Day 4) 

2.      Kahoot! Quiz/game (Day 5) 

The SAMR model greatly helped me to move beyond memorization and substitution level in my classes. I can see that students need to be more engaged and involved in their own education. They need to tap into their higher order thinking skills. The Kahoot! Game/quiz was a fantastic fun and learning method to get the students involved in education. It is also wonderful to have the students use their own devices to do the activity.