Meeting the Standards in Using ICT for Secondary Teaching

A Guide to the ITTNC

Steve Kennewell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415249874
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134533084
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

This book explains how Information and Communications technology (ICT) has the potential to make a real improvement to teaching and learning across the curriculum in secondary schools. It illustrates a wide variety of ways in which ICT can be used to enhance learning, offering a fresh burst of inspiration for the busy secondary school teacher. The author takes a structured approach, ensuring that the reader is guided progressively through all the material in order to achieve the required standards for achieving Qualified Teacher Status, and also to continue their development in ICT to an advanced level. This book usefully: * analyzes all the common ICT tools and explains how teachers of each subject in the National Curriculum can exploit these tools for effective learning * explores how people can learn with ICT, how their skills develop, and how these skills can aid their learning * provides a framework for planning, analysing and evaluating teaching with ICT * offers a range of innovative tasks, resources and methods of assessment.

1ICT in Secondary Education

In this first chapter, you are introduced to the role of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) as a tool for teachers and pupils as well as a subject of study. You are provided with examples of the use of ICT, by teachers and pupils, as a resource for teaching, learning, assessment and management. An outline explanation of the standards for qualified teacher status in the UK is given, and you will examine the place of ICT in both the knowledge and the skills required to meet those standards. Guidance on how to use this book is provided, together with other higher education (HE) sessions and school-based activities, in order to reach and surpass the standards for qualified teacher status.

What is ICT?

The term ICT covers all aspects of computers, networks (including the Internet) and certain other devices with information storage and processing capacity such as calculators, mobile phones and automatic control devices. The common factors here are that the devices process, store or communicate information, and that they are digital – that is, they handle information by representing it in terms of discrete symbols. This gives them massive information handling power in relation to their size and energy consumed, compared with older analogue technologies such as radio and TV, audio and video recording, and traditional telephones. The term has also been used (TTA, 1998) to cover these older media, and the distinction between computing and other resources is becoming blurred as digital technology increasingly pervades our lives. The important thing is what the technology can do, not how it works, but there are a number of general concepts concerning digital technology that you will need to understand in order to use ICT most effectively in teaching your subject. Chapters 2 and 3explore these in some detail, and Chapter 12 considers some implications of future technology, whilst the rest of this guide focuses on the use of ICT in teaching.

ICT resources

ICT resources can be broadly classified as:

• hardware – the equipment, such as a PC or interactive whiteboard;

• software – the stored instructions which enable the hardware to operate automatically, together with the information that it stores and processes, such as a word processing program and the documents produced using it;

• media – the materials that carry data and programs, such as floppy or hard disks;

• services – combinations of hardware, software and human resources that enable users to achieve more than they could with hardware and software alone, such as the Internet.

Task 1.1

Table 1.1 shows some ICT resources which are relevant to education. Some of them will be very familiar, others may be less so. For each one, first check that you know what it does (or find out what it does – you do not need to know how it works!) and then classify it as hardware, software, media or a service. You should refer to a glossary, either in book form or on the web, and for more detail about its use in education, see guides such as those from Becta's ICT Advice website (see Further reading at the end of this chapter).

Suggested answers are provided in Appendix C as a check.

The resources listed in Table 1.1 can be used in three main ways as tools for teaching and learning:

• teacher use in preparation, assessment or professional development;

• teacher use with a class;

• pupil use in the classroom, either to find information or represent their ideas.

The resources will not all be relevant to every subject; process control, for instance, will probably only be relevant to science and technology teachers. Some will only be used in one of the ways listed above: MIS, for instance will usually only be used by the teacher, out of sight of the pupils.

Case studies on using ICT

Here are some examples of how ICT resources may be used for different purposes related to education. At this stage, the focus will be on the technology and considering what role it might take in teaching and learning. It will be valuable, therefore, to read all these examples carefully and consider what is being achieved by using ICT rather than other ways of approaching the teaching. As your pedagogical thinking develops, you will need to switch your focus from the technology itself to the teaching of your specialist subjects, and consider how pupils’ learning may be supported by ICT.

Table 1.1 Types of ICT resource

Resource	Type
CAD (computer-aided design)
Calculator
CD-ROM
Data logging
Database
Desktop PC
Digital camera
Digital video
DTP (desktop publishing)
E-commerce
E-mail
Encyclopaedia
Graphic organiser
Internet
Intranet
Laptop PC
MIS (management information system)
Mobile phone
PDA (personal data assistant)
Playstations
Process control
SMS (text messaging)
Spreadsheet Video games
VLE (virtual learning environment)
WWW (World Wide Web)

Task 1.2

Which of the resources listed in Table 1.1 do you use regularly? Which have you used occasionally?

Think back to your own schooling. Did you or your teachers use ICT for any aspects of education? If so, how was it used? Do you think it helped?

