As a History teacher with an interest, and a little skill, in ICT, I take a keen interest in how ICT is viewed and taught in the schools I visit.

For three years I fought against a school system which restricted access to ICT and a few ‘elite’ teachers, this was in a Maths & Computing college. In theory all had access to the ICT rooms but, once the SLT decided to increase the number of ICT related qualifications on offer the number of hours the rooms became available were drastically reduced.

One option was to have ‘portable classrooms’, in reality classroom laptops. This again created the illusion of access, but as the number of students taking an ICT related subject outstripped the available rooms, demand exceeded supply.

One area of frustration then, and now, is that for a large proportion of the time, the students do not really need to be sat in front of a PC, and in fact the fact that they are, can sometimes mean that the students do not plan their work very well, resulting in poor quality work. For example I have asked students to “produce a powerpoint to promote your film”, now correct me if I am wrong, but who promotes a film using a Powerpoint presentation? Surely a trailer is much better, and can demonstrate similar skills. The students had produced a leaflet and a poster, and would later produce a website, surely this is just a lazy trawl through Microsofts products. This lack of context really gets to me, as I feel students are being let down, some students are doing meaningless activities for no logical reason, whilst others are desperate for ICT access.

So what do I suggest?         Simply scrap the ICT suites!

The money spent on designing and building ICT suites could be spent on a wireless network, and laptops. I was in a classroom with 10 students, who had access to a suite of 30 PCs, meaning 20 PCs were not being used for the hour. Now with a wireless network stdents could access their files from every classroom, every classroom has the potential to be an ICT suite, meaning all staff have access!

one flaw is the cost of Laptops, but do we really need top notch laptops for every lesson? Cheap wordprocessors for English, when students are simply ‘typing up’ ? Top notch for the cutting edge ICT lessons, and as well all know these top notch laptops soon become outdated, with this the school need only buy a new set, rather than invest in replacing every machine in the school, and hand down the outdated laptops.

another drawback would be printers, every classroom would need a printer, but would this really be a hardship,in fact staff would benefit, as it would help with photocopying.

Ok it may sound like an ideal which would be difficult to achieve, but why restrict ourselves and out students to ICT suites? After all how much easier would it be for students to share a laptop in a ‘normal’ classroom, meaning the students would see the computer as a resources, just like the textbook and the teacher, creating a balance.

This brings me to another idea, and this is all it is at the moment, an idea to get others thinking. How would I use laptops in a classroom? I would be as flexible as ever, if students are working in a group, then the group gets a laptop, OK i know at first students would fight to control it, but that is because they see it as a precious.

After time, once laptops have been made available all the time, I think students would come to use them as a tool, to enhance their learning, rather than something special and unique, which is the source of all that is valuable.

This is not too far away from reality, on a curriculum day, students did just that, groups of students had one laptop and a restricted printing total, thus students had to choose carefully what to print out, and what to include in a Powerpoint when presenting their research, the laptop was just another way to gather and present information, this can be done in a classroom, and would be no different to a normal lesson in which students research and then present their findings, this way they have a choice as to how to present their work.

I know this needs much more thought, and the planners would not really listen, there are far too many vested interests and schools are usually reluctant to engage in revolutionary thought when planning classrooms, after all classrooms have not changed much over the past century.

http://www.thestar.com/atkinsonseries/atkinson2009/article/718262–how-schools-get-it-wrong

A lots of what is said here ring true to me, I feel as if I have been fighting ‘the system’ for the past fiveyears, and am on a downer at the moment, although I feel as if I have begun to hit the upward slope, must be the prospect of Christmas and a new year? Thus instead of seeing this as an opporunity to moan, I see these ideas as something to provoke an idea of my own.

I too have had the “Don’t ask them questions. Just tell them what you want them to know.” from a so-called ‘advisor and I too felt upset and frustrated by the attitude, as this was the perception of my subject by those making the fundamental decisions, and . . .  they were, and still are wrong.

From my very first week in a school as an educator, i have tried to enthuse students, seeing my role as that of helping students develop, rather than telling them what ‘they must  know’, I think this stems from teaching Politics at my first school, where we aimed to develop different outlooks and opinions.

Thus I reslolve to stck to my own aim of asking “what do You think” as often as possible and listen to the replies, after all we all have two ears and just one mouth, thus I ask, should we not be listening twice as much as we speak?

I have a soft spot for wordle, ( http://www.wordle.net/) but up until now have not really got past the ‘wow, how does it do that’ stage.

Just had a thought, take an event or individual, find an account of it/them, throw it into Wordle ( I don’t know why it needs to be thrown, rather than placed, but it seems far more appropriate)

the result should show key words, describing the individual or event, and with another event/individual or account students can compare, thus beginning their journey towards assessing Significance.

The ony problem with this approach is the technology, ideally this would be a 10/15 minute activity, but practically it would take the whole lesson, for once one has students in front of a computer, one is reluctant to take them away, as we rarely get the access to the ICT technology in the quantity an quality we ‘non-core’ educators wish, but that is another issue all together.