Session 1.4 - Effective use of ICT
The OER4Schools Professional Learning Resource
Learning intentions and objectives.
In this session you will learn about:
- principles of interactive teaching
- Leadershiop for learning
- Most significant change
- Group work with ICT
- Sharing resources across groups
- Sharing resources within groups
Success criteria.
To meet the learning intentions you will:
ICT components.
The ICT components you will focus on are
- Searching for images and downloading images
- OpenOffice Impress for making your own photo stories
- Continuation of typing practice
- Typing practice in the classroom
Review of follow-up activities from last session
If you are running a professional learning programme which follows these sessions in sequence, then you should do the review of follow-up activities relating to the (Category:OER4S CPD). The 'review of follow-up activities' for that session is available, and also shown below in the session text. However, if you are following selected sessions in a different order, then you should use the reflection appropriate to the previous session you did.
The review of the follow-up activities for this session (to be done at the start of the next session) is available here.
There is no review of follow-up activities from last session available. You can go to the previous session () and.
Background text: Principles of interactive teaching
This section summarises some principles of interactive teaching. They are here for information and reference for the workshop participants. Ask them to look through the list now and see if they have any comments? Print the list and ask them to file it in their folders.
What is interactive teaching?
The principles of interactive teaching include
- recognising children as individuals actively engaged in interacting with the world, rather than passive recipients of knowledge,
- assessing learning needs and tailoring teaching to the child’s current level of knowledge and understanding (“scaffolding” or “child-centred” approach,
- “multimodal” interaction and expression – using different modes of presenting material and expressing ideas (drawing, video, audio as well as conventional texts) to engage learners,
- higher-order thinking – encouraging skills like analysis, synthesis, evaluation, sorting and categorising,
- improvable ideas – providing an environment where ideas can be critiqued and refined,
- diversity of ideas – exploring ideas and related/contrasting ideas, encouraging different ideas,
- building directly on others’ ideas to create joint knowledge products,
- democracy in knowledge building – everybody participates and is a legitimate contributor to knowledge, and
- learner agency and peer support – encouraging students to take responsibility for their own and one another’s learning.
You can print this content on a separate sheet here: OER4Schools/Principles of interactive teaching.
Why are we doing this?
Introduction (15 min) to leadership for learning
Where are we going? Overview of the resource topics
The present resource intends to cover a number of units. You have now come to the end of Unit 1.
Unit 1: Introduction to interactive teaching and the use of ICT. The unit offers an introduction to interactive teaching with and without ICT. It introduces the idea of “plan-teach-reflect”, as well as lesson planning to include interactive activity. The unit covers the following aspects:
- What is interactive teaching?
- ICTs in interactive teaching.
- Effective use of ICTs, including basic use of netbooks, browser, and images / slideshows (also in OpenOffice Impress).
The aims of Unit 1 are to
- understand principles of interactive teaching - with and without ICT,
- see illustrations and discuss issues involved in implementing it,
- think about changing one’s own practice, and
- develop ways of working with colleagues to reflect on practice, share ideas and trial new strategies.
The unit also introduces the most significant change technique, and at the end of this unit, we look at the Leadership for Learning principles.
Unit 2: Whole class dialogue & effective questioning. The unit’s focus is whole class dialogue and effective questioning. It covers:
- creating a supportive environment for dialogue;
- introducing cumulative talk – creating a story together;
- promoting and managing whole class discussion;
- types and examples of effective questions to ask in class, and
- how to engage students in activity at the blackboard.
At the end of this unit, we consider how to communicate with other teachers at the school, with parents, head teachers, as well as officials who might seek to assess your new teaching practices. It also includes some material to support school leaders in providing a conducive learning environment for their staff.
In terms of ICTs, this unit introduces GeoGebra and collaborative writing. You should continue practising your other ICT skills, including typing, and making use of images.
Unit 3: Group work. This unit introduces group work, how to agree on ground rules, and what sort of resources support group work (such as “talking points” and digital resources). In detail, the unit covers
- exploratory talk,
- same task group work,
- different tasks group work,
- group composition and formation,
- ground rules for group work,
- carousel of activities for group work,
- mixed pace group work and differentiation, and
- talking points activity for promoting group interaction.
Unit 4: Assessment for learning and lesson pacing. The unit introduces how to find out what your pupils have learnt, and where they need more help, allowing you to use lesson time effectively whilst making sure that your pupils are making continued progress.
In detail the unit covers
- using an assessment inventory as a self-assessment measure,
- sharing learning objectives and success criteria,
- summative feedback,
- formative feedback, and
- peer assessment.
