ICT Training for Teachers
Modern Foreign Languages -
Evaluating the impact of ICT in MFL
- Introduction
- With the lesson over, it is important to assess how
it went. This should be the case after every lesson, and all the more
so if you are introducing something new such as ICT. This is of course
not only to help inform the next lesson so that you can repeat success
and eliminate the less successful aspects of the lesson, but so that you
can also assess the pupils' progress in those aspects of MFL which you
hoped would be covered by ICT. You will also want to make some sort of
assessment of how their ICT skills are developing.
Discussion
Whilst assessing their use of ICT, don't
lose sight of the MFL aspects of the lesson. It's easy to get
excited about ICT and forget that this is actually meant to
be an MFL lesson supported by ICT. How will you guard
against this danger?
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- How successful was the lesson in general?
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- Consider the time spent actively on task by
the pupils. We often find with ICT that concentration spans increase
- did this happen? Consider the time spent negotiating with other
pupils; the time spent choosing software, assuming you have given
them a choice; the time spent discussing the appropriateness of the
software chosen for the given outcome.
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- Is there evidence of independent learning?
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- ICT can often allow much greater independence
in the learning process. Were the pupils able to take advantage of
this? Were the guidance notes for the lesson sufficiently clear to
encourage independent learning?
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- Did I ensure sufficient differentiation within the
group?
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- ICT activities can be constructed to suit
a wide range of pupils and abilities including pupils with special
educational needs. In many circumstances, ICT will allow differentiation
by software, where before the teacher was only able to allow for differentiation
by task or outcome. Do you need to plan for a wider or narrower range
of activities next time? ICT should free up time spent with the whole
class and allow the teacher more time for individual attention: were
you able to use this opportunity to check on individual progress?
And what about extra help for particular pupils, perhaps in the form
of a support teacher, or volunteer sixth formers?
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- Did I group the pupils satisfactorily?
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- How you seat the pupils can have a profound
effect on any lesson, and lessons using ICT are no exception. Whether
or not the pupils will be working in pairs, you might need to give
some more thought to how they will be seated. For instance, you could
match pupils by ability in the subject, or by ICT ability, with the
more capable able to give some help to the weaker.
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- Did the pupils use the ICT successfully?
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- You might need to revise your ideas of how
much help the pupils need and of the kind of guidance notes you will
give them, or it might simply be the case that you feel that they
should be able to use the ICT more independently in the future now
that that particular learning stage is past. Learning when using ICT
is no different from learning when using other interventions - there
is often a period when one is familiarising oneself with the intervention
strategy before the 'real' learning, the language learning, takes
place.
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- Did the ICT activity hinder or help the aim of the
lesson?
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- It is important not to be seduced by the ICT.
However busy at the computer the pupils were, it is vital to check
that the MFL purpose of the lesson has been met. All the usual checking
procedures can be used - direct questions, checking written work,
homework; in this sense a lesson using ICT should be no different
from a lesson with no ICT.
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- If it seems that the pupils have not made
the anticipated progress, and this was the first time you used a particular
ICT intervention, it may be the case, as mentioned above, that there
is simply a learning stage to be got over before the advantages of
using ICT for this particular purpose begin to flow. Check next time
that the advantages really are flowing!
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- There may however be certain uses of ICT which
on reflection do not advance the particular aspect of MFL learning
as planned. Again, the usual process of review should help to pinpoint
the problem. Was the chosen application appropriate to the task? Were
the materials too hard or too easy? Was the exercise properly planned?
Were the instructions clear? All these aspects can be put right or
improved upon. Or alternatively we have learned the hard way that
this particular idea didn't work out at all in practice!
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- Do I need to revise my expectations in the light
of the activity undertaken?
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- Pupils react differently to different teaching
strategies. Teachers are often surprised when a pupil who has previously
shown no interest in learning French becomes obsessed with getting
an exercise correct on the computer. Sometimes we find that a pupil
who is almost incapable of producing coherent written work submits
high quality work when using word banks in a word processed document.
I have even seen whole classes suddenly racing through course material
after exposure to ICT as their motivation for language learning unexpectedly
rose.
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- ICT can help all pupils in the presentation
of their work. It can also help to increase their accuracy: work produced
using word banks and with foreign language spell checkers should be
of a higher standard than 'freely' word processed work. The clarity
of the finished work means that spellings and grammatical endings
cannot be fudged, compared with hand-written work, and this can help
the pupils to concentrate on accuracy. We need to raise our expectations
accordingly, and assume that work will meet these higher standards.
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- If the pupils work in pairs, how do I assess their
work?
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- Again, talking to the pupils about their work
can elicit a great deal of evidence as to who did what, and you will
be able to make judgements accordingly, even if the whole point of
the lesson is that they should work, and be assessed, collaboratively.
What is important here is to be sure that collaborative work is indeed
a joint effort and not the result of one person's effort while the
other has an easy ride. Collaborative work will take many forms, from
more or less completely equal inputs, to a situation where one pupil
has all the ideas and the other does all the keying in. You will need
to find strategies, such as setting different tasks, or changing the
pairing arrangements, to make sure that this does not happen all the
time, even if on occasion it will be quite acceptable.
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- Work using ICT is more readily plagiarised
than hand-written work, and you do need to bear in mind the ease with
which text can be lifted straight from other sources. Pupils do need
to be trained not to copy information from say a CD-ROM or an Internet
site, but to absorb the information and present it in their own words.
When direct quoting is required, then they should always acknowledge
the source.
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- What evidence do I need to collect?
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- A lot of the evidence for work and progress
in lessons where ICT is used is the same as in other lessons, and
will come from questioning, discussion, hand-written work, and computer
print-outs. Some ICT activities (games, text manipulation, matching
exercises) will generate a 'mark' or score, and you can get the pupils
to write this down if the software does not itself keep a record of
individual progress. Some schools will have a policy for collecting
a certain amount of ICT work in all subjects to go into the individual
pupil's ICT folder which will then count towards the assessment of
their ICT capability: you will need to liaise with the ICT co-ordinator
in this case. It might be necessary to generate two print-outs on
these occasions - one for the pupil's ICT folder, and one to be fixed
into the pupil's MFL exercise book.
Occasionally you will want to use the ICT facilities
for more formal assessment. This can be difficult if you hope to conduct
an assessment of a whole year group simultaneously under exam conditions,
but it is perfectly possible if you can set up an activity which can be
completed by all pupils in a single lesson. Assessment will depend on the
activity: computer generated scores from a package which can do this; teacher
assessment of printed outputs from using the word processor or other package.
Work carried out over a longer period can be marked just like any other
'project' task.
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You can explore these ideas further in Module
5 of the Core Materials, if you have not already done so, and in Assessing
ICT capability in the Secondary Core. There are some further thoughts on
Reflecting on the impact of ICT in the
Core Materials.
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Activity
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Task 17
Assess your last lesson which used ICT
in the light of the above ideas.
- What can you learn?
- How will you improve things next time?
Write a full assessment of the lesson, concentrating
on the extent that ICT has supported the lesson as you answer these
questions.
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