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.