Unit 5: Enquiry-based learning and project work. The unit introduces how to work in an “enquiry-based” way, for instance learning through project work and in-depth, open-ended investigations. We explore a way of teaching and learning that encourages students to take the initiative to pose questions and explore their curiosity about the world around them, through a process of enquiry.
Unit 6: Into the future. This unit reviews the programme, and continues to make connections between the various interactive practices introduced throughout the programme. It also offers an introduction to action research and communities of practice, through which teachers can continually evolve their teaching practice.
You can print this content on a separate sheet here: OER4Schools/Unit overview.
Go through the above text (not spending too much time), making sure that everybody understands.
What is the most significant change?
In this section, we introduce participants to the “Most Significant Change technique”. We would like participants to formulate their own goals, and to identify what change(s) they might like to make.
The most significant change (MSC) technique
MSC is a form of participatory monitoring and evaluation. It is participatory because many project stakeholders are involved both in deciding the sorts of change to be recorded and in analysing the data. It is a form of monitoring because it occurs throughout the program cycle and provides information to help people manage the program. It contributes to evaluation because it provides data on impact and outcomes that can be used to help assess the performance of the program as a whole.
Essentially, the process involves ‘searching’ for project impact through:
- collection of significant change (SC) stories emanating from the field level
- systematic selection of the most significant of these stories by panels of designated stakeholders or staff
- collective reading of the stories aloud and regular and often in-depth discussions about the value of reported changes
When the technique is implemented successfully, whole teams of people begin to focus their attention on programme impact. You can find out more about the MSC technique here: http://www.mande.co.uk/docs/MSCGuide.pdf
We now consider what the biggest changes might be as a consequence of being involved in this programme - for yourselves, for your teaching, for your students, for the school, or in whatever other area!
Brainstorm (5 min). Think about how a newspaper works. A newspaper presents news stories about interesting events. Newspapers are structured into different sections (subject areas, such as foreign news, domestic news, financial news, sport, leisure). The most important stories go on the front page and the most important of these is usually at the top of the front page.
Whole group discussion (10 min). Now imagine that later on you will be putting together a whole newspaper issue about how this whole programme affects your thinking and classroom practice: What kinds of stories will be the most important? Who and what will the stories be about? Who will be affected by those stories, who would listen, and who will be they of interest to? What different sections would the newspaper have? What kind of change would you like to make?
Do the participants agree on how things might be different as a result of the programme? How will we know when these significant changes have happened? What kinds of evidence do our stories need to refer to? They can also be revised as time goes on. If participants mention ICT use and skills, ask them to focus on changes in pedagogy too.
Record what participants say in a permanent form - in writing or electronically so we can refer to them later on. Make sure it is recorded on video / audio.
Groupwork with computers: Sharing resources across groups
Reading (5 min)'. Read the following.
Access to computers: “We need more computers." Many schools don’t have access to computers at all, but where schools do have access, it is often felt that there are not enough computers. How many computers would a school need? While some might say that one computer per child, or perhaps one computer per two children would be ideal, for many schools (and classrooms) this is unrealistic. In general, when you have access to computers, you should therefore make sure that the computers are used in the best way possible in your context. We now consider how to make best use of whatever computers are available during group work.
Pair work (5 min) on sharing computers.. Spend 5 minutes as pairs, considering the following scenario: You have 60 children in your class, and 10 computers. How would you arrange the groups, how would you distribute the computers, how would you structure the lesson?
To help with this, consider the following questions:
- In devising groupings consider how many children can see the screen and get hands-on experience.
- If you only have a few computers, it is better to operate a carousel so everyone gets a chance?
Presentation and discussion (10 min). Go round all the pairs, who very briefly present their suggestions. Discuss the various outcomes. What different proposals are there?
Often the computers would be distributed equally (in this case one computer per group of 6), and all groups would do that same task. This distribution may well be seen a equitable. However, in practice, more than 3-4 children per computer does not work well.
Another way is to do different tasks groupwork, where some groups do computer-based work, while others do non-computer-based work. After a period of time, you can swap around the tasks, so that the groups which were not using a computer can now use one.
Refer to the two pictures above: In the picture with many children behind one netbook, do you think the children are using the netbook effectively? In the picture with the tablet, are the children interacting?
Here are two more pictures you can consider, regarding how children are sitting around a computer: In one picture, the screen us upright, and all the pupils are squeezing in behind. In the other picture, the screen is flat, allowing the children to sit around the screen.
Groupwork with computers: Sharing resources within groups
Having considered how computers are distributed among groups, we now consider how the computer can be shared equally within groups.
