ICT Training for Teachers
Secondary Core - ICT and curriculum
Access
- Introduction
- ICT is an area of the curriculum with
particular access issues and also particular opportunities to
deal with some inequalities. It is unrealistic to deal with this
enormously wide area here in anything more than a superficial
way but there is an important role in raising awareness of inequalities
in the classroom, issues include:
- ‘Climate reporting’ or ‘climate
mapping’ is generally detailed and time consuming involving
all public and pupil documentation, the decoration of buildings,
arrangement of equipment as well as the roles of teachers and
pupils in and outside lessons, interactions between pupils and
teachers, pupils and pupils, and teachers and teachers, and so
on. The result of such an evaluation should be some action and
it is likely that this will need to take place within the parameters
of a school policy on equal opportunities and with the consent
of the headteacher. A small-scale evaluation can be undertaken
with terms of reference clearly delimited and fined and intentions
agreed.
- Other aspects of curriculum access and
ICT relate to the type of software used with computers and sensitivity
in relating these to the needs of pupils over and above academic
considerations. It is worth bearing in mind that in industry
it is the norm for a company heavily using ICT to choose the
most appropriate software then buy the computer to run it.
- For some learners, particularly those
with restricted motor control, impaired sight and speech, ICT
hardware has provided channels of communication formerly unavailable
providing unheard of access to the ‘mainstream’ curriculum.
- Although desk-top computers or computer
games probably represent the highest profile manifestation of
ICT, it is worth remembering that most definitions of ICT include
more common applications including telephones, washing machines,
electronic musical instruments, camcorders, central heating control
systems, cable TV, Compact disks etc.
- Gender of learners, language, ethnic groups
of learners, religion, learners with special educational needs,
strategies, teacher mediation, software solutions, hardware solutions
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- Activity
To understand issues which can militate
against equal access to ICT, even subtly, for some learners
- OBJECTIVES
- To understand a range of equal opportunity
issues
- To explore a number of strategies for
supporting equal opportunities
- To develop a piece of work focussing on
an equal opportunity issue in ICT
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- QUESTIONS
- What is the 'ICT equal opportunities climate'?
- Focus on an aspect of ICT which raises
an issue in terms of provision for differences in ethnicity,
bilingualism, gender, social circumstances, giftedness, physical,
emotional or behavioural disabilities, etc.
- How does the learning environment effect
access?
- Describe the learning environment in
terms of access for learners in one or more groups for whom provision
might be limited. This will include issues of planing lessons
and management of learners.
- Look at planning, monitoring, layout
and allocation of ICT resources, visual environment, role models,
specialist support, software available, challenge or reinforcement
of stereotypes in materials etc.
- Use the 'climate report' you have compiled
to plan a lesson on ICT or about ICT in which some of the issues
you have identified can be broached in an appropriate way to
support equal opportunity
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- SELF
EVALUATION
- Was ‘climate reporting’ a useful
exercise, did you find out anything you didn’t know already
and do you think it is a useful technique?
- To what extent did you see something
in a new light or unexpected or discover something quite new
to you in terms of your access focus? In general was the technique
useful?
- Why did you choose the particular lesson
you did, and was it the best one to work with, why?
- Try and identify the reasons you had
for selecting the lesson you did. In hindsight was your focus
a useful one in terms of the area and materials you studied and
the aspect you selected for the lesson?
- If you taught the lesson prepared how
successful was it, did you achieve your objective of raising
an equal opportunities issue?
- Evaluate the lesson in terms of your
curriculum access (‘equal opportunities’) intentions.
