c. Selecting ICT Resources

The teacher in the case study is completely at home with the skills behind most of the options we have looked at above, including having first-hand knowledge of some sites dedicated to film on the web from which she could get excellent and detailed live information. She already has some word processed materials, she has seen some good general and commercial sites on the World Wide Web, and she knows how to use a CD-ROM.

You may not be in the same positions as she is, so we shall look at the options in the context of your school and your experience. Think about the following points as they apply to you:

Use discussion only, and not use any ICT (or other technology) at all.
I have a bit of a problem with this (I would say that, wouldn't I?) in as much as my own experience of working with this area of work is that it is both hugely enjoyable - on its own, without technology - and very challenging for young people. Especially in terms of the objectives set for this case study, there is such a wealth of material available from the World Wide Web and CD-ROM that it would be an opportunity missed if you didn't use it. Also, the capacity ICT has for manipulating information - especially the sort of information we are discussing here - will be seen to be very useful when we see what the teacher does with it.

Use a CD-ROM to gain access to background material - either general material such as can be found on typical encyclopaedias, or more focussed resources in CD subject-specific collections.
Some general CD-ROM products will give you background information on the relation between film and TV or theatre, but it will be hard work to get this out and probably not worth the effort if you want your data to be recent and relevant. More specific CD products, such as those produced by the BFI and some other commercial providers, give detailed information but can be expensive for a department to purchase, even if you had a range of uses for the product. I'd be inclined to use the general CD products for scene-setting in terms of getting data across the vocational board, but no more than that. You can get national mortality rates, for example, or GDP figures, or even figures on sport, but these quickly run out of date and are not always easy to pull from a CD for automated use. We will concentrate more here on the way the web is used to gather data and then the way other applications are used to manipulate it.

Use the World Wide Web to gather resources.
The web is an excellent resource for gathering information, especially in the area we are discussing here. The web sites identified below provide up to date information about the movie industry, and those featured in Word document on web sites for media provide useful information about TV and print media:

www.the-movie-times.com

www.imdb.com

Use the World Wide Web for the resources, and download the information in such a way as to make it usable in a spreadsheet.
The problem with this option is getting the information in a way that simply transfers from the site into a spreadsheet or other data manipulation package. We were not able to do this with the products attached to this case study, and it took us a little while to go through this process:

• Find the site - www.the-movie-times.com - (about ten minutes through Yahoo).
• Find the data for each actor we wanted. Very easy on this excellent site - (five minutes).
• Download the data for box-office earnings. Not possible, so we copied the data direct into a spreadsheet - (two minutes).
• In the spreadsheet, manipulate the data into rows and columns and insert the calculations - (fifteen minutes for data on the three actors featured).

In this way we could make the products - the spreadsheet attachment and the Word attachment - that we want pupils to make in the lessons. The case study teacher was now able to use the products with her pupils as models of what she wanted them to do.

Use a spreadsheet and a Word document to manage the information, regardless of how it has been acquired.
Having gone through the stages above, with the additional bit of work of finding images on sites that are again supplied with this case study, moving the data between the spreadsheet and the Word document was easy. Indeed, all we needed to do was copy the graph that we made in the spreadsheet and insert it into the Word file, and we could then insert the pictures and text boxes around it. The pupils can again take this as a model of what they need to do in order to get their data finding and manipulation work into a product they can use to demonstrate learning.

Now that you've looked at my ideas about the options available, you need to make your own choices. The teacher in the case study has decided to use all options including the spreadsheet and word document, and to combine two or more in particular sessions over a two-week period concentrating on the film earnings element of the objectives. You need to plan to do something of this sort.

On the next page, make a copy and fill out the summary to help you get focus on what you will do. I've put in some suggestions - you can use these as you like. Think of some uses of your own, and make a short note on what you will have to do to make it work, what you expect the benefit to be to your pupils, and what difficulties you expect to encounter when you do it in the classroom.

Resources Selected for Work on Film Earnings