Primary ICT Across the Curriculum

Debbie Simpson, Mike Toyn, Debbie Simpson, Mike Toyn

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857259646
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

The changing landscape of primary teaching requires trainees to consider learning and teaching in new ways. This book supports trainee teachers working towards primary QTS in teaching primary ICT across all areas of the curriculum.

Taking a truly cross-curricular approach, the text highlights meaningful links across the curriculum, while embracing the latest thinking and current good practice. A chapter on social networking and e-safety is included, giving essential guidance on this topical issue. This is followed by a section aimed at strengthening trainees? own skills and subject knowledge in ICT. Interactive activities and case studies link theory to practice and encourage the reader to rethink how ICT is taught in primary schools.

This Second Edition is linked to the 2012 Teachers? Standards.

About the Transforming Primary QTS series

This series reflects the new creative way schools are begining to teach, taking a fresh approach to supporting trainees as they work towards prmary QTS. Titles provide fully up tp date resources focused on teaching a more integrated and inclusive curriculum, and texts draw out meaningful and explicit cross curricular links.

PART 1 ICT IN THE NATIONAL CURRICULUM

1. ICT as a core skill

Debbie Simpson, Ian Todd and Mike Toyn

Learning Outcomes

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By the end of this chapter you should:

• understand the difference between ICT skills and ICT capability;
• understand your own use of ICT and your development of ICT capability;
• understand the historical context behind the use of ICT in schools;
• develop your understanding of the importance of supporting children to develop their ICT capability.

TEACHERS’ STANDARDS
A teacher must:

1. Set high expectations which inspire, motivate and challenge pupils

• establish a safe and stimulating environment for pupils, rooted in mutual respect.

2. Promote good progress and outcomes by pupils

• be accountable for pupils’ attainment, progress and outcomes
• plan teaching to build on pupils’ capabilities and prior knowledge
• demonstrate knowledge and understanding of how pupils learn and how this impacts on teaching.

3. Demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge

• have a secure knowledge of the relevant subject(s) and curriculum areas, foster and maintain pupils’ interest in the subject, and address misunderstandings
• demonstrate a critical understanding of developments in the subject and curriculum areas, and promote the value of scholarship.

4. Plan and teach well structured lessons

• impart knowledge and develop understanding through effective use of lesson time
• promote a love of learning and children’s intellectual curiosity
• contribute to the design and provision of an engaging curriculum within the relevant subject area(s).

5. Adapt teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils

• know when and how to differentiate appropriately, using approaches which enable pupils to be taught effectively
• have a secure understanding of how a range of factors can inhibit pupils’ ability to learn, and how best to overcome these.

Introduction

This chapter aims to set the scene for the rest of the book by discussing some key areas. As such it does not focus on developing your understanding of how to teach ICT effectively or use ICT in your teaching; rather it aims to support your learning about the way ICT should be used. It does this by making distinctions between different approaches to teaching ICT and by considering the impact that the history of ICT use in schools has had on the way it is taught. It also asks you to consider why and how you use ICT. This will provide opportunities for you to apply your own experiences to the way you teach ICT, and teach with ICT.

This chapter will underpin Part 1 and Part 2 of this book. You will see the importance of the need to develop children’s ICT capability and this will guide your learning when you read the chapters in Part 1 about teaching the ICT National Curriculum. By reflecting on the way you have learned to use ICT you will begin to realise the importance of context when using ICT to support learning across the curriculum. This will be helpful to you as you read the chapters in Part 2.

As an aid to developing your understanding, case studies are used to exemplify the key ideas presented in this chapter.

A brief history of ICT in primary classrooms

Even though every child at school in the UK today has been brought up in a world where computers are very commonplace, this has not always been the case. The significance of this is that even though it is easy to take ICT for granted, it is a very new phenomenon in education compared to the teaching of English and literacy, for example.

Within the short time that computers have been in classrooms there have been a number of different approaches to the way they should be used. Interestingly, the first computers that appeared in classrooms were not funded by the (then) Department for Education and Science (DES) but the (then Department for Trade and Industry (DTI). This underlined the perception that computers were a part of the world of work and that children needed to learn about them to prepare themselves for leaving school. The impact of this was that the curriculum was focused on learning how to operate computers and was known at the time as Computer Studies.

However, there were competing theoretical perspectives. Others, particularly influenced by ‘learning machines’ which had been developed in America, believed that computers would eventually become curriculum deliverers and that their role should be to deliver Computer Assisted Learning (CAL). Consequently, the development of a drill and practice curriculum for computers was advocated. An example of this would be the use of computers to test children’s recall of number bonds to ten, or common spelling patterns.

