I attended a launch meeting for the new AQA ICT A Level at the start of the week. An update is long overdue and the proposed changes address most of the shorcomings of the present A Level.
A nice feature of the AS is that there is no longer an assessed coursework module (which was a turn off for the more academically inclined students) and instead a short project report is to be brought into one of the two exam modules. The practical nature of the new specification will allow for better engagement while still allowing plenty of scope for deep levels of understanding of “ICT as a subject”.

Do you manage to teach using constructivist teaching methods?

How do you balance the requirements to follow the national curriculum with helping students to construct their own knowledge?

Do you have enough time on your timetable to effectively cover everything that is required of you as a teacher?

Please drop my a line or leave a comment.

I would be interested to hear about:

• which country you teach in
• what subject you teach
• how much teaching time to you have for each class/year group
• do you create your own resources, buy in or a combination of both
• do you have any success stories to share about helping others to learn

It is the time of year when there is a lot of course work to assess.

I have always been a strong believer in providing the marking criteria for students to follow. After all, I have to mark to the criteria so the students should be allowed to know what I will be looking for.

All year long I have been providing my GCSE and GCE groups with the marking criteria I will be using. I have given them frequent and regular reminders that they need to look at the criteria and ensure that their work fits what I will be looking for. I create presentations, provide handouts of ‘tips’ and give print outs of the marking criteria for the students to keep.

Even with constant reminders I am amazed how few students pay attention to those guidlines. Their work often resembles anything but what the marking criteria is asking for. Often the criteria is quite clear in that you have to include a certain section, part or comment to get above minimum marks and still many students fail to include that section.

Even worse, I am still seeing coursework copied from other students within the same class. One daft fool even handed in a piece of coursework which was a direct copy and paste from the examination board exemplar coursework.

It is easy to get good marks and as adults we can see that. However, many of our young adults have yet to discover the benefit of using assessment criteria to get good marks.

Proportions? About 15% follow the assessment criteria, 70% fail to meet the critera and 15% don’t seem to have even taken the effort to look at it.

Assessment for learning – good in theory but not the silver bullet that us adults see it as!

I have finally added the remaining panoramic images to the TT tour page of the virtualiom.com website. See http://www.virtualiom.com/tt

This brings the total of panoramas on view to 46 around the famous 37.3 mile road circuit. With the centenary celebrations planned for this June’s event there has been a dramatic increase in traffic to the site.

I have seen some events unfold in the school that I currently teach.

The ethos of the headteacher’s leadership is one of student empowerment. On the whole this is a very positive approach and the students are able to take responsibility for their learning. This doesn’t always make things easy for the teacher but is much better for the students and at the end of the day we are all there to help the students to learn.

One thing that has struck me has been that of the students ability (or inability) to learn the responsibility to go with their ‘empowered’ rights.

Children are children. They are constantly learning. They need to learn their social behaviours as well as their academic knowledge.

With rights come responsibilities. The two go hand in hand.

Which led me to think about how students learn responsibility. Observing students it could be said that many of them are irresponsible. They make poor decisions when it comes to:

• behaving in enclosed spaces – running around putting other children’s safety at risk
• looking after their belongings – dumping their bags and coats in the corridors
• dealing with adults – sometimes being cheeky and arguing when it is unnecessary
• behaving in a group situation – behaving inappropriately in a classroom when a teacher is trying to help a class learn, in turn spoiling the learning of others

The question is how to help students to learn to become responsible. While we have been giving students more and more ‘rights’ I feel that we have done little to balance that by teaching the responsibilities to go with the rights.

For example, historically students had to clear the building at breaks and had plenty of open space to run around and burn off any excess energy. Now, we have given the students the right to stay indoors at break and most of them choose to do so. For most of the students this works very well, they act in a responsible manner and there are no problems. However, there are a few students that abuse the right to be inside and run around putting the safety of other students at risk.

How should we deal with this situation?

• Should we have outlined that the ability to stay inside is a right and explicitly explained what the responsibility that goes with this right it is?
• Do we take away the right of the students that behave irresponsibly?

Whenever students have rights do we need to explicitly outline what the responsibilities are that go with those rights?

Can we help students to learn responsibility by removing their rights? I believe that rights and responsibilities go hand in hand. It seems logical that the reward for responsibility is the right to continue to do something.

Reward and punishment is the traditional mainstay of behaviour management in schools. If we are to continue to empower our students then perhaps reward and punishment is not directly applicable to the area of student empowerment. Perhaps it should be the the pairing of rights and responsibilities with removal of the rights of those that don’t accept the responsibility.

