ICT TEACHING STRATEGIES

In the classroom today, teachers need to do more than just expose students to ICT tools and resources in order to develop student ICT capability. Throughout the curriculum, there are ample opportunities for teachers to accomplish this. As a 21st century skill, ICT capability is best created when ICT is sitting transparently in the background of a subject context and is used to enhance its learning in a purposeful and meaningful context. It is essential that you intellectually challenge students in their use of ICT. Here are some points to remember:

• Progression in ICT capability is facilitated through the broadening and elaborating context and ICT environments; • Use more sophisticated software in response to the demands of the task – the aim is to broaden and elaborate contexts and use more sophisticated software as a consequence of the increasing elaboration of curriculum context; • The student must find and overcome difficulties for learning to occur and; • Maintain an appropriate balance between the factors according the objectives of the activity.

Determining a Starting Point – How to assess existing capabilities?

Assessment is closely linked to forward planning and so if you intend to plan for the progression of ICT capability with students, it is vital that you have an appreciation of where the children are, where they ought to be and where they might be heading next.

In order to help your students develop their ICT capability begin by determining their starting point followed by accurate directions that will enable them to plot a course for success.

The assessment of ICT capability is vital as it will allow you to track progress and to plan appropriately for students to achieve their capabilities. Proper assessment will provide you with real evidence and knowledge of where the students are up to. Without it any planning conducted would be worthless.

Being able to determine the starting point of a student’s ICT capability is vital if you are to plan effectively for progression. Already we have discussed how planning and assessment are closely linked. When a new student comes into the classroom like literacy and numeracy their existing ICT capability needs to be determined. However, unlike other areas this may not be as straightforward as students rarely have a complete understanding but instead a series of connected ideas (Beauchamp, 2012).

As with pre-teaching assessment in Science (Summers et al., 1998 as cited in Beauchamp, 2012) a useful framework can be equally applied. When trying to establish an existing understanding with students you could look for:

• Preconceptions – either a misconception, that is, a technical incorrect idea, or a partially understood technical idea; • Missing – a technical idea for which there was no evidence of any knowledge or understanding; • Knows – a technical idea of which the child demonstrated knowledge and understanding.

An idea would be to use a range of practical activities with no ICT and identify the level of the student’s understanding using questioning, written tests or practical tasks. In addition, you may also be able to decide the level of capability through class discussion.

Planning Technology-Literacy Integration

Before you begin, it is important to set out your to maximise opportunities for learning to occur. The next step is to determine what you are going to teach. In this instance, the example I have provided comes from the portfolio example of the Australian Curriculum. It sets out the standards which you need to know. In addition, you need to determine your instructional objectives and have a clear sense of the ways in which the literacy objectives dovetail with the Australian Curriculum ICT capability objectives.

If you are teaching in a low resource setting in which there may only be one computer in the room. Depending on the nature of the task and of the software, in this case a word processor such as MS Word, you may need to divide a group of six students into two of lots of three and give them 10 minutes each. This could become the working group for the week and the class can be rotated. As a consequence you will need to plan other literacy work for students to do whilst they are waiting away from the computer.

Additionally, if you have access to a data projector and there is access to the carpet area, then students could be preparing small presentations on the learning objectives. An activity like this will further develop their higher order thinking skills.

The following two table may be of further assistance in your planning.

Activity Software Literacy Vs. ICT potential

10 minute onscreen reinforcement of learning objective Tutorial CD, focused aims, revision in a game-style environment. High Literacy

Low level ICT skills

10 minute onscreen search and replace, reinforcement of learning objective Collaborative work on presentation for the plenary about a particular learning objective. Word processing High literacy

Presentation software

Word processing Low level ICT skills High literacy

High level ICT skills

Table 1. Plenary in a low resource setting (Potter, Sharpe, Turvey & Alllen, 2007)

Activity

Group activity reinforcing learning objective for 20 minutes

Software Literacy Vs. ICT Potential

Three computers, tutorial software or word processing High literacy

Low level ICT skills (tutorial)

Group activity on search and replace, guided writing

Collaborative work throughout literacy lessons on learning objective, used on the interactive whiteboard and perhaps published online on the school website PDAs or laptops available for group

Network room presentation software, html editors etc.

