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In the classroom
Misconceptions
Pupils (as well as some teachers) have misconceptions
about the nature of the subject IT and this strongly influences their
expectations of what they should be doing in it. They expect to spend
time 'on the machines' and might not see 'off computer' activities such
as those discussed in this session as being a proper part of IT lessons.
At best they may see them as a diversion from the 'real job' of 'working
on the computer'. I have seen teachers reiforce this view by saying to
a class "If you do not behave you will not be allowed to use the
computers". The point to try and convey is that IT lessons are the
place where a number of important capabilities are developed - not a computer-based
'playtime'. You do this in the way that you introduce topics and the attention
that you pay to developing the pupils concepts and ideas as well as their
skills.
As the late Rosalind Driver once memorably said "What is required
is 'brains on' not 'hands on'".
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Classroom examples
The evaluation
worksheet produced by Sahera Khan was used to get pupils to evaluate
each other's presentations.
A pupil taught by Nabil Hassani produced an interesting
evaluation of the set
of Logo procedures
he used to draw a house.
Clarendon School has created lesson plans for telling
the story of two tortoises - 'Enzo
and Zippy' - via a PowerPoint presentation. This resource can be found
via the TeacherNet site
which is the prime respository for all teacher-related DfEE material.
It contains a 'Useful Lesson Plans and Resources' section which links
at least one resource with each of the DfEE Schemes of Work. These have
all been evaluated (cf the Teacher Resource Exchange). I did the evaluation
for the ICT resources and found that there were almost no resources available
on the net which were directly relevant to the Schemes of Work. You should
browse these resources - and let me know of any new and relevant ones
that you find.
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Teaching point
The activity 'evaluate a presentation' is often
thought of as a single entity - it is not. You could for example wish
to see what criteria the pupils spontaneously use to evaluate presentations
- in which case you would not give them any in your introduction. What
you could do here is to give them a simple pro-forma saying, for example,
"Five things good presentations have are:...."
However you could instead wish to see how well the
pupils use a given set of criteria - in which case you would need to give
them these and ensure that they understood what they meant. In this case
you would also need to ensure that the pupils knew how much they were
supposed to write on each criterion - for example by giving them different
amounts of space on a form.
This is one example of why you need to think very
carefully about the point of an activity - what is it for - and to ensure
that the activity is matched to the learning objectives you have set for
the lesson.
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Other Resources
The DfEE Schemes of Work
You should look at the following units of the DfEE
schemes of work
Key Stage 2: unit 6A Multimedia
presentation;
Key Stage 3: unit 1 Using
ICT; unit 8 Public
information systems.
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Books/Papers
See chapter 5 of 'Learning to Teach Using ICT in
the Secondary School' edited by Marylin Leask and Norbert Pachler (Institute
library reference Loyx Ref LEA), which discusses the evaluation of multimedia
products.
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