Part 2:
Teaching with ICT
a.
Structuring Lessons
In
the case study we are dealing with, the teacher has a fairly regular
pattern to his sessions. He tends to start with a teacher-led
introduction to the session, outlining the area for coverage in
the session. In an hour-long lesson, he might restrict himself
to just one single moral or religious focus. From the introduction,
he will set pairs or small groups work to do, using either printed
worksheets, a section of a CD-ROM or specific investigations on
the World Wide Web. This work is structured, and he monitors progress
around the class until he can get them to report back to the whole
group on their progress, or summarise their progress in small
groups to feed back in the next session.
Again,
you might not work in exactly this way, but you probably do have
a pattern that you favour as a teacher. Characterise this pattern
to yourself now, and consider how the use of ICT as a resource
might fit into it.
The
teacher wants to use ICT over something like a four week period
(out of a total of eight weeks for the area of work), spending
two hours a week with it. First let's recall the main learning
objectives the teacher has for his pupils in this area:
- Explain
the concept of a moral problem
- Give
examples of problems as they impinge upon individuals and societies
- Describe
the responses of at least three religious traditions to a variety
of moral problems
- Discuss
approaches to the value of human life (including euthanasia,
murder, abortion, war, self-protection, self-destruction) particularly
in relation to:
- Christianity
- Islam
- Buddhism
Below
is a summary of how the three separate weeks are structured to
use ICT to meet some of these objectives. You will see that they
are proposed as three distinct stand-alone sets of work. This
is because the teacher needs to be flexible in when he can gain
access to the ICT, and needs to be able to move the sessions around
in consultation with other users of ICT in his school.
Take
a look at the summary and then produce your own account, and your
own lesson plans, showing how you would use the ICT resources
we have been discussing to do the same job on this area of work.
You might wish to extend or contract the time, and to fit the
plans, duration and work around your own experience of working
with this or a similar area of work.
Case Study
Lesson Structure
Four Weeks of ICT Use set into an Eight Week Programme - Decisions
of Life and Living
Week
1 - Use a CD Encyclopędia to define morality and moral problems
and provide examples of moral problems - 2 hours.
- Class
introduction and targeted questions - outline definition of
morality.
- Small
group work (groups of three):
- Bring
back a definition of 'moral problem' with two examples.
- Bring
back two examples of behaviours that are morally wrong in
one culture and not another.
- Bring
back two examples of behaviour that are considered morally
wrong but not illegal - ideally more than one culture.
- Bring
back examples for each of the focus-religions of ways of
describing behaviour as morally wrong.
- Bring
back examples of censures from the religions to the same
behaviours - abortion, euthanasia, killing (self-defence),
etc.
- Small
groups come back with information to form picture of relation
between religion, society and morality.
Week
2 - Use a CD Encyclopędia and the Internet to distinguish
between the three focus-religions and speculate on their responses
to the problem of the value of human life - 2 hours.
- Class
introduction - whole class discussion on the differences between
the three focus religions.
- Worksheet
based tasks on differences between religions for small group
work:
- Background
information on the religion.
- Current
world-status of the religion, including locations of followers
and associated cultures.
- Moral
guide-structure for the religions, including mode of expression.
-
Identify statements within the guide-structures relating
to value of human life.
- Small
groups feed back with responses to the worksheets - whole class
discussion of the three religions and their views of the value
of human life.
Week
3 - Prepare notes from the Internet on the three focus-religions'
responses to specific moral issues - War, Euthanasia, Suicide,
Murder, Abortion - 2 hours.
- Class
introduction.
- Small
group work on tasks determined by questions:
- Christian
approaches to euthanasia and/or abortion, with reference
to differences within Christianity.
- Christian
approaches to martyrdom.
- Buddhism
and the Four Noble Truths - impact on value of life.
- Buddhism
and samsara - the impact of belief in reincarnation.
- Islam
and the concept of Holy War - implications for value of
life.
- Islam,
ijtihad and ijma as ways of reasoning about human life (only
for the higher levels of the GCSE group).
- Feed
back finding of group work for discussion.
Week
4 - Use e-mail to send and receive communication to experts
and peers on specific issues in the area of work - 2 hours.
- Class
introduction - set task of formulating message for e-mail.
- Whole
class or groups create e-mail messages (with or without PowerPoint
presentations) in the form of a set of questions to the 'expert'
or a set of statements for discussion for the peer group or
interested party.
- Sending
of e-mails under supervision, with request for response time
and address.
- After
sending of e-mails, all messages shared by group in preparation
for receipt of replies in next session.
- Subsequent
sessions to build on response with or without ICT.
b.
Managing Learning in the Classroom
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