ICT in the Classroom

Strategies for implementing ICT in the Classroom

Martin Pluss
m.pluss@staff.tara.nsw.edu.au

INTRODUCTION

In School Innovation: Pathway to the Knowledge Society there is an unequivocal statement of what teachers have to do:

“The integration of I.C.T. into all major social institutions and organisations means that the necessity to equip young people with the capacity to understand and utilise the potential of such environments is no longer an option, but is now an imperative.” (Cuttance, 2001:73)

This issue has been increasingly addressed by schools through out school in Australia. For a number of years schools have been approaching the integration of ICT with a commendable investment in hardware and software. In more recent years it seems some schools have moved to another level with the investment in staff to facilitate ICT integration in schools. This integration has taken a number of forms. Some teachers in schools have taken the initiative and use ICT in the classroom to enthuse their departmental members. This often filters through then school. Sometimes their effort is acknowledged and a time allocation is sometimes given to help out other teachers. Gradually the school sees the benefit of this good work a greater allocation is given and the person becomes an ICT Integrator within the school. Other schools soon realise that they have to do something to facilitate the use of ICT in teaching and learning. In some schools, for what ever reason, there does not seem to be any or little momentum with ICT integration and the school decides to bring in outside experts to discuss strategies which lead to an appointment of someone to shape the direction of ICT with in the school.

Now the question becomes what can these integrators do to help teachers and students? The first thing is to give ideas on how to use the facilities that you may have. Secondly, then some ideas on what traditional and emerging learning technologies can be use and how to use them in the classroom are two sold starting points.


HOW TO USE THE TECHNOLOGY YOU HAVE

When I started using ICT in the classroom I was almost the only one who would book the computer room or library computers. Since then it is now harder to get into ICT rooms and a more strategic approach to the integration of ICT needs to be considered. At my school we have a two week cycle and it is much harder to get access to the computer facilities. In the past you could book rooms a term ahead now we have only a 2 week corridor to book. This is fair enough as we have to share the resources around and it is good that more and more teachers are using the resources.

I set aside one period a cycle for my classes in an ICT type room. I have tried a few approaches to using the room with the students.

1. Integration of ICT– long term project approach. This took the form of a long term project or activity. In this case I set a long term activity which is loosely related to the work we are doing in the term. The advantage is that you can separate the classroom work from the ICT work and if you miss a lesson due to an excursion or “incursion” (an in school activity that cuts into your lesson times) you a catch up the following week. From a student’s learning viewpoint this approach sometimes creates difficulty for the students as two weeks is a long time between activities and often only think about the lesson as they come to it. In addition it sometimes proved difficult to integrate into the classroom work going on at the same time.

So I started to think through a second approach.

2. Integration of ICT directly related to class work. In this approach I still had the lesson each fortnight and designed activities directly related to what we were doing in the classroom. I had to be a little more adaptable and flexible in my approach depending where I was up to with the class. This gets trickier when you have two classes in the same year group of different abilities or have been affected by incursions. Students who are well organise can cope with this well while others sometimes don’t bring together the products of the ICT activities with their classroom work.

This linking of ICT activities to class work I thought could be brought together though an ICT activity related to the syllabus

3. Integration of ICT linked to the syllabus work. I came across this third approach to help Year 10 students understand syllabus speak for the School Certificate. Here I have developed a set of activities which guide the students through the Syllabus Statement linked to the class work and the overall unit of work. Once the students have worked on the syllabus then, thorough activities, the class work is linked to the syllabus statements. I don’t think teachers overtly link their work to the Syllabus for their students. By doing this find they know the syllabus terms and are less confused when they have to link what they have learnt to external examinations with questions in syllabus language.


THE TYPE OF TECHNOLOGIES TO USE

Much depends on the skill level of the teacher and the students. One thing for certain is that when you compare the skills of students over the years the skill level increases down the age groups as each year goes by. It is not unusually for students to be able to develop web pages in the junior school while students in Year 12 are unable to perform a similar ask. This makes it difficult to develop a whole school scope and sequence for the development of ICT skills. In addition, a school strategy needs to take into account when the syllabuses have difference requirements at different Stages. What follows are some generic activities which can be used and applied into your schools situation. I have broken the activities into Traditional Learning Technologies (TLT) and Emerging Learning Technologies (ELT).

The use of Traditional Learning Technologies (TLT)
1. Basic computer software
The use of word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook and the Apple equilivant can all be implemented to enhance the learning of the content covered in class. A simple task of providing word documents on your intranet or network with questions for the students to download. The ICT skills they would learn with this simple activity would numerous such as being able to logon to their profile, navigate the network or use a username and password to access the file, save a document to their profile or home directory. In addition they have answered questions relevant to the unit of work they are studying.

