One of the problems with a subject like ICT is relating seemingly abstract terms. In a recent discussion about storage & computer memory, I found some of my Key Stage 3 students had little concept of the units of file size. After a little while we established that a kilobyte was bigger than a byte, a megabyte was bigger than a kilobyte, and a gigabyte was bigger than a megabyte, but that was...
The requests for ICT level descriptors in pupil speak continue to pile up on the TES forums, so I thought I'd make mine available for download. Personally, I think they make a lot of sense, and cover the array of ICT skills we ought to be covering in high schools very well, but at first glance seem inaccessible, particularly for assessing pupil progress.
I posted these a while ago on Twitter, but I think they deserve a repost. During my training year, I saw lesson plans as a hurdle to jump before teaching a lesson, but over the course of this year I’ve come to appreciate the value of an in-depth lesson plan. I put together a new proforma for our department earlier in the year, and it helps me form my thoughts when approaching a new subject...
I was interviewed by a freelance journalist for a TES article recently, and was told that our LA ICT advisor was unhappy with the comment I gave on the Rose reforms. “Good ICT is very difficult to teach, and rarely gets beyond skills building, or ‘trivial pursuits’ in primary schools,” I said, annoying primary ICT coordinators everywhere with my sweeping generalisation. “Teaching students to...
I posted these on Twitter, but with some questions from @misterel that I foolishly didn’t explain when I put them up I thought it’d be worthwhile explaining how they work. Click images for larger versions. OCR Unit 1 markbook: [link] (Links removed 06/08/09 as new versions have been posted here) OCR Unit 23 markbook: [link] On the first sheet the only things you need to fill in are...
I've been talking with @mwclarkson and @dagza about the out of touch way software companies are gouging schools for licensing fees (I studied at the Daily Mail school of impartiality, I did). The general feeling is that if our kids leave school competent in (for example) Photoshop, Fireworks & Dreamweaver, that surely has to be a big win for Adobe.