BEFORE YOU BEGIN – WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW?

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 confidence in these through carefully structured ICT activities. Being familiar with a program will help you to identify 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 demanding 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.

Exploiting available technology

For this particular curriculum activity, you will need to exploit the features of MS Word as a word processor. You will need to imagine the potential of this technology in relation to literacy development. As a consequence it may require you to take certain risks whilst experimenting with it in the classroom.

Word Processing

As discussed in the earlier paragraphs to be an ICT capable teacher is about you making the right judgements and having the right understanding about it. The software that the students are required to learn about in this particular curriculum activity is a word processor or an application like Microsoft Word.

Language

Text structure and organisation

Understand concepts about print and screen, including how books, film and simple texts work, and know some features of print, for example directionality (ACELA1433)

Literacy

Creating texts

Construct texts using software including word processing programs. (ACELY1654)

Table 1. Foundation Year English that encourages ICT Capability development (Australian Curriculum, 2018)

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.

What is expected level of development in Foundation Year? By the end of primary school, students are expected to know the following word processing skills:

• 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.

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.

How do students develop as digital content creators? How do students develop as technological innovators?

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.

Table 2. Benefits of Word Processing (Howell, 2012, p. 148)

How does WP aid digital fluency?

Core skills will be used throughout schooling and will be built upon as students become more experienced in the software program.

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.

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.

Concepts involved in Word Processing Word processing can only be used effectively by students if they understand its documents are a stored file of characters together with formatting tags.