EPS+-+Educational+Setting

//**A brief about my background..**// A tertiary qualified supply chain and distribution professional with extensive LOGISTICS Management experience working for global manufacturing organisations in the FMCG and Industrial sectors as well as management expertise with the local retail sector. Offers strong leadership as well as sound understanding of safety principles and legislation.Further have developed project and I.T management skills. Decisive hands on management style with robust communication skills and advocacy for a strong commitment to customers and employee safety.

//**A brief history about the school I teach ICT at...**// =Welcome to Lara Secondary College= Our community is located in a semi rural setting to the North of Geelong with easy access to both Melbourne and the Surf Coast. Our long awaited Secondary School opened in 2003 and has grown to a stable population of just over 800 students, with students in Years 7 - 12.

Our local community now has access to outstanding facilities with the completion of our Middle Years Centre which includes open learning spaces and specialist facilities. Our new buildings have enabled flexibility in our teaching approach to further enhance teacher practice to meet the needs of the 21st century learning.

Our high quality facilities are matched by the passion of our teaching and support staff who are dedicated to supporting every student in achieving their very best. As a community of learners we place emphasis on developing student connectedness and engagement through our broad range of innovative curriculum - the result of extensive research to find 'best practice' across Australia and the globe.

=**My Subjects**= I teach Mathematics at secondary school at both Year 9 and 10 levels for the entire year. Further, I teach ICT (named techie talk or Multimedia) to year 7/8 mix class each term (IE new group of 25 students each term).

=**How I incorporate ICT into my subjects**= My Techie Talk class is predominantly an ICT based class where I aim to provide my group of students a taster of various ICT programs. Topics I try to cover incorporate the following as in my opinion it provides a good mix of structured curriculum as well as creativity.
 * Go through a number of sessions on the Microsoft suite of products IE word, excel, powerpoint and to a lesser extent access. This taster culminates in an ASSESSMENT task using Powerpoint and requires students to create something of interest related to technology to present in both an illustrative and oral form.
 * I have been using a package titled "Rapid Typing". I have found students enjoy using this tool as it helps them improve both their speed and accuracy in typing in a fun and interactive manner.
 * I like using Google sketchup as its very intuitive and the results with just a few training sessions are fantastic and students tend to love the results from their labour.
 * I have found Windows movie maker is an ideal learning tool for junior secondary students. The software is very easy to use and allows students to be creative and in a fairly short period of time it allows them to create a movie from inception to end product. Many students have progressed from basic movie making to adding music, captions, and creative pictures so the product is quite professional. From a teaching perspective what I have gauged is students enjoy the intuitive nature of the software and love the editing functions as it allows them to add their personal stamp to a project they have created.