Wednesday, April 28, 2010
ICT in the Primary school - the pupil perspective.
Primary school children in England suggest their schools and teachers could improve their experience of ICT use at school without great expense.
Research recently published by The Institute of education indicates that primary school children have ideas of their own about how ICT could be used more effectively in schools and their ideas could be straightforward to implement.
The Knowledge Lab at the IOE conducted the research over a year long project with five primary schools in London and the West Midlands involving 600 children aged 7-11.
The children were asked to produce drawings, videos and online content to illustrate their present and perceived future use of ICT for learning. The children were also surveyed about their ownership of technology and use of it in and out of school. Most of the children interviewed were unhappy with the amount of use they had of technology at school but they only wanted minor changes.” most pupils seem to want relatively low-key changes at school – most notably a moderate ‘loosening’ of the restrictions on their ICT use”
The research recommends that schools can improve their use of ICT in ways with little cost by involving students in the decision-making around internet and technology use.
“they (school leaders) should concentrate on ways of getting kids more involved in the decision-making processes surrounding what devices can be brought into school or what websites are filtered. Any big changes to a school’s ICT provision should be gradual and consider the views of everyone in the school.”
Primary schools and ICT: Learning from pupil perspectives, by Neil Selwyn Sue Cranmer and John Potter, published on March 4, 2010 by Continuum (ISBN 1855395789).