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BEFORE YOU BEGIN – WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW?
Teacher competence in ICT plays a crucial role in the development of student ICT capability. Studies have indicated that the “extent to which ICT was effectively to support the development of literacy and numeracy depended to a large extent on the teacher’s own personal capabilities in ICT and in literacy and numeracy teaching” (Kennewell et al., 2000, p.105). It is important to note that in such studies it was also revealed that where teacher’s capabilities in ICT were lacking, in most cases there was a haphazard effort in the development of student ICT capability. Integrating ICT into teaching and learning is not straightforward. So to help you explore teaching approaches that integrate the use of ICT in the spirit of structured literacy teaching, we have compiled information to aid you in your teaching practices.
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Integrating ICT into teaching and learning is about exploiting the here and now of the available technology in the classroom and not waiting for the next big technological development to come along and solve your ICT problems. The Australian Curriculum encourages Primary teachers in particularly to implement this key strategy into their teaching practices.
The Australian Curriculum emphasises the use of digital technologies throughout the development of literacy. For this particular age group, it is recommneded that students develop their literacy skills with the help of these technologies.
• Word processors - both online and offline programs such as MS Word, Pages for iPads and Google Docs; • Digital forms of communications such as presentation programs such as MS PowerPoint and MS PhotoStory.
Teacher Knowledge of Resources
It is more important for you to be knowledgeable about one program that your students will use than it is to have an acquaintance with a large number. This won’t hamper their development in ICT capability as it is better for them to work with a small number versatile programs and to progressively develop their skills and confi-dence in these through carefully structured ICT activities. Being familiar with a program will help you to identi-fy when students may encounter a problem and enable you to plan for strategies to overcome them. Also, it will allow you to identify when students are ready to move onto a new feature or to use the software for a more de-manding task (Kennewell et al, 2000).
Being familiar with a program should take you beyond just knowing how to use the program for a variety of tasks. ICT capability for a teacher is the same as it is for a student – it is about developing an understanding and judgement about how to use those ICT techniques appropriately. Therefore, it is important that you reflect on the “processes it helps the user to carry out and the ICT techniques with which particular effects can be achieved” (Kennewell et al., 2000, p. 97). Consider then how you will introduce the program to the students along with what ideas need to be clear before they start.
Word Processing in Primary Education
Being proficient in word processing skills is something which students will continually use and build on throughout their school career. Programs such as this can be actively used to encourage students to draft and redraft their written work. Interacting with text is just part of what it can allow students to achieve, but it also has other features like spell and grammar checker which structured carefully can used by teachers to develop a student’s spelling and grammar. Such features can be used to enhance a student’s presentation and because of its editing features it facilitates a stronger engagement with text by students.
• Changing font, font size, bold, italics, highlight and font colour; • Justifying, changing spacing, indenting; • Setting up bullets and numbers, re-starting numbered lists; • Inserting and modifying a table; • Inserting a blank page and understanding whit this is used (not just hitting Enter multiple time); • Inserting a picture - embedding it tightly with text, understanding how to re-size and re-position it; • Inserting graphics, tables, smart art, symbols; • Inserting hyperlinks, setting how the link page opens; • Understanding how to set up a header, footer and page numbers; • Setting margins, knowing which is the standard setting, changing page orientation, setting up columns; • Using templates.
Children in the Foundation Year (Prep) to Year 1 are expected to have begun to learn how to enter text via keyboard, overlay keyboard and on-screen word bank.
They develop skills in producing text-based digital artefacts that can be shared, uploaded or printed. They apply new skills to creating artefacts that are beyond the task description or in new formats. Core skills will be used throughout schooling and will be built upon as students become more experienced in the software program.
Table 1. Benefits of Word Processing (Howell, 2012, p. 148)
How does WP aid digital fluency?
How will Word Processing impact in the classroom? According to Potter et al. (2007, p. 103), using the word processor in the classroom will impact the classroom by:
• Selecting appropriate opportunities – in which word processing software can facilitate, enhance or extend children’s learning, such as the importance of presentation in communication. In some instances the focus will be on teaching and learning in ICT (how to enlarge text, make newspaper type columns or add a border to a poster), in others ICT will be used as a resource in the teaching and learning of another curriculum area (writing for a specific audience); • Making explicit links between related knowledge, skills and understanding – word processing is closely associated with literacy and language work at all levels, and as a consequence has a contribution to make across the primary curriculum; • Modelling appropriate use of ICT – for instance, scribing and amending shared writing with the whole class or a group using the interactive whiteboard; • Demonstrating or intervening – for example, inserting an image into a word processing document, cutting and pasting, or deciding how and when to use the spellchecker. Explicit teaching of word processing knowledge, skills and understanding requires demonstration and intervention as with any other curriculum topic. Children may gain word processing skills by themselves, but without the guidance and direction of their teacher the acquisition of such capability will be haphazard © ICTE Solutions Australia 2018
Teacher Knowledge, Skills and Understanding In order to teach word processing skills effectively in this activity, the following list attempts to identify the level of teacher competence in ICT expected.
