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Classroom Management
The management of ICT in the classroom is becoming increasingly important as classrooms move closer towards the 21st century needs of society and embed more digital technologies in their practices.
Monitoring student use of ICT is important for two reasons. Firstly, students can appear to be usefully occupied with the ICT activity when in fact they are working very inefficiently and failing to exploit the full potential of ICT and not developing their ICT capability. Secondly, it is so easy for students to become distracted with the ICT resource particularly when they are using the Internet, and as they become more tech-savvy with every generation, this might not be obvious from their behaviour.
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In a previous section of this teaching resource, I highlighted what you need to monitor in terms of ICT capability. Classroom management when it comes to ICT needs to start with active teacher monitoring and intervening. It is by doing this, that students should begin to realise that their opportunities to become distracted and do something other than the work you had set out for them is very limited.
Teacher intervention, both planned and unplanned, not only helps you to develop their ICT capability but at the same time allows you to observe what they really have been doing instead. An observation that you are witness to might be that the student is not up to place in the work where you would expect to be and this might become obvious when observing other students’ work with ICT.
The development of student ICT capability will only occur if students are challenged intellectually with their ICT work. Intervention is the time to question their work and their use of ICT techniques. In the assessment of this ICT activity, you will need to judge the decisions they made in order to complete the finished product/ solution. Have your questions ready to get them thinking about how they might be able to do things better.
Despite this, there is no simple solution for effective management of ICT in the classroom. Make a note to yourself throughout the year to review what you do regularly as things change. The increasing emphasis on focused literacy lessons is undoubtedly going to change ICT use in the short term. However, as Higgins, Packard and Race (2004) point out, the targets for students’ ICT use, especially for email and the WWW means it will have considerable emphasis, too. They advise the following strategies (p. 12).
• Use ICT resources as much as you can and become competent and confident in your use; • Use computers to teach and demonstrate. For example, when using a word processor for demonstrations, try increasing the font size or the magnification to explain ‘copy’ and ‘paste’ or to demonstrate sentence level work; • Be critical. This means ensure that the use of the computer is a good idea for the chosen literacy activity.
The software needs to actually help the students achieve the learning outcome you want; • Be flexible about borrowing and lending equipment. Share the things around and organise your ICT tools and resources to get the best from it; • Decide the best place for the ICT tools and resources; • Maximise the time that computers are in use; • Involve the students in the management of the computers. Train the students to be responsible for switching on and shutting down; • Limit your objectives to what is achievable. Try setting up a record of who used which program on which day, so that the record is completed by the students themselves. You can then concentrate on assessing and recording their ICT capability; • Don’t show your frustration when the equipment goes wrong.
It is important to begin your ICT-literacy lessons with high expectations of students in term of ICT use. Why not, of course? Today, they are becoming more tech-savvy than ever and it is only going to increase its presence. So when you begin to develop the ICT activity for the literacy lesson, keep this in mind and develop self-supporting ICT activities. These activities allow you to teach a group effectively and not worry about students leaping across the classroom. Higgins et al. (2004, pp. 14-15) suggests these strategies.
• Keep it simple; • Keep in step – make sure that it follows on from what they have done in the previous year; • Introduce the activity to the whole class; • Use support cards – try using information cards, prompts, wall charts, step-by-step instructions; • Teach others to give support; • Train students in a system – for example, plan for students to have the responsibility to go and get the person whose turn it is next; • Give the students time to play; • Change the groupings of students at the computer; • Make sure no one dominates; • Make sure the students are clear about what they have go to do and why they are doing it; • Be explicit about where the students are to get support from; • Review each activity with the whole class.
Planning appropriate Literacy activities for ICT
Earlier, I highlighted the importance of planning for literacy-technology integration and when it comes to ICT activities, careful planning and consideration also needs to be taken into account. Use the following guidelines to help you to learn from other’s experience (Higgins, Packard, & Race, 2004, pp. 18-19).
• Use the National Curriculum ICT capability learning continuum to create your schemes of work; • Find out what other teachers use working with the same age group of students; • Plan a range of activities over the course of the year; • Plan and seek to develop every component of ICT capability in your integration of ICT in literacy teaching; • Use the computer for direct teaching; • Don’t get students to copy type finished work into a neat version. It is better to get them to use the computer to redraft and make changes to their work; • Be realistic about how long ICT activities will take.
Classroom management strategies for laptops
Mobile learning is becoming very popular with iPads and laptops being widespread in schools these days. Laptops being the first of the mobile technologies in the classroom is still in use and depending on the preferences of the school can still encourage students to learn. Unlike desktop computers however, its mobility can create headaches for teachers if not managed effectively with strategies that help students to understand their responsibility in it use. So here are some useful advice (Livingston, 2006). 1. Always plan aheadand check with the school technician to see if anything was working the way it should. We all know that technology is not reliable so if something can break down, it will. Have the technician on standby even at the beginning of the lesson sometimes waiting at the door to give yourself piece of mind. 2.Room setup is also another important factor when it comes to using laptops in the classroom. Functional desks and seating arrangements that encourage student collaboration is recognised as the best practice as it not only replicates real-world experiences but also helps you manage teamwork more efficiently. Arrange desks in clusters to enable you to circulate the room better.
3. How to stop students from drifting off onto other Internet sites is another question many teachers would like to know? One technique that you can trial is called the “Stick ‘em Up” method. The idea is that whenever you suspect students’ minds are wandering somewhere else they shouldn’t be simply pull out your ‘five fingered six shooter’ and say ‘Stick ‘em Up!” Students would need to know that as soon as you do that must raise their hands in the air and allow you to check their screens. Be sure to check to see if they have tried to hide them as well by minimising them. Believe me I have seen it happen many times.
Another technique is the ‘Lids down’ approach and the name is quite explanatory here. You would simply tell them to close their lids to about fist height which is too low to look at properly without having to scrunch down. In this approach, you will need to be quite vigilant as students might still try to type something.
4. My final bit of advice is about how you would benefit when you continually structure your lessons so that they are student-centred. Through facilitating these kinds of lessons more work can be accomplished and this is because students come to expect the structure of the lesson. A good way to start would be to discuss with the whole class what they are going to do, answer any question they throw at you then send them off to do their work.
Mobile technology in the classroom such as laptops brings with it many challenges particularly if they have Internet access, emails and possibly things that students have installed from their USBs. Classroom management in these circumstances can really test you at times. However, if you plan ahead you can meet these challenges head on and ensure that students ICT capability is learnt alongside subject content too.
Tips for managing the iPad Classroom
For iPads, use the following tips to help you manage them in the classroom (ISD, 2018).
Keep track of which student is using which device if possible: • If something inappropriate occurs with an iPad, this will help with tracking down who was responsible -
Keep a list of which student uses which iPad in each class. • Make students aware of which number iPad they use according to the school label on the back, or add your own numbered or coloured sticker to the back of the iPads to help students easily identify them • Let students know they will be held accountable for the condition of their assigned iPad. • Briefly inspect the iPads at the end of each use to check for damage. Look at which apps are open to see if students were staying on task.
Set a routine for how students should get iPads at the start of class and put them away at the end of class:
• Part of routine should be making sure all iPads are returned and inspected by the teacher at the end of class. • Any covers should also be put on the face of the iPads between classes and/or when the iPads are not going to be used for an extended period of time.
Face Down:
• Use this instruction to get student attention away from the iPads and on you during instructional time.
iPad on the Desk/Table in flat or slightly elevated position when being used:
• This allows you to see what the students are doing on the iPad at all times; • Do not let students use the iPad in their lap where the desk/table can hide what they are doing.
