Information & Communication Technologies

Rationale

The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is changing relationships between people all over the world and changing how knowledge is created, published, stored, read, responded to and retrieved. This interconnectedness between communities of learners, workers, family and friends alters the fundamental skill set citizens need to participate in society.

The young develop digital literacy through both formal schooling experiences as well as from family, friends and community. In informal learning situations students learn from watching others, trial and error, asking friends, and by exploring options. How ICT becomes part of formal learning is important. Substituting white boards for blackboards doesn’t improve student learning outcomes, teachers do.

The curriculum should reflect and build on the digital literacies that students already have. Developing students’ ICT knowledge and skill is part of the content of the curriculum. It should also provide a context in which students reflect critically on issues of ethics, safety, popular culture and identity.

Schools use ICT as an integral tool to engage students in understanding concepts and processes in more depth and to enable them to demonstrate their understanding, fit classroom learning to particular student needs and interests, and to extend the reach of the classroom across space and time. For some children with disabilities, ICTs are particularly important in enabling them to engage with the curriculum and demonstrate their learning.

For teachers, using ICT is a necessary part of enacting the whole curriculum - during planning, implementation, assessment and reporting.

Major outcomes

Using ICTs as an effective tool for learning both supports KLA learning and provides all students with the opportunity to become competent, discriminating, creative and productive users of ICT.

Using ICT to develop KLA knowledge and skills:

Ä    supports student achievement and consolidation of the Essential Learnings

Ä    enables ways of working and learning, through authentic and challenging tasks, that are not possible or are less efficient without technologies

Ä    stimulates student engagement in learning.

Developing knowledge and skills in the use of ICT:

Ä    provides the capacity to select and use ICT to inquire, create, and communicate with others

Ä    increases understanding of the impact of ICT on society, including potential risks to health and safety

Ä    develops flexibility through a repertoire of skills that can be selected for different demands and can be recombined and built upon to meet new challenges.

ICT and literacy

Literacy now involves making meanings with texts that use multiple communication modes that may be delivered by a range of technologies supported on different platforms. To become multiliterate students need to be adept with using emerging digital technologies and be able to use ICT appropriately to access, manage and evaluate information, develop new understandings, and communicate with others in order to participate effectively in society.  This includes the skills and capacity to: find and select appropriate and relevant information, judge its quality, and identify the ways in which information presented as text, graphics and numeric data can are combined to convey meaning and influence audience perceptions.

ICT and numeracy

Like literacy, the numerate behaviours required to participate effectively in society continue to change as a result of the wide-spread application of technologies. Tools such as calculators (basic, scientific and graphic), data collection devices (e.g. GPS systems, data loggers) and communication technology enable students to work in more realistic real-world contexts and to work with more complex processes and data sets. Using ICT can increase students’ confidence and ability to choose suitable methods to solve problems requiring mathematical skills in a variety of contexts.

Overview of ICT across curriculum areas

To organise the following descriptions of how students use ICT as a tool for learning, five broad aspects are used: Inquiring with ICT, Creating with ICT, Communicating with ICT, Operating ICT and Ethics, Issues and ICT. These are used to clearly present the scope of ICT across curriculum areas. However in the classroom, and in any real-life use of ICT, these five aspects work together in a variety of ways and are interdependent. They cannot be dealt with in isolation and need to be used flexibly rather than as ways to structure curriculum.

Inquiring with ICT

Students use ICT to process information and data in many ways. They identify information and data needs and plan actions to locate, access and retrieve information and data. They acknowledge and use information and data from a variety of sources and critically assess their quality. They organise, manipulate, structure and refine information to improve their interpretations and abstract knowledge. They process data and information into other formats to visualise and communicate knowledge, constructing new insights. They design and implement information products and systems to store data, query data, manipulate, data, and produce reports and charts. They use information tools as modelling tools to understand concepts, predict trends, deduce logical conclusions, substantiate reasoning and model real world systems and practices.

Creating with ICT

Students create a range of innovative ICT solutions using a variety of software packages and online environments often combining information and media components to produce ICT products. They use ICT to make thinking processes visible and clarify concepts and plans. They share understandings with peers and authentic audiences, demonstrating their depth of understanding, creativity, project management and problem-solving capacity. They analyse problems, needs and opportunities, explore ideas, develop concepts and evaluate ICT learning solutions. They use processes to select appropriate ICT, generate ideas and plans, express themselves, and monitor and reflect on their learning.

Communicating with ICT

Students use ICT to develop or enhance their communication and also as a medium to transmit communication. They share, interact and develop relationships in applying ICT to present information and data, engage with audiences and collaborate in meaningful ways. They use ICT to communicate face-to-face and remotely with individuals and local and global communities for learning and citizenship development. They use and personalise/construct online community portals and tools, ELearning spaces and networked environments to communicate an online identify and offer knowledge and understanding to others. Students experience alternative views, construct new understandings and empathise with others. Students use a variety of media, forms and genres to portray messages to defined audiences. Students use project-management processes and digital tools to work on complex projects.

Ethics, issues and ICT

Students understand the increasingly prominent role of ICT in society and its impact on self, work and others in personal and global applications. They value working, learning and communicating digitally. They have an appreciation of the roles and responsibilities of people working with ICT and are discriminating, ethical, legal, responsible and safe users of ICT. Students use safe practices to protect financial and contact information and develop strategies for handling unwanted communication and mobile phone or internet sales schemes, auctions and services. They protect personal information, especially in online communities to prevent unwanted sales and approaches. They acknowledge the intellectual property and copyright associated with digital products. They reflect on ICT issues in the past and explore the impact of future ICT development.

Operating ICT

Students effectively operate a range of ICT functions, applications and systems for creating, communicating, inquiring and to manage, store and retrieve information and data. They design and implement systems for managing data, online services and content between home and school, to prepare them for portable productivity,    to be able to work and learn wherever they are, at any time. They competently perform operational sequences with a range of ICT and use the distinctive characteristics of technology and technological processes to achieve curriculum outcomes, work productively and deepen knowledge of ICT. Students consistently apply standards and conventions when using ICT. Students develop the confidence to learn to master new tools and environments demonstrating both independent digital competence and the capacity to share digital expertise with others. They apply preventative strategies for maintaining and solving basic ICT-related problems as network participants and personal owners of ICT devices and environments. Students work digitally, to harness the significance of processing information and creating products and processes in digital form.

For more information contact your Head of Campus.