• Creating, opening, saving, closing, deleting and printing documents; • Selecting font, font size, colour, style (italic, bold), line spacing and justifications; • Inserting, deleting, selecting, cutting, copying, pasting and undoing; • Utilising help; • Inserting bullet points, tables, clip art, borders, shading and columns; • Altering page orientation (landscape, portrait), background colour, page size and margins; • Altering defaults; • Forcing page breaks; • Utilising tabs and indents; • Utilising spelling and grammar checkers (including how to switch on and off), thesaurus, print preview, highlighter and talking facilities (including how to switch on an off) and find and replace; • Connecting alternative input devices (overlay keyboards, touch screens); • Constructing and utilising on-screen word banks; • Inserting page numbers; • Inserting text, graphics, tables and documents from other applications; • Inserting symbols, headers and footers; • Creating macros and templates; • Utilising dynamic links between documents; • Customising the word processor; • Merging documents; • Formatting graphics; • Protecting documents.
Conceptual Understanding Conceptual understanding underpins the learning of every ICT technique and this is what makes the ICT techniques learnt through word processing so transferrable across the curriculum. In ICT capability, the “cognitive phase emphasises the importance of conceptual understanding. For example, understanding the difference between an effect and a style is essential to being able to learn the difference between them, and key to being able to use them appropriately” (Potter and Darbyshire, 2010, p. 18).
For example: “When we first show a child how to insert an image into a publication, it is helpful to talk about selecting the object by clicking, and to refer to handles and dragging when sizing or moving the object. If we use the same words in another context – or better still, prompts the child to use the words – the concepts should start to develop.”
According to Potter and Darbyshire (2010) these ICT techniques which we may select in order to create a solution to a problem are a function of the context, the resources available and our strategic knowledge.
Word processing can only be used effectively by students if they understand its documents are a stored file of characters together with formatting tags. These tags control how it appears on the screen and also the printed page. A feature likes this allows it to be transferred quite easily to different sources. It can adjust automatically to start a new line when required and white space can appear on the page when there are no characters.
Presentation software in Primary Education
With the use of a digital projector, multimedia programs such as MS PowerPoint, Textease Presenter or Apple’s Keynote can present literacy ideas and concepts in more engaging ways. These programs are effective in education as they encompass tremendous value in supplementing and supporting oral presentations by showing visually the structuring of ideas. They also aid the student’s identification, development and sequencing of the points to be made.
As a whole-class teaching program, they are ideal for demonstrating the teaching of literacy and ICT capability.
What is the expected level of development for Year 1 students? In addition to word processing techniques, presentation programs involve a number of techniques that include:
• Slide format – each new slide can have a different format; • Master slide – a similar idea to a Master page in desktop publishing; • Views – choose whether to see various version of the slides; • Insert movies or sounds – this is in addition to text, images; • Add notes – students can create notes to be printed; • Timing – the slide show can be set to play with each slide/object given a specific timing for display; • Transitions and animation – various effects can be applied to both transitions between slides and animations; • Action buttons – an object can be set to trigger another event when clicked, such as jumping to another slide.
Students are expected to know the following ICT techniques:
• Enter text in a text box; • Highlight text, change font, font colour, size and alignment; • Use the Undo button on the Standard toolbar; • Navigate from slide to slide using the scroll bar; • Insert pictures from file; move, and resize; • Insert, move and delete clip art; • Insert clip art from MS Office from Online Clip Art; • Use Print Preview, print a document; • Print handouts two, three or six a page; • Take photos with a digital camera.
In addition to the above skills, students also need to learn how to:
• Save documents both to the hard-drive of a computer and a USB stick; • Keyboard effectively using typing skills.
Students are creating a digital artefact, the presentation itself. The format and multimedia used in the presentation provide multiple opportunities for innovation. As group and individual presentations become more common and are assessment tasks, students using presentation software for these tasks become more fluent in key skills needed in school.
Table 2. Benefits of Presentation software (Howell, 2012, p. 156)
Concepts Involved Children do not have to be sitting at a computer to develop their ICT capability. Concepts and higher order skills can be taught through whole-class questioning. Presentation software like MS PowerPoint have similar concepts to word processing except that there is no continuity of text across the slides and only one section of the presentation can be seen at the one time. Sections are revealed under a person’s control. The ideas of transitions and animation are therefore important in designing a presentation.