Pair work (5 min).. In pairs, consider the following questions:
- What would you do if there are some students who always control the computer, while other group members never get to use it?
- Would you say that it is sensible to mix computer-literate pupils with novices?
- How will you ensure they help rather than dominate their peers?
Discussion (10 min). Discuss the outcomes of your reflection as a whole class.
You should discuss strategies for access to computers within the group, i.e. rotating access to trackpad. You could also discuss the benefits of using tablets or putting computer screen flat (where this is possible).
It's important to create an environment where all pupils can participate. It's very important to make this explicit as the goal for group work: Everybody should have a go on the computer, not just the students who can type fast.
Come up with strategies for how you can achieve this. For example, in a group of 4, the students need to change over: For example, after a set period of time, access to the computer is rotated. This could be facilitated by giving each student a bottle top when they use the computer (but only on first use). At the end of the task, part of the evaluation is how many bottle tops your group got.
Planning a lesson using groupwork and ICT
Ensure that you have plenty of time for this task to be planned!
You should allow at least half an hour to 45 min.
Plan a lesson in year groups (30 min). Plan a lesson together in year groups (i.e. all grade 4 teachers plan a lesson for grade 4 together; grade 5 teachers together for grade 5; etc).
- Discuss with your colleagues (from the same grade) which topics you have coming up next week, and whether some of these topics would work particularly well with groupwork and ICT.
- Make active use of the computers in the lab to identify digital resources together.
- Devise an open activity where groups have a shared goal and where outcomes may differ between groups, for a lesson you are teaching next week.
- Consider: How will you ensure everyone participates and everyone learns? How will you stretch all learners?
- What will you say to the groups to ensure this? (Make a note in your lesson template.)
- Explicitly ask groups to make sure everyone understands the new concept or process; make it their responsibility to support each other and check this is happening.
- Consider whether you can assign different roles within the group.
- Consider how the computers will be swapped between groups, and between pupiles within a group, to ensure that there is effective access for everybody.
Follow-up activities
Agreeing follow-up activities (5 min).
Part A: Try out your groupwork with ICT. As the week progresses, the teachers within each grade should share the experiences. That is to say, if you are the first teacher to teach this lesson, meet your colleagues afterwards, and discuss with them how it went, and what improvements could be made.
As you teach the lesson remember to think about your own role in the classroom; it is not just to monitor progress but also to interact with pupils, assess their understanding, offer support and help move their thinking forward. Sometimes a group will even need you to sit with them and offer intensive support to progress. Think about how you can identify this need?
During the lessons, remember to encourage groups to let everybody within the group have a go at using the ICT!
Video some of the groupwork if you can (ideally a colleague can do this for you so they can capture you as well as the pupils) and upload it to the server.
Part B: Learning about ICT. Teacher lab activity.
- In preparation for developing some image-based lesson activities, you should search suitable images.
- Do some typing practice to improve your typing skills.
The following items are specific to the programme at CBS, and may need to be adapted to local circumstances:
Searching for images:
- If there is internet, you can use the "search images on flickr" link from your school homepage (http://192.168.128.1)
- Alternatively, if connectivity is poor, you can do this by browsing the schools edition of wikipedia, also linked from the school homepage.
Part C: Read the principles of interactive teaching - do you have any questions or comments?
Part D: Learning more about email (optional).
- Come to the teacher lab at least once this week to learn more ICT skills. This week you should
- Send an email to the oer4schools list
In the next session, these follow-up activities will be reviewed. If you are using this session on its own, you can have a look at the review of follow-up activities here.
[[todoinfo::
Notes about etherpad - move elsewhere:
Part B: Classroom activity. Do the collaborative writing activity - the classroom activity sheet is available here. Please print it, and use it during the lesson
- Go to Etherpad and explore options for making text bold andunderlined.
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At the end of each session, we provide an overview of the activities in this session, together with their suggested timings. Although this appears at the end of the session (for technical reasons), you should keep an eye on this throughout the session, to make sure that you are pacing the workshop session appropriately!
Total time: 100 (min)
Activities in this session:
- Introduction (15 min) to leadership for learning
- Brainstorm(5 min).
- Whole group discussion(10 min).
- Reading (5 min)'
- Pair work (5 min) on sharing computers.
- Presentation and discussion(10 min).
- Pair work(5 min).
- Discussion(10 min).
- Plan a lesson in year groups(30 min).
- Agreeing follow-up activities(5 min).
If you have printed this session for offline use, you may also need to download the following assets:
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