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Most primary schools will rely on the class
teacher to deliver the ICT Curriculum. An early decision has to be made
as to whether the ICT room will be used as a skills building area or
for integrative work supporting that done in the classroom. Building
basic skills need only take a short time and then the focus can move
towards implementing ICT as an integral part of the classroom work.
The skill of the teacher is the
greatest factor in determining whether practice in the ICT room is effective.
There is no substitute for a well-planned approach combined with sound
understanding of both the demands and opportunities presented by the
ICT environment. However, good teaching may be enhanced with some additions
to the room.
Display media
A whiteboard would
be an essential basic with a good supply of recommended dry wipe markers
and rubber. This would need to be placed where all the class could see
from their computer.
A digital
projector is by far the best teaching option and allows the content
of the teacher's PC or laptop to be projected onto a screen or whiteboard.
A 'smart
board' (electronic whiteboard) may be used with a data projector.
It acts as a normal whiteboard but is interactive in that touching on
parts of the screen (e.g. touching the 'cross' to close a window) directly
controls the computer. Words, shapes and coloured lines may be drawn
on the display. Presentation software allows a variety of grids, arrows
and shapes to be superimposed on the display. Later, the contents of
the display may be printed out and handed out to the children.
Skills building
Minimum skills needed are:
- Operating a mouse
- Logging on if using a network; accessing personal
and shared folders
- Saving work with an appropriate filename
- Locating and opening saved work
- Printing
It is not necessary to have all these
skills to begin integrative work. Work can frequently be completed and
printed without having to save.
Teaching Styles
There are two basic aproaches to teaching the
whole class in the ICT room:
All together now: start
at point A. Wait until all have achieved point A before moving on to
point B
The big bang: start
at point A and stand back and watch what happens, teaching on demand
as ideas develop.
All together now
This style may have some uses for younger children
but is often used to maintain control of the lesson. Maybe, initially,
this style is useful for the teacher who is new to ICT and would find
widely differentiated work difficult to manage. It can also be used
at the beginning of a lesson to establish a base from which to work,
for example, setting up a spreadsheet or ensuring a saved piece of work
has been retrieved.
The big bang
This style of teaching allows children to move
forward at a pace which they can control. It takes in to account the
fact that many students may already have the skills that the teacher
is planning to teach. An essential issue to consider is that through
the medium of ICT, there will be children who have considerably more
skill than the teacher. It falls on the experienced teacher to manage
this successfully and not to see this as a threat.
Employing the big bang essentially
needs the teacher to be much more than a little ahead of the children,
and will be most successfully employed by those who use ICT on a daily
basis. Allowing children to be creative and to investigate the technology
freely takes courage and requires good planning in depth. An able student,
leaving the teacher floundering can sometimes complete a half term's
scheme of work in the first lesson. It is important to have extension
exercises and projects available for these children.
The converse is also true. Some children
will be unable to access even the first lesson due to lack of background
skills, for example in using spreadsheets. Children with low numeracy
skills may find the concept of using a spreadsheet hard to cope with
and preparatory exercises may need to be presented. Using this technique
of teaching along with choice of material can lead to each child working
at different levels on different content.
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