Parasomnia Firstly – ICT is the term educators in the UK, but now in many other places to, use to describe the use of computers within education. ICT stands for Information Communication Technology. On another of my websites I’ve created a Flash activity that asks people to consider what ‘effective ICT’ really is.
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I actually created this because every year I’m asked to deliver a session about ICT to new trainee teachers. I try my best to make this hands on, exploring interactive learning materials to spark an interest. However, I really felt that people who attended the session weren’t being stretched and consequently they weren’t being asked to think for themselves. I want teachers and students to consider the whole point of using a computer – as often the best use of ICT is to actually decide not to use the computer at all!
Dying God So I created a Flash activity that puts forward an example scenario and then the use has to use a drag bar to select how effective they think this activity would be – they have to drag a score from 0 to 10. As a Flash eLearning application, I’m really pleased with it – it was very simple to put togther, it simply works and forces the user to focus on the content.
To build it all I did was create an array full of the examples, together with some additional feedback and my own score. Flash then randomizes this array and serves them up for the user to work with. As each score is selected (or dragged I suppose) the number is recorded. The screen then displays my own interpretation, my own score together with the feedback. This process continues until the entire bank of examples is used up.
At the end there is then the opportunity to reflect. This part I’ve found rather strange. When people try the activity they keep thinking in terms of being ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. If their scores aren’t close to mine, they don’t like it. However, this simply doesn’t matter. The idea of the exercise is to get people talking, get people thinking about the concept of effective ICT. The main aim is to prevent people thinking that typing your coursework up in an ICT suite is in any way ‘effective’.
Anyway, this is how I feel Flash is brilliant for us as educators – it allows anyone to create short, interactive tasks that can really enliven a task. 
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Carl // Jan 21, 2006 at 3:06 pm
I enjoyed that, I did quite well too considering!
What always annoys me is where ICT is used as a reward in other subjects i.e. last day of term or a friday afternoon. Total waste in my opinion. When I was at school most departments had there own ICT Suites, they where simply used for ‘copying up coursework’ , ‘Logon to Sam Learning’ or to simply to send the naughty students away! I can remember on a few occasions where ICT was almost used as blackmail “If we get this piece of work done by Wednesday, I will book the ICT Suite for Thursday and so on!”
Even when it was booked it wasen’t used properly, you can’t just tell a student to logon and create a powerpoint on ‘Fosil Fuels’ and expect them to do it, without the temptation of the whole Internet infront of them.
Or can you?
Even though they had a vast amount of specialist educational software specific for each unit. Why waste all that money on new machines to simply use Microsoft Office? Yes Office is powerful and you can do a lot of it, but surely the kid’s need some scope?
2 Andrew Field // Jan 21, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Glad you enjoyed it – remember the point that I’ve tried to make above – it doesn’t matter if you don’t ’score’ 100% – the main aim is that teachers are encouraged to evaluate their use of ICT.
You are exactly right about students requiring scope. The Office programs can be used for some amazing activities, but not if it is simple low level ‘type this up’ or suchlike.
I suppose in your role as a technician you’ll also see all the time students waste browsing the internet instead of doing their work.
3 Carl // Jan 21, 2006 at 6:44 pm
Indeed we do see lots them playing games, not really much we can do.
I scored 67% anyway!
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