c.
Helping Learners Develop their own IT Capabilities
Whenever
the pupils in the case study are using a computer to learn, they
are of course not only developing their Business Studies skills
but also their ICT skills. It is important to distinguish between
one thing and the other, and also for us as Business Studies specialists
to know when a pupil is learning to use ICT as well as learning
to understand Business Studies. This is especially true with pupils
at GNVQ Intermediate or Advanced level in terms of their acquisition
of Key Skills. This case study provides you with activity that
can generate evidence for the IT Key Skill, and to some extent
for the Number. Your own developments of the ideas, in collusion
with Key Skills colleagues, will no doubt develop even more opportunities.
If
pupils used all possible resources - and maybe one or two extra
that you thought of - the very least they would have developed
is the following range:
- Loading
software - a CD
- Accessing
the World Wide Web
- Searching
for information - on the CD or the World Wide Web
-
Copying data from the web into other applications
- Basic
skills of mouse and keyboard manipulation
- Printing
- if the pupil was allowed to print from the CD or the World
Wide Web
- Using
a spreadsheet package to store, manage and manipulate data
- Using
a word processor package - if pupils transferred data into Word
documents for projects
- Managing
files - if pupils gained access to the folder of images and
used this to create their new work
It
might be interesting to look back over your own lesson plans to
see where these things happened, and even to look at the IT curriculum
as it applies to pupils at Key Stages three, four and in the key
Skills to see what they are doing in your subject that is contributing
to their development in the IT arena. All case studies in all
subjects in this series make this same statement, so crucial is
the pupil's awareness of and use of ICT to his or her own learning
in other subjects using it.
It
is worth trying this exercise:
- Identify
what pupils are doing with ICT in the Business Studies tasks
you have set them.
- Identify
whether what they are doing is a basic motor skill such as moving
a mouse, a technique where they have to follow steps or a higher
order skill where they have to plan and make decisions.
- Identify
the areas of the IT curriculum at the pupil's key stage to see
whether work you are doing with him or her can be linked to
learning in the IT area.
 d.
Assessing Learning
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