b. Managing Learning in the Classroom

We have touched on the question of the practicalities of using ICT in the classroom, and the technical question of whether everything you need to have working on a computer will be. The next question is how to manage the people, the space and the equipment/resources in a way that maximises learning.

Whether you are using ICT or not, but perhaps more when you are, your first question here is how to arrange pupils. In the case study the teacher prefers to keep difficult pupils apart, because there is so much individual and independent learning going on. He also likes to mix abilities, both subject specific and ICT literacy levels.

This is one for discussion with your mentor - how will you sit pupils when you have a space where all pupils are using ICT, and how will you arrange them when resources are more limited so that only some can use ICT?

The next question is how to deal with the peaks and troughs of intervention, and how to ensure that reasonably equal progress is being made across the whole class. The mixing of abilities in ICT literacy helps with this in our case study, but you will need to decide what is best for you. Another one for discussion with colleagues and your mentor.

Finally, you have to face the question of what happens when one, some or all of your ICT facilities give up the ghost. Here you must imagine the worst happening and ensure that you are prepared for it, and you must do this without making so much work for yourself that the efficiency saving of using ICT is lost. I generally at this point suggest a fall-back position that involves printing resources for the purpose and keeping them as a stand-by, or caching the web site so that if your web connection goes down you can still work. I can't think of anything that simple here, since you are dependant in the first part of this exercise on the web being live, the site you are on working and Bized's model running.

If it fails, you can still use the Virtual Factory on your local network, but the base-work on the economy will not be provided in the same way. If the whole thing fails - say, your network goes down and you can't use the PC's at all, then of course you are back to scratch. Here I think that over time you can gather resources from what you have in the Virtual Factory in a way that enables you to use printed matter and still make good progress.

In summary, you have four issues to consider in managing learning:

• The mixing of abilities when you set pair or group work.
• The arrangement of people in the room, including yourself.
• Keeping on top of intervention, and ensuring that all pupils get equal attention.
• Managing a room full of pupils waiting to use ICT to learn when the power fails.

As you are going through the process of planning and using ICT in this and the other case studies, your mentor will advise you on these matters.

c. Helping Learners Develop their own IT Capabilities