2. Subject specific software
The specific subject software such as Data Logging for Science, Mathematics software games, GIS for Geography, image manipulation software for Visual Art, special programs for Languages to name a few. For example the ICT skills learnt by using image manipulation software will teach the students a lot about manipulating the size of images for which the network manager will be eternally grateful. In the process of doing this the will learn where to locate original files, create photo galleries, thumbnails and perhaps integrate them into web pages.

3. Web browsing software
Students know how to use different browsers but do they use all of the functions? Browsing software is a very powerful instrument. Knowledge management aside the management of bookmarks should be the first thing taught to students. This way they can learn to navigate to where they need to be quickly and efficiently. Once the have done this they can learn to make use of functions on the internet that can collate their needed data and store information they have and interacting by using for example My Space.


The use of Emerging Learning Technologies (ELT)

It is difficult to work out when a technology is mainstream and no longer emerging. As a working definitions if people on your staff have not heard of the term (s), if they have heard of it and don’t know what it is it is and if they don’t know how to use it t then it is an emerging technology for your school – even if it is mainstream elsewhere. This is unlikely to be the case if you keep up-to-date. There are a few ELTs to consider using.

1. Blogging
Blogs are like online journals with posts that date based, archived and enable a degree of interaction though the use of comments, pingbacks and trackbacks. You can either use blogs to search information using blog search engines and manage the updates using software such as Bloglines. There can be individual blogs and group blogs and the content is determined by the writer. Accordingly they can be official blogs of organizations or be developed and used for the teaching and learning of certain topics in a variety of subject areas. They are in the public domain and for their use in schools they can be developed internally through the school’s network protected by the firewall. It is up to you if you ant to create your own blog,

2. Integrated learning modules
Open source software has enabled the development of Learning Management Systems (LMS) and content management systems such a Moodle which have to capacity for forums, instant messaging, and online submission of work and the marking of such work. There is a lot of potential to assist teachers with the management of their own work by using such a system. These will require a greater involvement of the technical support of your school such as the network manager in order to get such a system operational and stream lined for teaching and learning.

3. Wikis
A lot of people have heard of Wikipedia and increasingly students and teachers are aware that you can create you own and use them for teaching and learning. A wiki can be set up where groups of students can add information on a topic and different students writing their own chapter. Here is a capacity for everyone to edit and add to other students work with different levels of permissions. There is wiki software that you get your network manager to install or you can make use of numerous public wikis such as wikispaces.com.

4. Podcasting
The use of audio files is not new but with the development of digital recorders, ipods and mp3 players it has become easier to create, stream and listen to audio files. Podcasts are actually the broadcasting of audio files using software supported by RSS feeds. When the audios have been made they are broadcasted by RSS feeds. Often a web page is associated with the podcasts and you can get them manually. Students can use these audio files for revision, part of project work and integrated into units of work. There is some more technical work to do to convert the Wave files from digital recorder to mp3 and get them to a suitable size to use them on the internet.

5. Online photo galleries
These galleries are often used if you want to integrate all your blog online. Photos on blogs need to be on the internet as well. You can have private or public galleries in internet based storage such as Flickr. With the addition of automatically generated scrip you can also have a little gallery on our webpage or blog. His would be very useful for adding an extra dimension to web pages constructed by students. Also galleries can be use to share photos.

6. Enhancements for Browsers
Increasingly web browsers are adding functionality for their users. Del.icio.us is a programme which enables you to store your Favourites online and then access them from what ever computer rather than having them stored on a dedicated computer. The value of this is in students being about to move around different computers and have access to their Bookmarks/Favourites. Then there are all the additional Plug Ins that add functionality to your browser

CONCLUSION
There is accelerating natural evolution of ICT technologies by the students that we teach. Meanwhile, educational authorities are starting to prescribe minimum skills that students and by implication teachers should develop. Some schools are adopting a probable future approach and letting the integration of ITC evolved as being prescribes to them. Others schools are adopting a preferred future approach and making use of innovative teachers who model the use of emerging learning technologies. These teachers are to be supported in kind or time as they provide the basis for schools to move forward and may even lead t the appointment of ICT Integrators who help shape and evolve a school’s approach to using traditional and emerging learning technologies by providing ideas on how best to use the technologies your school has and provide ideas on how to use such technologies in teaching and learning.


REFERENCES

Cuttance, P (2001) “Information and Communication Technologies” School Innovation: Pathway to the Knowledge Society, Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs pp.73-100.