ICT in school
A minimum specification?
The absolute minimum ?
There is no doubt that technology has revolutionised the way in which we live our lives over the last 100 years, and as we face oil crises these changes and both their advantages and disadvantages are brought into sharp relief. But what about our schools? Tony Blair famously said that if you walked into a classroom in 1998 it would look very similar to walking into one in 1898. Is this still the case for your classroom? Do you now have an electronic whiteboard, or at least a video-projector onto a whiteboard? Are you utilising the incredible resources that the technology gives you in your teaching and learning? I have seen an incredible range of practice over the last few years in schools across the UK and I would like to suggest that it is now essential that you are doing the following things:
1
Using the range of information that is available on-line to enrich and develop your teaching and the learning in your classroom. This might be just access to the wide range of video, image and audio information that is on-line but also it should be creating your own dynamic resources, presentations can be much more than text, communicating with the wide range of expertise and professional support that is available and collaborating with your colleagues via the message boards and forums that are developing.
2
Developing with your students a critical evaluative approach to on-line resources, the internet is a treasure trove but to get the gold out you often have to shift a lot of rock. Are you giving your students the skills to ask key questions of any resource they find on-line, questions such as “who wrote this?” “How do I know?”, “what is their bias?”, “Is it accurate?”, “is it coming from a particular faith or religious tradition?’”. Are you asking the same questions about the resources you access and use with your students or do you take it all on “blind faith?”
3
Allowing the students to present their work in a variety of multi-media formats. It is not longer acceptable to expect your students only to do ‘written work’ every one of your students, except for a tiny few, will have access to a digital stills and video camera, and a voice recorder – they will be part of that device which we still call a mobile ‘phone’. Are you flexible enough in the work you set to allow your students to produce a storyboard, video clip, audio clip or mixture of these into a multi-media presentation? This work can easily be kept in the students’ e-portfolios and be made available for you, their parents and the wider school to see. You may be amazed at what children for whom writing is a problem come up with when allowed to make a movie, an advert or a documentary and remember they will have the technical tools and probably the technical skills to do this – you may have to challenge the conservatism of the SLT in the use of these tools but RE is good at challenging orthodoxy
4
Using the school’s learning platform. Learning is not a nine to five occupation but an “anytime, anywhere, anyplace” thing and you need to putting up resources on the schools learning platform that allow this to happen. At the very least this should be the materials you are using in the classroom but also extension materials, links to support video and audio (see below) and allowing the students to contribute to this resource bank. At best you should be using the blog, wiki or forum facility to extend learning and offer the wider community the chance to participate in the activities happening in the RE classroom
5
Accessing personal viewpoints and authentic members of the religious communities via on-line video sharing sites such as YouTube (see the article in RE Today of Autumn, 2008 for more ideas); or allowing you students to go off and interview members of the religious and faith communities and bring these personal stories into the classroom
6

Using technology to capture the work that your students are doing in the classroom. How often does the excellent work that your students do disappear into the aether because it is ethereal? Do you use still and video cameras to capture presentations or dramatic episodes? Do you use audio capture to get the key ideas of groups at the end of a discussion, debate or dialogue (the 3 D’s of the RE classroom)? So often we only assess written work, or work on paper and I am sure that there is much more of this happening in your RE classroom

Some assessment ideas to consider using technology with.

You may say, “I can’t do this, I haven’t the time, skills or options”, but that is no longer acceptable. This is the way of learning for many of your students already and to say that you are not willing to learn is a poor role model for a teacher, who expects their students to learn new things every day. So you need to get yourself on a course, look at some on-line INSET or take it in hand.

These new ways of learning are, and will continue, to change the way we think about learning; information has never been more available. It is how we turn this information into knowledge and this knowledge into wisdom.
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