Information Scotland The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland ISSN 1743-5471 Issue contents | Journal contents | About the online edition of the journal April 2003 Volume 1 (2)

ICT and education

Embedding a vision

ICT literacy must start at school. Carol Doig reports on the recent 'Masterclass' training of leaders to take it through education across Scotland.

Over 10 weeks 600 head teachers, senior managers, local authority representatives and school librarians from across every local authority in Scotland have been gathering together for intensive ICT training.

The Masterclass training - organised by SEED, Learning and Teaching Scotland and Rhona Arthur (Assistant Director of SLIC) - follows on from the National Lottery-funded New Opportunity Fund (NOF) training. The aim was to create a shared vision of the potential applications and challenges of integrating ICT into the curriculum, and to encourage leadership to embed these visions in learning, teaching and management of education across Scotland.

From 4 to 7 March, a group of 60 people - including a large representation of librarians - met at Stirling University to participate in a series of seminars and workshops aimed at creating a core of key ICT personnel who have the skills to take forward ideas and disseminate information through every level of their local authority. Over the four days, 17 librarians were brought together to share good practices and to work, collaboratively, on pertinent tasks.

Masterclass representatives attended seminars about MIICE (Measurement of the Impact of ICT on Children's Education), HGIOS and ICT (How good is our school), managing ICT resources and taking a closer look at the contribution of ICT to learning and teaching.

In addition, a series of workshops offered 'Masterclassers' the opportunity to experience practical classes about digital technologies, ICT and learning strategies, developing ICT across the curriculum, think.com workshops and e-learning.

The workshop experience
David Muir, tutor at Jordanhill, gave a presentation on the five-step model for e-learning: using electronic means to further learning. David's model - taken from work done by Gilly Salmon and Steve Heppel - was broken down into the following steps:

1. Access and motivation
2. Online socialisation
3. Information exchange
4. Knowledge construction
5. Development

David Muir made a few pertinent observations. The discussion focused on the practical implications that Jordanhill had with poor student take up of e-learning. The emphasis was on giving students or pupils the skills to access electronic resources/learning in the first place - creating skills was only the first step! Additionally, David Muir also pointed out that an interactive programme does not necessarily mean that pupils are learning. People can take part in something, but unless the activity is linked to or develops classroom learning then why use ICT; what purpose is it going to serve?

Two sessions offered hands-on experience of learning how to shoot and edit videos. Masterclassers were introduced to cropping, adding music, inserting titles and sequencing clips. The workshops also looked at using copyright-free music and animations, and demonstrations of video technology, as applied to classroom teaching, was shown to all participants. Again, the emphasis was on integrating the technologies into classroom teaching, rather than using the IT as an 'add-on'.

The third session introduced participants to the Think.com website. The site has been specially set up to provide pupils and staff with ideas for using and developing ICT. It is a closed online community - open to Masterclass participants only - which will continue to offer opportunities to contact and share information with other Masterclassers.

Day Two saw Ivan Mykytyn, EdICT Training, give a presentation about learning styles. Ivan talked about the 'Multiple Intelligence' theory of Howard Gardner and how it could influence the way that teachers and librarians present information to pupils: are visual presentations a better way of presenting information to visual learners? All participants took part in two quizzes which were used to determine which type of learning was most appropriate for an individual - this exercise caused a lot of laughter and a few denials!

Sandra O'Neill, Call Centre, gave a presentation about special educational needs pupils in education. Sandra produced a box of useful technologies, but she also gave good practical tips about adapting existing ICT - increasing pixel sizes on monitors to help visually impaired children, or slowing down the mouse speed to help pupils with coordination difficulties.

Seminars
The MIICE document was also used to examine components for evaluating and assessing the impact of ICT in relation to performance indicators set out in HGIOS (How good is our school?) for both primary and secondary schools. The MIICE toolkit is particularly relevant to secondary schools, classroom practitioners and school librarians, because it provides measures which can be used to determine the effectiveness of ICT in attaining learning outcomes in teaching. As with HGIOS, models at level 2 and 4 are exemplified in the MIICE document.

Several presentations were also given on the development of ICT across the curriculum. Margaret Robertson, Educational Advisor for Inverclyde, talked about her role in taking forward the use of ICT in science and maths in her local educational authority. Margaret talked about the use of Integrated Learning Systems. This included a look at the use of Successmaker in maths, laptops in science for logging data, interactive whiteboards, Heriot Watt's SCHOLAR website, and alpha-interface software for Physics.

Rhona Arthur, Assistant Director, SLIC, gave a presentation on examples of good practice in school libraries. Rhona used examples from Linlithgow, Ellon Academy, Banff Academy, and James Gillespie HS to illustrate her points about the potential use that school librarians could make of ICT. Rhona discussed the role of the librarian to manage intranets and to exploit these valuable tools to give pupils greater opportunity to access electronic resources. Intranets could be used for storing Powerpoint presentations, creating online lessons, or preparing website resources. Information skills and ICT were another big part of Rhona's presentation. The skills programme could begin with something as easy as supporting pupils to log onto a networked PC, or it could mean helping pupils to evaluate the appropriateness, relevancy and authority of websites.

Collaborative tasks - Librarians
The three librarian groups were each given a task to complete over the four days. The groups worked on:

1. Creating a framework to help users identify and evaluate information, and to establish criteria which help the user to find the most appropriate information for their needs from the perspective of primary, secondary and staff.
2. Producing a template to allow school librarians to develop a structured approach to planning and assessing the impact of Internet-based projects.
3. Creating a mapping progression of library skills using 5-14 guidelines.

The collaborative tasks produced a great deal of discussion and ideas about the various topics. Templates and evaluation sheets, drawn from the experience of many school librarians, were designed and will be made available on Slainte (www.slainte.org.uk) for every librarian to use. For the future, the setting up of a resource bank - to share good practice - was discussed, and the possibilities for such a resource will be investigated by Rhona Arthur. Work on the third task will take longer than the six hours set aside at Masterclass, and North Ayrshire's Audrey Sutton is leading the project to create a progression of library skills using 5-14 guidelines.

The final day of Masterclass was taken up with group presentations of all of the collaborative tasks. Newly acquired skills - digital video - were used to produce some highly entertaining presentations. Presentations will be available to view online at Think.com for Masterclassers.

Conclusion
The main achievement of Masterclass is to create an e-community with the skills and will to develop ICT literacy, at all levels, throughout Scotland. The classes allowed ICT specialists, classroom practitioners, head teachers and librarians to share and develop their visions of using ICT. The first step to developing toolkits for librarians has been taken and, hopefully, colleagues will have been inspired enough to lead the progression of these projects. This was an invaluable opportunity to network. However, a few pertinent points were made:

• Remember to crawl before you try to walk - e-learning is only useful if individuals have the skills to access online information;
• You want to use ICT, but what for? Would it be more appropriate to use another medium?

Carol Doig is Librarian at Bell Baxter High School, Cupar, Fife

Information Scotland Vol. 1 (2) April 2003

Information Scotland is delivered online by the SAPIENS electronic publishing service based at the Centre for Digital Library Research. SLAINTE (Scottish libraries across the Internet) offers further information about librarianship and information management in Scotland.