Word processing software, Authoring templates provided by the online supplier High level ICT skills (WP) High literacy

High level ICT skills High literacy

High level ICT skills

The effective use of ICT in activities demands higher order skills and so students need to recognise when the use of ICT might be appropriate for a task. To achieve this, start by discussing what can it do and how it might be achieved. You might want to discuss with them: Where there have seen this software before; how was it used etc.

By implementing this methodology you will be helping them to develop autonomy. It involves giving them the right knowledge they need in order to select the appropriate tools and resources for the solution.

A good example of how to develop autonomous learners would be to discuss with students the different software available. It doesn’t mean to go into great detail but share with them what they are, what they are mostly used for and then go further and explore various key features of them and question students as where and why these features would be used.

In primary education, students love to show their creative side and if given the chance they would choose a particular software that they would think will demonstrate their creativity the most. For example, if you ask to write a report on something some may choose PowerPoint over MS Word. The latter is the one you want them to use as reports are typically documented and Word has the features and functions to enable this better.

It is best teach ICT techniques when the task provided a suitable context. Provide extra practice in routines when necessary to supplement the work in context.

Student Planning and Evaluating (Higher Order Skills)

By year 3 or perhaps year 4, students may be able to begin to plan and evaluate their own work in relation to ICT.

Along with displaying your own enthusiasm towards the use of ICT to help with the development of the students’, they also have to articulate their thoughts about the opportunities, processes and strategies which they have experienced. This could be in the form of verbal, written or email and must be interactive.

Students should consolidate their thoughts in the end through reflecting formally on their ICT learning. If we encourage students to reflect on the use of techniques across contexts and situations, they are more likely to generate principles, ideas and strategies that are widely applicable.

In terms of processes, the particular techniques and the sequence are not fully determined by the goal, and the user needs an understanding of both the goal and the tools available in order to make appropriate choices. Sometimes the choice made will not produce the desired effect, and a different technique will be tried. Reflection on this mistake will lead to learning which improves the user’s ability to make an appropriate choice in the future.

Concepts are developed through verbalisation of activities and by reflection on experience – particularly experience which is carefully structured. As a teacher it is important that you model the decision making process to students. If you model the techniques of strategic planning by thinking out loud in front of students, you will demonstrate to them the questions that might arise during the process.

Secondly, give students the responsibility of planning a task and coach them by asking focussing questions at intervals to guide them towards a viable plan.

Building on experiences from home

Digital natives such as this generation of students use a computer with increasing confidence and competence in their own homes. For this reason, teachers should build on their ICT experiences in order to gain most from their ICT work at school. Ensure that:

• Student activities are interesting to them; • Activities are structured in such a way to stimulate understanding that may be difficult for them to achieve unaided; • You appreciate the nature of children’s ICT work at home; • You provide opportunities both inside and outside of the lesson for children who do not have home access to ICT facilities.

Stimulating and Structuring Activities

To capitalise on home use of ICT ensure that:

• You set clear objectives; • Activities are structured; • You set high expectations of students in terms of ICT use; • You have an appreciation of any problems likely to experienced and have planned strategies to deal with them.

Use the following teaching method: • Whole class briefing on the context of the activity; • Detailed explanation to each group when they were ready to work on the activity; • Careful choice of pairs to work on the computer in turn; • A review of the key points with the group afterwards.

Also it is best to work the whole class or group beforehand to clarify your expectations, focus their attention on the activity, and generate ideas and to conduct the demonstration of ICT techniques.

Research (Kennewell et al., 2000) also indicates that it is best to identify to the students when it is the most appropriate to plan their work on paper first so that they had a clear view of what they intended to do. It highlighted how important learning activities need to be introduced by explanation and questioning of students, and then concluded with further questioning and a reflection activity that clearly summarises what they had learned.