I for one think that the rights and responsibilities model may prevent the popular student cry of “it’s not fair!”. As long as we are clear and explicit the right to do something is earned by exhibiting the responsibility to go with it then the students will get to practice responsibility if they want all the things in life that are good.

Every single time I have travelled transatlantic to the United States there has always been one person in the long queue in front of me that hasn’t completed their visa waiver form (VWF) prior to attending the immigration desk.

This not only frustrates the immigration staff but holds up the queue slowing down the whole process and frustrating the many tired travellers waiting to clear immigration.

What I don’t understand is how these people got to be in this situation. They have:

• Just travelled for 9 hours where they have had plenty of free time to complete their VWF
• Had cabin staff parading the aisles with forms offering help and advice
• Watched an in-flight video explaining what the form is, why it is necessary and how to complete it
• Had access to the in-flight magazine that has several pages dedicated to helping complete the VWF

I have a theory as to why this is and how the problem can be addressed. There is a general problem in trying to help the general public to learn how to perform a necessary task and to then actually do it.

The next 6 months will be spent addressing such a problem and how organisations can produce resources that are effective at achieving high levels of learning and compliance.

With the end of 2006 fast approaching it is a time to reflect on some of the issues I have been dealing with over the past year.

I have a degree in Computer Science, have been using computers for 25 years and am truly passionate about what computer technology can do to enhance the lifestyle and career of a 21st century citizen. However, I am puzzled about the subject I currently teach.

I chose to teach ICT because it appears on the outside to be the teaching of the use of computers. However, the national curriculum describes ICT as something completely different to what the public perceives the subject to be. Instead of focusing on the ‘how’ and the ‘skill’ to use computers to meet the needs of the future workplace and lifestyle, the national curriculum focuses more on indirect concepts such as ‘audience’ and ‘evaluation’. It is not that considering audience and evaluating work are not important aspects, it is just that they appear to be universal to all subjects. A piece of work produced in History, Geography or even English should have to stand up to the same universal criteria of audience and evaluation to be a truly effective piece of work.

The subject could and should be made a lot more interesting and relevant to the students if the focus was more on the use of the technology to achieve current life needs. ICT should be a ‘skill’ that is used in every other subject to help produce work.

The subject of ICT also doesn’t appear to have a natural context. Arbitrary contexts are used to give meaning to a piece of learning (e.g. Make a poster to advertise a film). Time may be better spent if the context used were one that was a real need to the student (e.g. I need to make a thank you letter after Xmas, or I need to make a poster to advertise the school fair – and then each student puts these up around town). More care may be given to the work if it was known that it would be used to achieve a real goal.

Although we have good computer equipment in schools we are still some way from every student having their own laptop computer. ICT should then become a subject that helps develop the student’s ability to complete tasks that they would do as part of their normal life. Students shouldn’t think any more of using the computer to complete their work than they do using a pen, pencil, ruler and calculator.

So as we enter 2007 I make a wish that the subject of ICT changes. I wish for changes that focus on the learning of the computer and the applications that are used to achieve real-life useful tasks. The national curriculum is due for an update. Technology has moved on but the national curriculum hasn’t kept up!

With the start of the British school year only a week away my thoughts turn to the motivation of the young people in our high schools.

It is ironic that with one of the best education systems in the world that many of our students lack motivation and don’t want to take advantage of the marvelous learning opportunity. Looking at motivation globally it seems that the worse the career prospects of a society the greater the value placed on the educational system.

Many of our students know that they will be OK when they leave school regardless of their level of education. There are jobs, there is a good social security service for those without employment and looking at the current level of debt there is easy finance for almost anything people want to buy these days.

Although, as an adult we can see the benefits that a good education provides, it can be difficult for a high school student to associate with their own future and the real-world issues of finance, employment and generally coping with adult life.

Talking about career prospects doesn’t appear to motivate our children, and why should it – children have no concept or experience of ‘employment’. This year we might want to think about finding more immediate benefits to the school lessons we provide.

How can our students benefit from their learning TODAY? How can we sell them on the idea of using what they have learned to improve their life right now?

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It has taken many days to get there but VirtualIOM.com has received an update. The update includes:

• New CSS and XHTML compliant design
• Easier to navigate layout
• Cool imagery
• Backend processing all XML based taking feeds from the GyroVision host
• 9 additional panoramas

Take a visit and let me know what you think. I still have a checklist of about 10 things admin that need adding but the site is 98% operational.