ICT skills & competencies: after being a so-called 'IT teacher' i never wanted to look at a skills checklist again - everything was out of context and nothing was meaningful - i wanted my kids to just jump in there and do it.
After some talking to people around the schools (not just our schools but further afield) there is some surprise that our so called 'digital natives', many of them, are just as technologically illiterate as the next person!
Should we plan to explicitly teach basic computer skills and monitor and evaluate them in order to fill in the gaps?
What do we expect our children to be able to do and at different ages?
If our children are getting frequent opportunities to use ICTs in their learning, surely this makes those questions irrelevant - they wouldn't be able to complete the learning activities if they didn't have those skills in place already.
So what do you do? Maybe schools where children are not able to log on or save files to the correct place, or know how to write a document, create a picture, put it in etc are just not giving their children enough learning opportunities using computers.
Maybe a checklist of skills would help some teachers to make sure they are planning to integrate and therefore actually doing it. Having them set up a timetable in the classroom to ensure children are using the computer...
So there are some classrooms where ICT is just ubiquitous and if you're not one of those classrooms maybe you need your checklist & your timetable as a place to start.
Professional reflections on education in NZ - Dancing on the shifting carpet
1 comment:
I tend to introduce a few basics in a structured way. My thought is that once introduced they will be using them often enough to remember them. Others are introduced on an "as needed" basis. Also if they get stuck they can ask and that can quickly turn into a good skills teaching moment.
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