Jon Hoff’s Teaching ICT (PGCE year)

This week I’ve been to a number of lectures, including e-safety, behaviour management, ECM (every child matters) and the new national curriculum. 

During a ‘Where have we been with the National Curriculum and where are we going’? lecture, in reply to the question ‘Skills and processes for what?’ we watched the following show:

During an afternoon discussion, I bought up with my table the fact that this showed just how important ICT was in schools today. I was met with, I think, a reluctant acceptance. One voiced an opinion that students would always need the ability to research from books and physical sources. The justification was, for example, a History trainee who would glean most of their ‘data’ from books. Me? I remained steadfast, the future is digital. All books will be available (or released in some form) online. Is (or will) the skill of researching physical sources (still be) essential? 

I’d hate to teach someone how to find something in a book using the index just to look in the index of a book and find something. Especially considering that forward thinking world institutions are already digitising their paper collections. The Library of Congress is just one example.  Meaning that rare sources contained soley within their building in a physical presence can be accessed and searched by anyone with a connection.

Teaching kids to connect, how to access online tools, how to search and evaluate information, and how to share and collaborate is the key to unlocking their future success in a digital world.  

It’s the end of the second day of my first week in University on the PGCE ICT. Words like framework, statutory, Key Stage, curriculum, targets, objectives and outcomes are bouncing around in my head and ticker-taping in front of my very eyes. I am hallucinating. This kind of rigid structure in education in this country is something I will have to get used to and accept.

Previously I have had flexibility and freedom. I’d bump into Tim the Language Arts guy in the corridor at AIS and he’d be like ‘Hey Jon, doing a project called ‘Choose your own Adventure’ and I’d be like ‘Hey that’s prefect for an introduction to designing websites, let’s do it…!’ Alas, I get the feeling that most British teachers are so inundated and restricted that collaborative projects probably only feature deeply in their subconsciousness.  I hope to be proved wrong. 

So, spent the day looking at Key Stage 3/4 and some of the topics involved. Collaboration with Google Docs was mentioned very briefly. Got a few presentations coming up including one xcurricular (use of ICT in Geography) and one on Baud, Bit rate and Banwidth. I’ll be plying tweeters for some ideas on those….

I have been assigned my schools. The second, longer placement involved a ‘challenging’ school with some issues. Ofsted report is smothered in 3s and 4s. However, I feel like I am ready for anything. 

As the previous post refers to Google Forms being used in schools to cut out the misery of paper based labouring when collecting data, the same can apply to society as a whole. An example in my home town of Bournemouth left residents seething. Livid. Ballistic. Straining at the leash. Rabid even. And I would have had some special words myself for the people who arranged this traffic survey.

This from the local paper:

“NUMPTIES”, “brain-dead”, “jobsworths” and “survey monkeys”. And these are just the printable insults hurled at the people who organised the Spur Road traffic census, which caused giant jams north of Bournemouth on Thursday.

Twenty-four hours after the clipboards were packed away, Bournemouth motorists were still fuming about what one described as “the farce of the century”.

And from this article:

THERE was misery for thousands of motorists caught up in a six-mile tailback caused by the latest traffic surveys…

…The delays continued throughout the day, with the survey running from 7am to 7pm.

How, in this era of technology, was this allowed to happen! 

How about a simple Google spreadsheet form embedded on a simple website address. Let’s say 80% of those motorists use a computer at home or at work. Are they more likely to respond with useful data if they see a well advertised website along the way : *** Traffic Survey – Improve our roads – Visit www.bournemouthtrafficsurvey.com***? Would you feel more likely to respond to this manner of communication rather than being forced against your will to be stuck in a traffic jam on your way to work….?

The local council could/should also be compling a *mailing list of the willing* who are happy to recieve local information/newsletters via email. A big job, but once it is set up, it is set up. 

It was in late August 2007 when I was first offered a position teaching ICT. With three years previous experience of classroom teaching, a first degree in the right field and hobbies which involved blogging, web design and photography, I thought I could make the leap without too much fuss. My brief was simple : create a cirriculumn. Whilst other subjects in this young International School all had their swanky new text books, I salvaged a few photocopied chapters from an Office 2003 tutorial book.  Proceeding through the year I had my kids set up their own blogs here.

Seeing as the school was in Vietnam,  issues such as horrible connection speeds and regular power cuts affected my classes, along with the usual network nightmares and an I.T department insistant on change at all the wrong times. Through the year, I taught photoshop skills using Photoshop Elements, short video projects with Adobe Premiere Elements,  HTML and CSS coding, MSW Logo, Pencil, along with two collaborative projects with the Language Arts department.  Oh yeah, and Office apps. 

September 2008 and I am starting a PGCE ICT at Southampton University School of Education. Having spent today having a look around the ICT blogosphere, I’m wondering how much of the wonderful Web 2.0 resources I can work into my teaching units, if it will be applicable, or even possible.  

I am already excited about the prospect of doing some Voice Threads, a perfect example of using technology to teach not only technical skills but also literacy.  

I’ve already linked up to some of the best sites I have found so far, including Effective ICT (check out the presentation on the home page), Kim Cofino’s site (who is currently working in Bangkok) and ICT in my Classroom which has loads of great ideas of how to use Google Docs in the classroom (based on a primary classroom) and just posted about ‘cloud based computing’. 

I hope in the coming weeks and months to post about my experiences as a trainee PGCE student in the ICT field starting with five days observation in a primary school tomorrow.