Part 2:
Teaching With ICT

a. Structuring Lessons

In the case study we are dealing with, the teacher has a fairly regular pattern to his sessions. He tends to start with a teacher-led introduction to the session, outlining the area for coverage in the session. In an hour-long lesson, he might restrict himself to just one single theatre or to one aspect of design such as lighting, acoustics or visual access. From the introduction, he will set pairs or small groups work to do, using either printed worksheets, a section of a CD or specific investigations on the World Wide Web. This work is structured, and he monitors progress around the class until he can get them to report back to the whole group on their progress, or summarise their progress in small groups to feed back in the next session.

Again, you might not work in exactly this way, but you probably do have a pattern that you favour as a teacher. Characterise this pattern to yourself now, and consider how the use of ICT as a resource might fit into it.

The teacher wants to use ICT over a two-week introductory period spending one hour a week with it. First let's recall the main learning objectives the teacher has for his pupils in this area:

• Explain some common features of theatre design, such as:
  • seating arrangements
  • visual access
  • layering of tiers
  • performer-audience placing
  • support-performer placing
• Discuss the impact of theatre design on performance and experience, especially in relation to:
  • acoustics
  • actor-presentation
  • set-design implications
  • lighting
  • audience visual, auditory and positional experience
• Explore ways of representing theatre design on paper
• Create a theatre design in one of three formats provided, using Word or a drawing application OR
• Transpose a design from one of three formats to the other

Below is a summary of how the two separate weeks are structured to use ICT to meet some of these objectives. You will see that they are proposed as two distinct stand-alone sets of work. This is because the teacher needs to be flexible in when he can gain access to the ICT, and needs to be able to move the sessions around in consultation with other users of ICT in his school.

Take a look at the summary and then produce your own account, and your own lesson plans, showing how you would use the ICT resources we have been discussing to do the same job on this area of work. You might wish to extend or contract the time, and to fit the plans, durations and work around your own experience of working with this or a similar area of work.

Case Study Lesson Structure

Week 1 - Use the pictures from the CD and the Word document (Theatre Design Examples) to discuss theatre design.

• Class introduction and targeted questions - Summarise significant aspects of design - specifically seating, lighting, acoustics, visual access.
• Small group work (groups of two/three):
  • Each small group around a single computer.
  • Using the Word document and the images provided, each group labels up using text boxes one of the designs with explanations of features and a description of the impact of this design of theatre.
  • Groups save their own text-box amended version of the design and print one copy for each member.
• Class discussion of points raised by group work - specifically the impact of the design features of one of the designs in its impact on performance and experience in the space.

Week 2 - Use the pictures and Internet to render one of the designs in another format.

• Class introduction - whole class discussion to re-cap work done on design in last session. Introduce purpose of this session - to render one of the designs in another format using Word or another package. Explain reason for this in terms of understanding of theatre - not as a drawing exercise.
• Worksheet based tasks on previous session's saved work - same small groups:
  • Group opens the annotated design from the last session.
  • Referring to the other design formats in the supplied document, group decides to render their annotated version in one of the other formats, and explains to the teacher the choice of format.
  • Group renders design and re-enters annotation.
  • If time allows, groups can e-mail one another the new designs for comment and return.
• Small groups feed back with responses to the worksheets - whole class discussion of reasons for annotation, rendering choice and conclusions about design.

b. Managing Learning in the Classroom