How is ICT used in your current course for each of the purposes above? How does it help?

Consider the possible ways in which you may use ICT in teaching. Which resources do you think that you will need to become familiar with for teaching?

Are there other ICT resources that you have used in your education or in employment that you think would be useful in schools?

Example 1.1

The Internet was selected by an English teacher to help pupils prepare for a debate on the topic of capital punishment. It enabled pupils to work in small groups, using books and bookmarked websites on the WWW through networked PCs in the Resource Centre, to find information and opinions from a wide range of sources, both from the UK and from countries which have the death penalty. It also enabled each group to send a summary of their arguments by e-mail to other pupils who were acting as speech editors in preparation for the formal debate (TTA, 1999a).

Figure 1.1 Accessing views on capital punishment from the World Wide Web: http://www.reprieve.org.uk/ copyright Reprive 2003

Example 1.2

A spreadsheet program was selected by a science teacher to help pupils produce graphs from prepared data in order to identify relationships between the properties of the planets in the solar system. The topic was introduced by showing animated images from a CD-ROM to the whole class and asking questions to focus pupils’ attention on the relative position and movement of planets. Pupils were then required to produce the graphs and use them, together with printed information and the content of selected websites, to produce reports of their findings (TTA, 1999a).

Figure 1.2 Spreadsheet showing graph of solar system data

Example 1.3

A presentation program (such as PowerPoint) was selected by an RE teacher to help pupils to work in small groups preparing a talk to the class on the forms and places of worship of different faiths. Pupils used visits to places of worship and talks with representatives of faiths in order to carry out research. This was supplemented by accessing websites (though search engine or bookmark) and CD-ROM, and by e-mailing information services of different faiths in order to ask detailed questions. The presentation program enabled pupils to use the digital videos and images they had taken on visits or scanned from other sources to illustrate the points made in their talks (TTA, 1999a).

Example 1.4

A dynamic geometry program was selected by a mathematics teacher to help pupils develop their understanding of the angle properties of parallel lines and triangles.

The teacher was able to demonstrate certain effects and techniques using the software with an interactive whiteboard, and as the image was manipulated, the teacher asked pupils questions to focus their attention on what was changing and what was not. The pupils were then able to use the software in pairs in the ICT room to investigate the relationships between angles made by a line crossing two parallel lines, to make conjectures and test them out with instant feedback (TTA, 1999a).

Example 1.5

A laptop computer linked to a data projector was selected by a geography teacher to present video clips to a class during an investigation of whether there is a North/ South divide in Italy. The teacher had filmed a number of key aspects of each area, and transferred the material to her laptop and used video editing software in order to divide it into short clips, each of which illustrated a particular point she wanted pupils to note. She played a number of clips, first without sound in order to focus their attention on what they could see, and then with sound. She was able to ask pupils questions and, depending on their answers, show appropriate clips in order to help pupils to develop their understanding. She encouraged pupils to formulate their own questions and replayed particular clips to help with responses. She used a word processing program, using a large, clear typeface, to record key points as they arose. She switched the display between the video and the document frequently, and developed a long list of ideas that was stored and retrieved for later discussion. The pupils were then required to make summary notes for themselves about what they had learned. This was followed up by a task where pupils worked in pairs on networked PCs, using mapping software to plot the distribution of different social and economic factors across Italy. They were able to draw conclusions about differences between North and South by visually examining the map shading for general patterns concerning population, employment, car ownership, etc. Printouts of each pair's map were displayed on the wall and the conclusions discussed. Pupils then extended their own notes about their learning (based on TTA, 1999b).

Figure 1.3 Demonstrating properties of angles on...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Meeting theStandards inUsing ICT forSecondaryTeaching
• Meeting the Standards Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 ICT in secondary education
• Chapter 2 The nature of ICT and its potential contribution to teaching and learning
• Chapter 3 ICT tools and concepts
• Chapter 4 Applications of ICT in the curriculum
• Chapter 5 How pupils learn with ICT
• Chapter 6 ICT capability and its development
• Chapter 7 Managing learning in the ICT classroom
• Chapter 8 Developing pedagogy with ICT
• Chapter 9 Preparation and evaluation of ICT resources
• Chapter 10 Impact of ICT on assessment
• Chapter 11 Other professional applications of ICT
• Chapter 12 The future – developments in technology and improvements in pedagogy
• Appendix A Extracts relating to ICT from Qualifying to Teach: Professional Standards for Qualified Teacher Status and Requirements for Initial Teacher Training
• Appendix B Programmes of Study for the National Curriculum for ICT in England
• Appendix C Suggested Answers to Tasks
• Appendix D ICT and Subject Teaching: Self-assessment and Record of Progress
• Appendix E Lesson Plan Template
• Bibliography
• Index