Use of ICT within English lessons - what do your lot do / use that works well?

[pete]

We're having a new English block built and it's being fitted out with the usual standard teaching-room AV / IT kit. Other depts (tech, for example) are easy to cater for in refits, English it's a bit more nebulous regarding subject-specific needs.

I'm looking for good "ooh, I can use that straightaway" rather than the "hidden at the back of the cupboard white elephant" because our English dept, while lovely people, do need a helping hand with ICT. I have a meeting with them pending to discuss ideas and it would be handy to go with examples of what works elsewhere.

Looking on Teachernet and Google I see lots of "here's how to use Youtube/Web2.0 thingy/video cameras/podcast/online word processing/txt spk shkspr* in lessons", but nothing hardware/widget/software-specific?

*yes, I made the last one up.

[ljlbray]

We had Avervision Visualisers at the last school I worked at. Easy to use and not requiring a computer if they don't like or want to - bit like a fancy ohp I know, but they did get a lot of use in the English department, were useful in sharing passages with the class when there was only one copy of the book, and the software was easy to use to annotate, highlight sections, whatever else they wanted to do with it. Thats all I can think of hardware wise.

[Hightower]

I think boardworks works well here. Most the staff use it. It can be used straight out the box, but a lot of our teachers have modded the slides to suit their lesson plans. That coupled with a slate should work well and get the whole class involved. We also have a set of voting thingy's in tech - they work really well, when the teacher can be bothered to set them up.

[CallMeFred]

ClickView gets heavily used by our English teachers.

[Rydra]

Pretty much what others have said already, there's not really any 'new tech' up and coming on this front, until we get the stage where all students work from netbooks/ipads or whatever. I long for the day when I can say bye-bye to printers and using paper entirely, in favour of a lightweight/flexible tablet!

The only other thing I'd look into, is resources that teach about english use within the computing world. For example, almost all programming languages (unless I've really missed something) work in english, most sites on the internet (that deal internationally) have english language options too. What I find missing in most curriculum now, is how to actually write on a computer in legibible english. It's amazing how people can go from perfectly crafted written word, to a blobbed wall of text in pink writing with yellow background and little animated pixies in the corners the minute they find a computer under their mitts.