Monitoring Student Progress

It is important to monitor student progress on computers for two reasons:

1. It is common for students to appear to be usefully occupied with the activity when in fact they are working very inefficiently and failing to exploit the potential of ICT; 2. Because of the richness of the resource, students may divert from the intended task without it being obvious from their behaviour. (Kennewell et al., 2000, p. 94)

• Routines – Definition: the ease and speed by which ICT techniques are carried out. For each year level, have a checklist of techniques available that each student should be able to use routinely. Keep this checklist up-to-date according to the software and hardware available. If students struggle with a routine then extra practice is needed; ICT Techniques – Definition: a skill that has not become a routine yet. In this case, they can be carried out using the affordances on the screen (icons, menus) or with the help of adults or peers (Kennewell et al., 2000). Have a checklist for each class ready in order to keep track of each students’ confidence in ICT techniques – Give students who need help the minimum amount of support and then withdraw the support as soon as possible; • Processes – Definition: made up of several ICT techniques. Students need to have an understanding of the relevant concepts needed in order to make decisions about which ICT techniques are appropriate for the task. It is essential that they are not given step-by-step tasks so that you as a teacher can let them try out their ideas, and intervene when they fail to make the expected approach. As with ICT techniques, the minimum amount of support should be provided. Structure the activity with questioning, prompting and demonstrating if necessary. Then withdraw the support as soon as possible. Note: If a student uses a desktop publisher to produce a poster or a spreadsheet, you cannot use a checklist. Instead, your description of how a student understood a process should include the way a student approached a task and the level of support they received. You could then use the level description that best matches the approach to the task in the ICT capability Learning Continuum and record the level of support given; • Higher order skills – Definition: level of decision-making a student has during a process. There are three ways you can aid their development:

1. Model the techniques of strategic planning by thinking out aloud in front of the students to highlight the questions that might be asked during a process; 2. Give the students responsibility for planning a task and then coach them by asking them focusing questions at intervals to guide students towards a viable plan; 3. Involve the students socially in planning, monitoring, evaluating and reflecting through whole class teaching.

Teacher Intervention

Intervening in a student’s ICT activity can go a long way towards developing their higher order skills. Ensure that you:

• Use focusing questions in the form of generalisations to help students in the formation of generalisations; • Split the task into stages if it is complex or if you are teaching a low-ability class; • Only explain the next stage when a number of students have completed the current task; • Plan particular points in the lesson when you will stop the class to review what they have done and explain the next stage.

In planning consider – • Planned points to explain or demonstrate something which was not appropriate at the start or perhaps question students about what they are doing; • Unplanned points for when a student has a problem. It would help if you can predict these difficulties; • Intervening to drive the pace of the work forward or even setting more specific targets. (Kennewell, 2004)

Affordances in relation to ICT basically means the opportunities provided to the student by the technology is support of the task, the social support provided by the teacher or any other adult and also the contextual support provided by the setting in which the activity occurs (Kennewell et al., 2000).

Scaffolding may also be provided by the technology itself in lessons using ICT. However, there must be a gap to bridge between the student’s abilities and the requirements of the problem situation if learning is to occur. This gap can be reduced if you add to the affordances of the environment e.g. providing an information sheet to assist in the use of the software or a clear demonstration using the data projector.

Arrange the following conditions: • On the basis of the student’s current abilities, the affordances are insufficient for the learner to complete the set task; • Adjust the affordances of the learning environment to reduce the gap sufficiently for the students to be able to bridge it with effort; • Student’s abilities change as a result of the experience. (Kennewell et al., 2000)

To encourage the use of higher order skills and understanding ensure that the affordances of the planning, monitoring and evaluating the activity is not too great.

The predominant source of learning for each ICT capability component are: • Routine – through practice; • ICT techniques – copying a teacher, peer or trial and error; • Concepts – through verbalisation of activities and by reflection on experience; • Processes – supported combination of ICT techniques into multistage procedures in a range of problem situations, with an increasing degree of personal autonomy and active involvement on the behalf of the student; • Higher order skills – developed in an environment which encourages exploration when opportunities are presented to decide which software to use and how to use it, to make plans, to monitor progress through an extended and evaluate and reflect on solutions made by ICT. (Kennewell et al., 2000)

Assessing ICT capability

If you wish to assess your students’ ICT capability I recommend that of which Kennewell et al. (2000, p.99) states:

• Devise methods of enabling the students to monitor and record their own progress e.g. self-assessment sheets; • Question students and ask them how they went about a task; • Set occasional prescribed challenges e.g. Can you write a caption and print it out for me? • Make use of well briefed parent helpers to work exclusively with children at the computer, recording the the amount of help each child received; • Vary pairings to see how children work with other partners; • Encourage children to save their first drafts as well as their final drafts of each piece of ICT work.