Part 1:
Preparing to Use ICT in Teaching

a. Aims and Objectives

In this case study, the teacher's aims were to develop the pupils' data handling skills and their ability to apply them to worthwhile problems. She wanted to develop pupils' higher order skills - planning, hypothesising, seeking new ways of solving problems and justifying decisions.

Specifically, she wanted pupils to be able to:

• Pose questions which might be answered by collecting and analysing numeric data
• Identify what data would be needed and design ways of collecting the data they required
• Make hypotheses and produce suitable graphs and statistics in order to test these hypotheses
• Write up their results and illustrate their conclusions with statistical evidence

Questions for Consideration

• Identify which aspects of the Mathematics programmes of study will be involved in this topic.
• Do you currently use a project to enable pupils to apply their data handling skills to problems?
• If not, what sort of tasks do you use?
• If so, how do you manage the project:
  • Briefing
  • Monitoring of progress
  • Intervention and feedback
  • Timing and pace
  • Reporting of results
• Do pupils use ICT for this work at present? If not, do you think your management procedures will need to change when ICT is used?

Keep a short record of your responses to these questions for discussion with your mentor.

b. Deciding Whether to Use ICT