Consider the unique role of ICT to a child's education and to a child's learning, especially modelling to encourage understanding and knowledge

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Consider the unique role of ICT to a child’s education and to a child’s learning, especially modelling to encourage understanding and knowledge

ICT is more than just another teaching tool.  Its potential for improving the quality and standards of pupils' education is significant (NCC, 1999).  ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has a distinctive contribution to play in all children’s primary education in that it prepares children to engage in a rapidly changing world in which work and other activities are increasingly changing.  This is due to children’s ability to access varied and developing technology.  Children can learn how to use ICT to gain access to ideas and experiences from a wide range of people, communities and cultures.  They are also increasing able to think about its implications for use at home, school and in their future careers.  I believe that ICT has a unique contribution to make to a child’s primary education and to their learning in that it can easily be taught across all of the primary subjects. Whilst still teaching children about ICT this does not interfere with the learning of the other subject.

There are four features of ICT which help us see how important it is in the curriculum, they also show how it is distinctive from other subjects.  These are Interactivity, Speed and Automatic functions, Capacity and Range, and Provisionality.

Interactivity is the way ICT can give immediate and vivid feedback, and can respond to decisions and actions made by the user.  This aspect of ICT helps children to make decisions, see the consequences and then be able to act on the feedback given.  The way information is stored and processed allows teachers and children to be able to explore models and simulations (I shall talk more about this later).  ICT also makes it possible to present information in ways, which are accessible in different forms and for different audiences.  Children can now search for and compare information from different sources, for example by looking at different web sites or CD-ROMs.  They can easily learn how different people, communities or those from different eras can have very different opinions.  The nature of the interactivity of ICT lets children easily communicate with other people, locally and or at a distance meaning that they can learn and understand about others much more easily than before the use of ICT.

Speed and Automatic functions enable routine tasks to be completed and repeated quickly, allowing children to concentrate on thinking and on tasks such as analysing and looking for patterns within data.  This gives them more time to ask questions and look for answers, meaning that they are more able to present and explain their findings.  The functions of speed and automation enable teachers to demonstrate, explore and explain aspects of their teaching more effectively.  One example of this is where ICT is used to measure events at long or short time intervals, in order to compress or expand events which would normally take very short or long periods of time, and to show them to children at appropriate speeds.  Events can be measured and recorded which might otherwise be impossible to gather in a classroom and sequences of actions can then be examined and links can be made within those events (Byrne & Sharp 2002).  

Capacity and Range are the functions of ICT, which give children, and their teachers, access to huge amounts of information.  There is a wide variety, from Web sites and external databases to CD-ROMs.  ICT can help users (teachers and children) handle large amounts of information, which would normally be outside their everyday experience, for example, historical, recent or even immediate information (such as web-cams).  ICT also allows access to expertise and knowledge from outside the classroom, the school and the local community, such as links to Universities or Industry.

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The ICT function of Provisionality allows changes to be made easily to stored information.  This enables work to be changed easily and for alternatives to be tried out.  For example, when using the word processor, the writer can make countless changes and can save numerous versions, which can be saved and returned to again and again for amendments.  The work can then be improved again after evaluation by response partners or teacher.  Another example, is that of a selection of figures in a spreadsheet, one number can be altered in a table which can show implications for other numbers within ...

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