ICT and the Classroom teacher - what should we expect?

[Mike Cameron]

This network is mainly made up of ICT teachers with a fair smattering of teachers from other subjects, so this is a good place to get a good view of what one might expect any teacher to be able to do with ICT.

The attached document contains some outline ideas on what ICT related activities/skills/capabilities we might (eventually) expect from all classroom teachers, not just teachers of ICT. Some are no-brainers ("turn on a PC") whilst others might be seen as contentious ("connect a PC to an LCD projector").

The document is an Aunt Sally. It is not meant to be a definitive list, nor is it anywhere detailed or precise enough yet. It is a starting point. Please knock it down to your hearts content. Add to it and suggest any amendments you like. Many of you may already have documents of this kind for your own schools and perhaps you could share them here if you have.

Ideally, if we get to some sort of settled view on this, the aim would be to then start to create some resources (or provide links to existing good ones) that make possible what we say we think all teachers should be able to do. This would create a genuinely useful CPD resource for all teachers.

Mike

[Chris Ryall]

Good idea - particularly to link the list to useful CPD resources.

The one skill I'd love all teachers and students develop is:

Effectively seek and provide mutual support

I don't know how this would break down into clearer competencies, but it could include:

• "Use a search engine with appropriate search terms" - you have that one in your list.
• Articulate clearly what you wish to achieve, and the barriers, when seeking support
• Access applications' help features (F1)
• Build connections to online and offline resources already available - know how to find and contribute to online resources and how to develop relationships with other learners.
• Publish the solution - help someone else!

I'll sleep on it and try to form a more coherent, measurable idea!

[Mike Cameron]

I think the use of existing resources is so important. My abilty to magically (so it seemed to my colleagues) solve technical problems increased exponentially once I discovered Usenet (now Google Groups) and learnt how to create efficient search terms. The fact that for whatever problem you had there were either a million others who had either had and solved it already or were about to have it and so help to find the solution for you is wonderful. You don't even have to know them.

There is a calculation in teaching. If you add up all the hours teaching required to cover all of the National Curriculum subjects at all levels and age groups, and divide the answer by the number of teachers there are, the result is ... 2! So, if, in a perfect world, each teacher could create 2 hours of resources a year, we'd have it cracked :-)

Mike

[Dai]

We are looking to write an IT benchmark into new teachers contracts:

1. ActivStudio Level1 Pro User Certificate
2. Modules 1, 2 &7 of the ECDL (basic internet, email and file management.

Contracts would stipulate that these qualifications must be attepmted in first year of employment.

Question is what about existing staff? Trying to nrgotiate with the Head about non-contact time (lesson/week) for volunteers.

However, plenty of the credible items on your list would not be covered. I rely on teacher's good will and enthusiasm which doesn't get our cross-curricular ICT moving very quickly. Only when staff really see how easy and effective something can be in the classroom and they are given 1-2-1 training to do I really see an impact on their teaching and learning.

All our teachers use computers in their classrooms but very few feel the need to become 'in charge' of their tools. I wonder if I would be so inspired if it wasn't my subject?

To get back to your list, I really liked the brevity. Do we definately need wikis in there? I don't think it is necessary to be able to connect speakers and projector - ours are already hooked up.

VLE list is good.
Also, Chris' point about embedding/creating connections to online material is important.
This list would change with every school but it is a very good starting point.

[Mike Cameron]

I have tried to make the list "task" based because it is easier for a teacher to self-assess themselves that way. Either you can upload a photo to Flickr or you can't. It does not necessarily mean that the use of Flickr is the important thing. If you break down what uploading a photo to flickr requires in terms on competencies then you can see that it is covering a fairly wide area. Unfortunately some areas ("using appropriate search terms") are less open to this approach than others.

Do teachers need Wikis (wiki's?, wikis'? wika?). Not sure. All I do know is that they are a suberb tool for creating joinly authored content and again, its more the capability that is important than the actual tool. Could have said "Be able to use and share GoogleDocs".

Re the projectors, in around 30% of schools less than 50% of classrooms have a projector. In less than 30% of schools is the figure 100% installed (recent informal survey of over 100 schools nationwide). So in some schools if a teacher wants to use a projector then they have to get one from central or departmental resources and get it linked up. So much easier if they can do it themselves. Again, its as much about understanding the process behind using the projector (right cable, keystoning, VDU select) as it is about the actual projector.

Some teachers will obviously (currently) be able to do more than others. But if we fast forward say 5 years, which of the items on the list would we say are perhaps not so important for a teacher (aside from the fact that all the technologies will have moved on). I think in terms of my children. One is 7, the other is 4. I would like to think that when they get to secondary school any lesson that they go into could be able to benefit from any of the capabilities on the list. They will certainly be able to do them, so perhaps so should their teachers (eventually).

