Use of ICT in Learning and Teaching

Exploring Scratch - Whys and Hows? Date: 26/07/18 -Thursday This blog post is simply inspired from my recent dive into Scratch . I have never been fond of programming and have always found it extremely boring and complicated. It was my recent experience of working in Scratch that helped change the initial thoughts. This blog post explores the whys and hows of introducing Scratch in schools, in  academy's , at home or in any other formal/informal settings.  Scratch is a programming language , developed by the Life Long Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is designed for kids aged between 8 - 16 years but anyone can use it. A colorful and easy to use interface, easy accessibility, ease of sharing in an online community, trial and error opportunity, interactivity , availability of help tutorials and much more has made it a favorite of people of all ages. It is used in more than 150 countries and is available in 40 languages. My first program in Scratch was t...

Podcasting - Transforming T & L in Schools Date: 15 July 2018/Sunday This time my blogpost explores Podcasting with some insight into why I believe it has the power to transform teaching and learning in schools. So lets begin by digging a little and finding out what are actually podcasts, how do you create them? a look into websites that let you host free podcasts? a list of advantages for using in schools and much more. Join the ride people :) Just to make it as simple as possible, a podcast is a digital file (audio/video) available online and can be downloaded to any device computer , mobile or an portable media player and you can listen to it whenever you want to using our speakers or headphones while driving, sitting, walking , during exercise etc. In other words its on demand radio , the content is different every time, not the same as usual radio station episode every week. It has content to either inspire you, motivate you, increase your knowledge and understandin...

The Khan Academy Date: 2nd July 2018/Monday This blogpost is inspired from my dive into the Khan Academy, which is a non profit educational organization created by educator Salman Khan in 2006 with the aim to develop online tools to assist students develop a deeper understanding of different taught concepts related to Math, Science, Art and Humanities, Grammar, Economics, exams like SAT, GMAT etc. It is a huge repository of interactive quizzes, reading articles  and video based lessons. It is free and anyone can join. I will begin by briefly describing the joining procedure, creating accounts, creating classes and adding students, assign tasks and monitoring progress reports. I have imported my two classes from the Google Classroom. The resource has been used with kids at both the SOS Children Village and Ranaa Child Welfare Foundation (a school for street children in Peshawar). Mostly used for practicing grammar and different math concepts for grades KG and above.I can alw...