Innovation Profile 023

One improvement leads to another

Introducing classroom/lecture-room ICT display systems, such as projectors and interactive whiteboards, brings many advantages but also raises some issues. These can be seen either as a problem or an opportunity.

Making it possible to use digital content much more powerfully in the classroom will soon cause discussion about how the school/college manages its digital learning content. In doing this, it is the needs of the individual teachers and classes that must be considered first.

Teachers know well what learning content will work best with their students. In the past it has taken a long time for teachers to organise the resources for their classes. ICT can change that, allowing teachers to manage content more effectively, and to re-use and to re-purpose it.

A school/college can either accept that teachers will do this individually, or they can arrange for the overall ICT system to support and enable the creation, storage and use of digital content by teachers.

Software is available to help with this. For example, Promethean (http://www.promethean.co.uk) supply interactive whiteboards but also provide their ACTIVstudio software. This, in addition to numerous other features, allows individual teachers to store their own resources, which can be accessed from any classroom. The ability to select and quickly access the particular resources suitable for a class is a very key part of the professional skills of teachers.

However a school should consider the larger issue. The resources that individual teachers find or create might be of great use to other teachers. Though it will take considerable effort to establish a whole-school/college approach to digital content the benefits can be considerable as well. Promethean are also helping to address this issue and provide a network version of their ACTIVstudio software. This provision is designed to underpin the sharing of 'effective practice using ICT'.

The whole purpose of introducing interactive whiteboards into classrooms is to allow much more powerful learning content to be used as the focus for class work and discussion. Installing the whiteboards is only half the task, making sure the content is available and well managed will considerably increase the value of the investment.

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If you know of examples of innovative use of ICT-for-learning that others would be interested in, please email innovations@eep-edu.org

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