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 RE 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 package, 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 RE 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 RE?
- 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 your 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
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