schoolscape @ future project, an EU Minerva project
d. Using ICT to Transform Learning
Adviser John Cuthell
Summary
The MirandaNet Fellowship in partnership with Minerva Schoolscape
@ Future EU Minerva project and Promethean Interactive Whiteboards
has set up a professional development programme for teachers across
the UK. There are 3 sessions in 2003 where 8 teachers are being
assisted in learning the technology, setting up classroom projects,
sharing with colleagues and building a knowledge base of action
research teachers briefing packs.
On this page there is a PDF Brochure about the first stage of the
project (610K). Teachers can order more of these brochures.
The MirandaNorth page offer more project details including some
detailed case studies. www.mirandanorth.org.uk/whiteboards.html
All the teachers engaged in this project have been creating their
professional community of learning and teaching. A website and a
series of newsletters have provided a community of practice environment
for this group of teacher learners.
The briefing pack:
Teachers briefing pack seven
Introduction
ICT has fundamentally changed the way we live our everyday lives
and conduct our business, yet it is easy for teachers to exist in
a time warp of outdated ideas of education. In this school the staff
have been concentrating on using technology to transform learning.
The teachers see independent learning and paying more attention
to the children's learning needs as a fundamental issue in
democratic citizenship.
Technology
- The UnITy web resources
- The Internet for source materials
- Promethean Interactive whiteboards with a range of reading software
- Jolly phonics software
Key players
- Early years reading specialist
- Learners
- Early years readers
Methodology
- Action research supported by the MirandaNet team
- Analysis of the key issues
The aim of this project was to enrich reading skills through the
use of ICT with the youngest children in school. By the end of KS
1 the children should have the following skills, they should be
able to:
- Gather information from a variety of sources
- Enter and retrieve information in a variety of forms
- Retrieve information that has been stored
- Use text, tables, images and sound to develop ideas.
- Select from and add to information that has been retrieved for
particular purposes.
- Try things out and explore what happens in real and imaginary
situations
Technology was employed to provide contemporary context where children
were exposed not only to conventional literacy challenges, but also
to the demands of multimedia communication
Conclusions
ICT enables children to get their information from a number
of different sources in a visual way that makes information clear
to children who have little knowledge, understanding or experience
of the world. When trying to make sense of the world about you,
one picture is worth a thousand words. The facility for cutting
and pasting teaches the skills of ordering and organising information.
It allows the child to take down information, delete what is not
relevant and reorder and group information into categories. These
skills used to be boring to learn and difficult to teach in the
artificial context of a comprehension passage. How much more essential,
relevant and fun when ICT is used to organise information to pass
onto a third party, to be published on the web and seen by others,
perhaps even in other countries? No one else reads a pupil's
work in an exercise book but they will see the relevance and the
importance of producing their best work if there is the potential,
if not the reality, of the work being seen by a world-wide audience.
Being acknowledged by others has far more motivational power than
being awarded a gold star.
The teachers in this project are now convinced that using ICT in
the classroom is more than teaching a set of skills, it is teaching
twenty-first century ways of thinking. Good and relevant use of
ICT increases the engagement and motivation of our pupils and improves
their behaviour because they are actively involved in learning.
If it is taught correctly - not as a subject but as a vehicle for
retrieving analysing and sharing information with a real audience
- it develops the children's analytical skills in an exciting
and relevant way and makes them active, critical and self-confident
learners.
Appendices
- The transformational learning models
- The rationale for using computers with young children
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