Task for Study Day 1: Thursday 16th September

Your task is to read Chapter 1 of the book “Teaching ICT” by Carl Simmons and Claire Hawkins (pages 1 to 12) and reflect on some of the questions posed.

I would recommend you buy a copy of this book when you can, but for now I have scanned in the first few pages and made them available on the VLE. If you cannot yet access the VLE (http://vle.anglia.ac.uk ) then I will email you all a copy of the chapter.

You can access nearly all the pages (except 8-9) on Google Books here: 

 

There are six reflection points within this chapter. I have included them all here.

1.1  Consider the following prompt questions:

• What is education? What is its purpose? When does it happen and how?
• Who is a teacher? Are teachers the only people who teach? How is teaching different from training? What makes a good teacher and why?
• What is learning? How do we know that learning has happened? How do we learn best? Is learning involuntary or do we have to consciously learn?

1.2  What do you believe?

·          Why do you think education is important?

·          How did education influence your life and why?

·          Why do you want to be a teacher?

1.3 Consider how you learn best, perhaps focusing on something which you do or know particularly well, and consider how you learnt it. What makes that form of learning most effective for you? Now consider a situation where learning was not so effective. What made this learning experience ineffective? How could it have been improved? What lessons can you learn from this reflection for your teaching and learning practice?

1.4 Review your subject knowledge audit and the one on the companion website (www.saugepub.co.uk/secondary - click on the teaching ICT book, then Chapter 1). Consider if your subject knowledge is broad enough to address all the topic areas raised. What else do you think should be taught in ICT lessons? Are there any topics that inspire you that you would want to include? How might you achieve this?

1.5 What role do you think the ICT department and staff should have in advising and supporting staff from other subject areas? How do you think cross-curricular projects may benefit pupils and staff? Are there any disadvantages to cross-curricular projects?

1.6 Identify some ways that emerging technologies such as social networking tools, games and mobile technology could be used for educational purposes in lessons (see http://www.futurelab.org.uk for ideas).

Can you choose two of these reflection points in the chapter and write about 150 words on each, reflecting on your own previous experiences. Please could you email this to me at sue.sentance@anglia.ac.uk prior to Monday morning when we have a subject-specific session starting at 9am.