Isn’t that a delightful concept?
I came across it in a posting titled What should we do with those computers? Admittedly that blogger didn’t create the phrase. Yosif quotes Eileen Lento:
- “If you’re just sprinkling the technology on top of the curriculum, it’s not as compelling,” says. Intel’s [Eileen Lento, a government and education strategist]. “Then you just have some expensive pencils.”
Nor does it seem he actually wrote most of the article. The original is by Christopher Dawson who wrote:
- students are becoming adept at research online and most have solid skills with productivity apps, but we still have a long ways to go genuinely integrating the tools and training teachers to build technology-driven lessons instead of merely having kids type their papers.
Yosif goes on to say of his/her own context
- Ironically despite the Fact that the Philippines is a BPO (meaning Business Process Outsourcing) country, most of its Public primary and secondary schools do not use Computers for class room instruction.
Getting back though to the sprinkling of the technology on the top, how do we go about ensuring that technology is really embedded in the new national curriculum?
How do teachers get a real understanding that what they have to do is wider than just incorporating passive internet searching in their teaching? How do they get to know about the web 2.0 tools that will enable their students to share, communicate and create? And how do we persuade them that is important?
We’ve been talking about embedding technology into the curriculum for a long time now. A decade ago I was working in a job with the title of Computing Across the Curriculum Coordinator.
A colleague and I have been having discussion this week about how curriculum statements can simplify the process for teachers. Whether general statements of “use technology to..” are enough, or whether the statements need to be a lot more specific about what sort of technology to use, and what sort of outcomes to expect, dependent on the curriculum content.
Part of my research has been to look for examples of ICT continuums with a curriculum/subject-based focus.
Here are some of the results:
Victorian Essential Learning Standards
Concepts and Skills Charts particularly ICT which gives charts with 6 levels in visualising thinking, creating, and communicating.
Thinking Processes has a similar set of charts but these do not relate to the ICT continuum.
SACSA Primary Years:
Each document has a continuum of Key Ideas, Examples of Evidence and Outcomes
The Examples of evidence include a continuum of ICT skills
English, Maths, Science, Society & Environment
The SACSA Companion Documents attempt to unpack the Outcomes with embedded ICTs for English R-10, Mathematics R-10, Science R-10, Society & Environment R-10
Queensland Essential Learnings Scope and Sequence Years 1-9 documents:
- learning descriptions outlining what is essential for students to know, understand and be able to do by the end of Years 3, 5, 7, and 9 are critical for future learning and progress.
- English, Mathematics, Science, Society and Environment
- More QCAR info at http://education.qld.gov.au/qcar/index.html
ACT Department of Education – ECTL Framework
Section 6: Using ICTs effectively (page 62 on)
Following pages have Markers of Progress (a continuum) for each stage.
Tasmania Curriculum Areas by Standards
Standards state what students can do. The curriculum is organised from standard one to standard five, describing the years of schooling from Kindergarten to Year 10. Further information about standards can be accessed through each curriculum area or using the resources below.
Each stage includes activities which use ICTs.
Tasmanian Education Department K-10 ICT Cross Curricular Framework:
ICTs K-10 Syllabus, Standards and Strands – “at each stage its is expected that students at this standard will…”
Gives performance criteria and sample learning activities.
Sample Skills p160 onwards – lists things students should be able to do with ICT: Inquiring, Creating, Communicating, Operating
Includes a Checklist for ICT skills (p165 on), specific for each year level.
Develop your teaching practice using ICT – DCSF (UK)- Practical Support Pack
Designed to persuade teachers of the benefits of including ICT Primary materials available in Primary Literacy and Mathematics, for Reception to Year 6, in year by year
Secondary materials available for Years 7, 8, and 9 in a variety of subjects including English, Mathematics, Science, and History.
Manitoba – Literacy with ICT K-12
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/tech/index.html
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/tech/lict/show_me/continuum.html
BECTA – Next Generation Learning – checklist for parents
Specific skills lists for 4 key stages
I’d be interested in hearing of any other attempts you know of to link actual subject areas to an ICT embedded skills continuum.
One Comment
Kerry,
I’m not sure if this one may be something which you’ll find useful.
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/corporate/about_us/index.cfm
To put it in a NATIONAL ICT context, you’l need to start here (in Canada). http://www.canarie.ca/members/index.html
Hopefully you might understand that the ICT (skills) continuum you talk about evolves at a number of levels; the primary one being the network on which a member’s web stuff is sprinkled. For the cone, you’d need to have a curricula that touches on subjects like Lambda grids and light paths. For the ice cream, you’d one that describes things like platforms, applications and directories. And that’s before you introduce other ingredients = IP versions like IPv6 and protocols like BGP.
It’s much the same with CANARIE’s US cousins, where they approach an ever-changng ICT continuum like this.
https://wiki.internet2.edu/confluence/display/I2SP/2008+INTERNET2+STRATEGIC+PLANNING;jsessionid=22FC5C66A54E9733B38A4DDBB301C449
I use these two because Aussies seem to think the same (Nth American) way= they put discussion about the architecture of a network before the content and communities, which will use it.
In Europe and the UK, they take a more holistic approach and try to make an inquiry like this more inclusive. They know people will learn to change their behaviours from a secretariat’s approach). I’ll point you at one doc from the primaryreview. The last two paras are the telling ones.
http://www.primaryreview.org.uk/Downloads/RJA_Weavers_Company_lecture_web.pdf
Yu can backtrack to the home page to get some idea of how extensively they work (at being inclusive) = by including people in a new routine and process of inquiry.
Almost always you’ll find that there is less talk about making policy, and more about giving schools more freedom to use media production tools and an understanding of the publically funded networks that span institutions.
Never will you find the words “Professional Learning” used. Any reader of Karl Popper can point the inherent assumption behind the term. As it says in that primaryreview report above; “it is not good governance to assume that political judgement and official data are inherently superior to other views and other kinds of evidence. That assumption has nothing to do with knowledge or truth, and everything to do with power”.
Please keep in mind that those Aussie jobs (say tens of thousands to be conservative),which are rapidly moving to Manila, occur because Aussie (telco, banking, etc) networks, and customers, need someone to support = educate = them. And all the time all education.edu can do is talk and talk to “professional learners” about how to use the sprinkling on top.
Kerry, believe me, you’ll never create a policy which encourages innovation. All you can do is learn enough to solicit a question.
2 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[…] It is really important with Australia’s DER rollout that teachers get well beyond using computers as an expensive pencil. Some will use it as a more up to date textbook and that is OK so long as it is the basis for the creation of knowledge and students get to use them in creative ways. By that I don’t mean creativity as in artistic, but creative in the sense of collaboration, shared knowledge, shared understandings, and the creation of new content. […]
[…] It is an issue we here in Australia, in the midst of our Digital Education Revolution, must be aware of too. I have written many times on this theme. We have to be careful that we don’t just “sprinkle the technology on the top“. Some educators have yet to realise that embedding ICTs in their teaching and learning goes deeper than working out how they can “use computers in the lesson”. […]
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