There is a real generational issue here. I like your idea of writing into the contracts such issues (is that for all teachers new to the school or just NQT's?), but as you say, what about other teachers. Well, some will do it because they see the benefits. Some will do it because their department starts to teach that way (and research shows that the best way to move this forward is on a whole department basis). And some will never do it. Not because they are not good/conciencious/hard-working teachers, but for many other reasons. But I would like to think (ever the optimist) that before 10 years are up, that all teachers will be capable of a (maybe subject differentiated/augmented) list of capabilites such as my starting point.

And for myself I should have added "Able to understand and act upon the output of a spell-checker"!

Mike

[Alex Savage]

Hi Mike
I created an ICT audit for trainee teachers a couple of years ago. It probably needs updating now, but you might find some of the skills of use.
ict audit
Re your list, I think that teachers now need to be able to analyse student results, targets etc in a spreadsheet.

[Emmanuelle]

Would you say you would use this as a competence checklist?
It's very interesting to see the differences between schools? Things mentioned like Bebo, Flickr etc would not go down very well in my school as we would prefer a more pragmatic approach.
For instance we would insist more on standard software (the basic/ standard MS Office applications): how about Excel to edit a markbook ?, Publisher to create fancy displays (instead of WordArt in Word?)...
I know that Performance Management standards have recently changed (I am still on maternity leave so I have not ket in touch with this particular detail.... oh why?) anyway, in the past we wanted to include such competence checklist into the performance management cycle. What do you think about this? does it sound like a reasonable request to impose on colleagues -bear in mind that it does target the less "able"? The idea is that everyone has the basic skills (including checking/ deleting emails t avoid server overload and desktop / file management to avoid files being "accidentally" deleted!)... also what about Interactive whiteboard skills?
Emmanuelle
PS: can't find my competence checklist right now (my point about File management!)

[Mike Cameron]

The purpsoe of the list was to try to get away from what i traditionally see, which is either a very broad-brush approach ("How would you rate you abiltiy to use Excel - novice/Average/Expert") where it is difficult to self-assess what you should put, or the very detailed approach ("Can use enbolded a sentence in Word") which can be very simplistic. I have tried to create a list of tasks that can either be done or not. The tasks themselves are not the be-all and end-all but the capabilities they represent are.
As to performance management, some schools are writng attainment of ECDL into their perfomance management. Others are writing into contracts of new teachers that they eitehr already have ECDL or that they will achieve it within two terms of joining the school. So it is happening.
The reason I went for items such as Flickr and Bebo was to try and make the list reflect uses of technology that would be more likely to impact on teaching and learning that operating a spreadsheet which will impact more on assessment and the management thereof (which is not to say that it shouldn't have an impact on T&L, but I am sure you know what i mean.
What about Interactive whiteboards? Indeed, what about them?
Mike
PS - Why worry about file management - install a good search tool and let the processor take the strain ;-)

[Dai]

I am allowed to do pretty much what I like at my school. The problem is resistance. Not more ICT! I hear the coffee cups drone.

It's interesting because everyone thinks something about ICT. I loved your list Mike because it mentioned the social networking tools. I was working with an English teacher the other day and our students were blogging about their recent class reader - Sir Gerrain The Green Knight, a 14th century text (or something like that). She talked about one of the boys who had tried to put a URL in to YouTube and she wasn't sure about it because YouTube is [bad]. I then searched YouTube for sir gerrain and we found a 3 part cartoon of the same book, a man reading the original text in ye olde english and some other clips. Well she could have burst with joy because she was genuinely shocked to find useful teaching resources on YouTube. And there are thousands of them. A nin year old girl taught me to count to ten in binary on my fingers - now I make all my A Level students learn it.

We do the ECDL thing you mentioned in the last post, but how boring is that? Imagine if I was to stipulate in teachers contracts that they must hunt down YouTube videos relevant to their curriculum. Imagine. A riot of enjoyable work. At least for most people.

Whilst I'm here, I also guide/push/encourage teachers to achieve Promethean ActivStudio Level1 Pro User Foundation certificates (also planned to be part of the contract). The certificate is boring but if I listen to how they use the board and then show them some nifty tips for using it quickly and effectively they get all excited and bite.

My point here is that..........
I learn and I teach with side effects. I do something fantastic (edit movie) and I learn file management on the way.

Am I off the mark here? Have I been looking at teachers the wrong way?

BTW: moral dilemma - I teach the virtues of touch typing but I look at the keyboard. Am I a bad teacher?