Around the same time a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Seymour Papert, was advocating a radically different standpoint. Papert developed the LOGO programming language and argued that there was far more educational value in children teaching computers through developing programming skills, than in children being taught by computers through drill and practice techniques. Consequently, a discovery-based approach was advocated, with children working on problems and developing their understanding of mathematics, communication, problem solving and logic, etc. along the way.

Alongside these perspectives, which have influenced the ways in which ICT has been used in UK schools, is the issue of funding and its impact on provision. At present, many schools have impressive quantities of ICT resources and teachers are often challenged to ensure they are used to their optimum effect. However, this has not always been the case. In the 1980s the Microelectronics Education Programme (MEP) was one of the first to fund computer provision in schools and £32 million was made available, with the result that by the end of the 1980s most schools owned at least one computer (in total, not per class). This presented a dilemma as, whilst teachers recognised that using this precious resource for activities such as number bond practice seemed rather wasteful, the extended use of LOGO as advocated by Papert could not be accommodated with only one computer in a school. This tension resulted in teachers making pragmatic and practical choices about ICT teaching.

The limited provision of ICT resources continued to have an impact on the way ICT skills were taught until the late 1990s when the National Grid for Learning (NGfL) provided significant funding (£100 million in 1998/1999 for example) allowing schools to vastly increase their ICT provision, and school leaders and teachers made strategic decisions about the way that resources should be allocated. Many schools initially tried to place one computer in each class then, as NGfL money became available, began to put a second computer into classrooms. Often they found that classrooms were not large enough to accommodate any further computers and that there were still problems ensuring that each child in the class had adequate access to the resources. This led to the development of computer suites, which had an impact on the way that ICT was managed, as now a whole class of children could be taught at once. However, having all the computer resources in one room required the relocation of the class to the computer suite, and there could be difficulties in scheduling access to the room. Many schools are now adopting a more flexible approach through the use of portable computing combined with classroom computing and some centralised provision.

It is sometimes easy to assume that the way things are now is the way they have always been, but this has not been the case for ICT within primary education. Indeed the current situation where ICT is a curriculum subject and children have to learn about ICT as well as using it to support learning in other subjects had been scheduled to change under the implementation of the Primary Curriculum Review (Rose, 2008). Indeed, had it not been for a change of government in 2010, this change would already be being implemented in schools.

Theoretical perspectives, ICT provision and political decisions have all influenced the way that ICT has been taught and used in primary schools and will continue to do so. Your developing understanding of what ICT capability is will stand you in good stead as you make significant and effective use of ICT to support children’s learning.

Activity

By considering your own experience you will be able to place this within a framework of time/provision/and theoretical perspective. What was your experience of ICT at school? Were there computers, and were they PCs or some other form of computer? Did you use LOGO or did you spend time using the computer for practising spellings or times tables?
How do you foresee the use of ICT in the next five or ten years?

What is ICT capability?

The previous section outlined briefly the history of ICT provision in UK schools and some of the competing theories about the purpose of ICT, its pedagogy and curriculum structure. This section will explore these issues in more detail by considering what is meant by ICT capability.

Fox (2003, page 57) distinguishes between ICT techniques, such as recognising and using the font tool to change the appearance of word-processed text, and ICT skills by noting that a skill is something that you can get better at. Using ICT to change fonts to suit a specific purpose and intended audience however, is a skill, as children can improve their decision-making based on experience and feedback. It is possible to make a similar distinction between ICT skills and ICT capability. In theory, it would be perfectly possible to plan an ICT curriculum that was entirely skills-based and that allowed learners to get better at skills but did not develop their capability in any way. This curriculum might be characterised by a focus on learning how to operate specific software titles using examples that were not related to other areas of the children’s learning.

The South West Grid for Learning (SWGfL) website represents ICT capability using a Venn diagram (Figure 1.1). Techniques are the ‘nuts and bolts’ of ICT, for example, the ability to cut and paste text in a word processed document. Process skills relate to the purposeful application of techniques, for example choosing and using an appropriate font for a specific purpose. It is to these two elements of the diagram that Fox’s distinction applies. However, the SWGfL diagram also includes a third aspect of ICT: concepts. Conceptual understanding implies an awareness of the contribution that ICT tools and resources can make to learning, and the ability to make informed choices about which technology to use, when and where to use it and, indeed, whether it is appropriate to use ICT for a task at all. It can be seen therefore that the distinction between techniques and skills is only part of the picture of ICT capability, and that higher order conceptual understanding must also be taken into account.

Figure 1.1 ICT capability

Activity

Have you gained an ICT qualification? Perhaps a GCSE or O level in ICT or a European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL)? If so, consider how much of your learning was spent on each of the segments in Figure 1.1. Would you describe the syllabus as having been focused on skills and techniques or was it aim...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1 ICT in the National Curriculum
• Part 2 ICT Supporting Primary Education
• Model answers
• Index