Module 10 Activity 3 Planning for ICTs in your school

School’s General Vision

The school envisions a learning community in which all stakeholders work collaboratively as active partners to support and enhance continuous student achievement and professional growth of the staff in the process of nation building.

School’s ICT Vision

ICT will be used effectively to enhance teaching and learning in all areas of the school, to support collaborative and co-operative learning, to develop higher order thinking skills, to assess learning and to help all students realize their educational and social potential.

Alignment between the general vision and its ICT-specific vision:

The SWOT analysis revealed that the school’s general vision focuses on the enhancement of continuous student achievement and professional growth of staff but it does not specifically state how this will be done.  It may be argued that ICTs play a leading role in the development of students and teachers in the school, but as they are written, both visions are not specifically aligned in the role that ICTs will play. This non-alignment of the visions would most likely result in ad hoc ICT planning and development at the school. To this end, there will be a need to align the school’s general vision and the ICT vision so that together they will clearly form the guiding principle in the work that needs to be done in ICT at the school

Module 10 Activity 2 A Vision for school ICT Policy

Ten years from now, I envisage ICTs being fully integrated into the school’s curriculum as well as being the driving force for the school’s day to day operation.  Learning using ICTs will be anytime anywhere learning.  The school would have implemented ways for the ICTs to be fully integrated into the curriculum and students to use ICTs for effective learning.  The schools vision for ICT will reflect national as well as international needs so that the students will fit seamlessly into any society.

Issues to include are:

·         ICT vision, mission, rationale

·         The need for learners to be autonomous in learning

·         The teachers role will be on managing learning

·         A competence-based curriculum apportions knowledge where it has a relevance to the

competencies which are being taught.

·         Usage of ICT for students, teachers and administrators

·         ICTs for special needs and exceptional students

·         Health and safety issues

·         Internet acceptable use policy

·         World wide web use, email and chat policy

·         sanctions

·         Agreement forms for children and Permission forms for parents

Module 10 Activity 1 Phase of ICT Use

ICT use in my school places it at the applying phase.  Staff and students have started using ICTs for teaching and learning in a number of ways since they have access to ICTs at school as well as at home. Teachers have been issued with laptops for teaching and students in grades 8 to 11 have been issued with tablets for learning.

The school has ICT devices in the computer labs which are basically used for Information technology, a subject being offered at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) level. The labs are also available for use by staff and students outside of scheduled class time once the room is booked in advance for that purpose. Classrooms are not equipped with computers but teachers may use their laptops with multimedia projector to teach their lessons. In addition, the school is equipped with wireless internet technology which enables teachers to set tasks and students to complete tasks requiring its use. Teachers generally use ICTs to prepare and teach certain aspects of their lessons, conduct research, keep records and create learning resources for their students. Some teachers, especially the more mature ones, are still hesitant in using ICT to teach for fear of being ridiculed by the students who might have more knowledge about ICTs than they do. Teachers have been exposed to the use of ICTs for teaching but some of them are afraid of changing the way that they teach. They are reluctant to move away from the teacher-centred classroom (familiar territory) to a more student-centred environment (unfamiliar territory). There is still a need for ICT integration in the teaching and learning process at my school.

School administrators, on the other hand, use ICTs for report generation, record keeping, assessment and other word processing tasks that are required on a day to day basis.