Part 2:
Teaching with ICT

a. Structuring Lessons

In the case study we are dealing with, the teacher has a fairly regular pattern to her sessions. She tends to start with a teacher-led introduction to the session, outlining the area for coverage in the session. In an hour-long lesson, she might restrict herself to just one movement, artist or theme. From the introduction, she will set pairs or small groups work to do, using either printed worksheets, a section of the CD or specific investigations on the World Wide Web. This work is structured, and she monitors progress around the class until she can get them to report back to the whole group on their progress, or summarise their progress in small groups to feedback 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.

Over something like a ten week period, spending two or three hours a week on the story, the teacher in the case study has wanted to introduce the ICT based work at about the third week. She wants to spend the first two on ensuring, using other means, that all pupils were reasonably familiar with the topic. First let's recall the main learning objectives the teacher has for her pupils in this area:

• Identify major art movements between 1880 and 1980
• Distinguish between the different movements
• Identify key individuals and practitioners
• Identify the main themes from the movements
• Comment to a limited extent on comparisons between movements

Below is a summary of how weeks 3-7 are structured to use ICT to meet these objectives. Take a look at this 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 art history. You might wish to extend or contract the time, and to fit the plans, duration and work around your own experience of working with this or a similar text.

Case Study Lesson Structure

Week 3 - Use the CD and World Wide Web sites, with printed worksheets, to identify the key art historical movements.

• Class introduction, small group work - one set of groups working on the movements, the other set of groups using the World Wide Web with targeted artists printed to worksheets.
• Groups provide summaries to each other of the theme with which they were tasked.
• Class summary/conclusion.

Weeks 4-6 - Discovering Techniques of the movements and artists.

• Class introduction.
• Mid-point intervention to focus on emerging images and technical queries - combine individuals and pairs to larger groups.
• Class summary and conclusion.

Week 7 - Consolidation of ICT-based work done and focus on coursework.

• Class introduction - summarise previous four weeks.
• Small groups provided with coursework brief(s) differentiated by level and topic.
• Use World Wide Web e-mail to investigate responses to questions in brief - alone or in pairs.
• After lapse of time for responses, feedback e-mail finding to group.
• Whole class summary of findings and set coursework.

b. Managing Learning in the Classroom