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 single actor or aspect of film economics such as box-office takings, star fees or production costs. From the introduction, she 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 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 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 her pupils in this area:

• Investigate the Hollywood industry to gain a sense of its economic importance
• Describe and explain the respective earnings of a variety of film stars' movies
• Compare film earnings within the Hollywood sector
• Compare film with TV in terms of earnings and economic activity
• Present at least some of their findings in the form of a comparative spreadsheet
• Transfer some findings from spreadsheet format to Word document format for inclusion in a project

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 she can gain access to the ICT, and needs to be able to move the sessions around in consultation with other users of ICT in her 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 web to gather data about box-office takings by movie stars.

• Class introduction and targeted questions:
  • Set the context for discussion of film/TV comparisons.
  • Speculate on some differences and differentiate between box office and other earnings in film.
  • Set pupils with own comparisons - either from the list given with the support material for this case study, or to the pupils' own preference.
• Small group work (groups of two/three):
  • Each group accesses the Movie Times site for information on its chosen stars.
  • Each individual within the group concentrates on comparisons between stars under determined conditions - time/movie type/role in relation to movie.
  • Each individual comes away from the investigation with data for inputting into the spreadsheet.
• Class discussion of points raised by group work:
  • All pupils get a sense of the sums involved in the movie industry, and attempt comparison with TV.
  • All pupils clear on the task for the next session.

Week 2 - Use the data from the web investigation to create comparisons.

• Class introduction - Whole class discussion to re-cap work done on data gathering in last session:
  • Introduce purpose of this session - create spreadsheets for comparison purposes, and to export a graph showing the comparison into a Word document.
  • Explain reason for this in terms of understanding of the media industry - not merely as a data management exercise.
• Worksheet based tasks on previous session's saved work - same small groups:
  • Group members create their own spreadsheets using last session's data - ideally one to a machine for this activity.
  • Individuals transfer the data from Excel to Word and use images from the CD or the web to provide illustration to the graph or bar chart.
  • Within the groups, individuals might cross-check each other's data with the original web-source.
• Small groups feed back with responses to the worksheets:
  • Whole class discussion of individual comparisons, and of implications of this for understanding of film stars' careers.
  • Whole class discussion of relation between film stars and TV in economic terms.

Other and future sessions might include comparisons of earnings of individuals from other spheres of interest - sport or music for example. Alternatively, comparisons between companies, industries, nation-states or even continents might be of interest. One word of advice - this case study and the Find and Structure Information case study for Drama have a similar focus, so if you are going to employ the ideas directly you might want to check with drama colleagues to see how it's going for them.

b. Managing Learning in the Classroom