Jack Kenny points to the ICT in Practice Awards winners as examples of teachers
transforming the way they work
Professor Stephen Heppell's analogy for schools ICT is that you learn to drive
a car, and then you turn up for your test and are given a horse and cart. Many
schools realise the truth of that. They don't teach their students to drive for
a limousine curriculum; they stick to the horse-and-buggy curriculum that the
students will be assessed on. Who can blame them?
Schools have to change. Individuals have to change. It is not an either/or
option. Initially, individuals will show the way. Becta's ICT in Practice
Awards discover individuals who want their pupils to make use of the
technology, and often those individual teachers will be found in areas of
education where the pressure to succeed in conventional terms is not as
intense. Next year's award winners were announced last month at the Xchange
2005 conference in Birmingham, and we feature three here.
When a four-year-old told me his favourite painter was Monet I was more than a
little surprised. He was in the care of Helen Newman, who approaches computers
as if they had just been discovered. Helen's creativity, she feels, is helped
by working in a system that is not target-led, but experience-led. She teaches
foundation years at Sanday Community School, which is the only school on the
island of Sanday in the Orkneys. Her classroom looks like an artist's studio,
and it is, because every one in there, teacher and pupils, is an artist. Helen
uses very simple techniques.
She finds images from great painters on the internet. First she puts the images
with colour bleached out into Logotron's Revelation Natural Art, projects them
on to the interactive whiteboard and invites the three- and four-year-olds to
restore the colour. She then uses the technique with real paint and projected
images on paper pinned to the wall. The children paint over the images,
creating pastiches of Van Gogh and Monet, developing their fine motor skills as
well as increasing their appreciation of visual images.
Pete Wells, now based at Sunderland City Learning Centre, was teaching pupils
with profound and multiple learning difficulties. Pete is an ebullient
character who just tore up the rule book. He changed the name of his former
school department to Sensory Learning because, quite simply, that is what
happens. He has pioneered ways of telling stories that really do use the
current cliche of VAK (visual, auditory and kinesthetic).
Teaching children whose progress can only be measured in microscopic steps can
be difficult. Pete approaches the work with pzazz. He invents stories full of
slime, snot and other repulsive substances. If the story is set at the seaside,
one of the helpers will kneel at the side of the children and gently spray
water. Giving them experiences that would be difficult to replicate is at the
core of his work. Perhaps Pete's most radical innovation has been the use of
green-screen technology - Chroma Key. His pupils probably will never visit the
Sphinx or take part in Star Wars, but with this they can. Pete records them on
video, with a green screen as background. He then inserts a video clip or still
behind the child's image, and lo and behold they are flying with Superman or
singing with Elvis in Las Vegas.
Ian Green, a technician at Sandwell College in the West Midlands, has achieved
the feat of making sure that one of the classes in the college has been taught
by a teacher in Los Angeles. Newly qualified Chris Skilbeck started at Sandwell
in September 2004. Chris's partner was offered the chance to do some research
into microbiology in Los Angeles, the only snag being that the work would start
in January 2005 and Chris wanted to go with her. Chris had made a hit with his
pupils on the A2 Biology course in that short time, so Ian devised a scheme
whereby Chris would be able to continue to teach the students from his
apartment in Los Angeles. Using Polycom video-conferencing and a program called
Glance, Chris appears on the whiteboard and Ian backs him up with practicals
and demonstrations. Chris uses a graphic tablet for drawing, and the pictures
appear on a computer nextb to the big screen. Ian and Chris "talk" through MSN
Messenger before the lesson so that Ian has the right equipment.
The three teachers working in their separate areas have things to show all
teachers about the use of ICT. The quality in all three is good learning and
teaching. They want to do great work for the students and ICT is the best way
to do it.
TRANSFORM YOUR TEACHING
* Decide what you'd do were you not hedged in by rules and regulations - then
do it
* Read inspirational writers
* Ask questions
* Find your philosophy of education
* Only use innovations that fit with your philosophy. Piecemeal innovation is
pointless
* Challenge the status quo
* Develop the skills you need - forget the rest
* Everything should be done to sharpen the relevance to the children of what is
being taught
* You are out to create autonomous learners
* Learn to manage change - it won't just happen
* Embed change into the psyche of your colleagues
* Tell your students what you are trying to do and listen to their criticism
SOURCES
* Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom Larry Cuban, Harvard
University Press, Paperback - April 2003, Amazon £9.95
* How Children Fail How Children Learn John Holt, Penguin, Amazon £15.38
(both books)
* The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer.
Seymour Papert, Amazon £13.84 Basic Books
* Logotron's Revelation Natural Art - £55 www.logo.com/products.html
* Green Screen Work Kudlian Soft www.kudlian.net
* Screen sharing Glance www.glance.net - Free demo
* ICT In Practice Awards www.becta.org.uk/practiceawards
ICT in Practice Award winners Tim Rylands, Helen Newman and Pete Wells will
feature in the TES afternoon keynote session at the BETT 2006 show on January
12 led by Professor Tim Brighouse and John Davitt, addressing "how teachers
change their practice to change the world", this session will be a celebration
of good, replicable classroom practice. You can book spaces online at:
www.bettshow.co.uk.
