Thunder

Margaret Wright (QCA) has just posed the question if you were creating a GCSE in ICT what would you add to functional skills to form this qualification. To me the answer is engaging and motivating uses of ICTs, I am sure there are very few if any students who want to study databases, spreadsheets and wordprocessing. We should look at a qualification that encompasses the ICTs they use outside the school environment. If students were able to submit their myspace site or their latest video from YouTube, I am sure they would engage more in our classrooms. It would probably be worth looking outside the conventional uses of ICT, look at using mobile phones, mp3 players, games consoles etc.

I think it would be great to sit down and develop a GCSE for our ‘digital natives’, it is probably something we should do in conjunction with our students, what do they think ICT is actually about.  My biggest issue with ICT qualifications to date is that they are very quickly out of date, how do we design a qualification that is future proofed?  Should we have a selection of modules that students can pick from, smaller modules that can be developed and replaced easily. I could see modules on internet safety, computer gaming, blogging, podcasting, internet research etc etc

So what do you think?

As some of you may be aware I am in ’sunny’ Torquay at the NAACE conference, yesterday I delivered by session on web2.0 in the classroom (you can find most of the sites referred to here).

It has been great to have so much positive feedback and a little constructive negative feedback. This has left me thinking about how to improve and where I believe we should start to go next. What I believe is that it is good to see the practical uses of web2.0 in the classroom whether they be the best use or not, from the primary school blog to the geography tectonics podcast, my use of del.icio.us to the gallery of student work. Where I believe I need to take this next is to start to look in more detail about the effects on teaching and learning from using these technologies, to me it is obvious but that is not the case for everyone.

I think in Shropshire we could be at a tipping point, we have spent the last 18 months or so piloting and developing our use of these technologies but can we start to exploit them even further, using blogs to support boys writing, podcasts to support speaking and listening, del.icio.us to support research etc

I am keen to hear other peoples opinions and set up some collaborations to develop materials to support the use of these technologies in the classroom. Has anyone already developed teaching units, that don’t necessarily teach the technologies but exploit their use.