e. Planning the Work of Learners

In the case study teacher's experience, planning the work of learners using ICT is quite straightforward. He has access to a PC with Internet access in his teaching room, his school's library has machines on the Internet and with CD-ROM access, and he knows that several of his learners have Internet access at home. He has also by now looked at some other World Wide Web sites and can show pupils the relations between the information on these different resources. He is therefore comfortable to set homework on the gathering of information that can be done outside the classroom, and have individuals and pairs working in the classroom on set information-gathering tasks.

Your case might be different. Firstly, do you have access to a computer, a computer room or a library/learning centre where you can work on History lessons with a full group of pupils? Secondly, can you run a CD-ROM or access the Internet on any or all of the machines you can get access to? There are other, technical questions, but these are less important than the educational questions. Consider those below before you start planning the series of lessons in detail.

  • How long will you take to deal with the topics from start to finish, including the production of coursework if this is relevant?
  • How much of this time will you spend using a CD-ROM, gaining access to the internet in a planned and structured way, and using word-processed resources of your own?
  • Are you comfortable with the use of the database and spreadsheet packages, and can you gain access to the right kind of information to make use of these meaningful?
  • How do you want to order the use of ICT for learning and assessment - do you want it blocked or staggered, and will you need to circulate pupils around it in circumstances where not all pupils can use computers at once?
  • How will you plan to ensure that all pupils are spending time using ICT for the best purposes in their preparation of History work?
  • How will you ensure that pupils do not simply 'copy and paste' from the resources they encounter, and that they develop the skills they need for this area of History?
  • How will you ensure that students avoid simply improving the presentation of the work with ICT rather than learning better as a result of using it?

These questions are crucial at this stage, and you might want to discuss them with colleagues and/or you mentor before you create a scheme of work that includes the use of ICT, however rough the scheme is at the beginning. Once you are happy that you have a plan of how to use ICT effectively for the work you want to do on the topics, you should go on to consider some lesson plans for actually applying it in the classroom.

Part 2: Teaching with ICT