Why teachers and pupils love Switched on ICT
Click on the testimonials below to read or watch them.
Why St Peter’s Primary love Switched on ICT
Mrs Homewood Engayne Primary School
In October I decided to take the bold move, as Leader for ICT, and put the SOICT units of work into my teachers’ hands and see what they do. Give them complete freedom about which they choose to do first. At an ICT Leaders meeting, where we were discussing SOICT, my idea was met with comments such as “How will you make sure they don’t just choose units they can do on Powerpoint?” “What if they get rid of old units which they should be doing and don’t replace them with like-ones?” “All year groups will end up doing the same thing.”
Most other leaders were implementing the full scheme straight away, ditching all other ICT planning, or they were using the units in only one year group at a time to pilot and roll out slowly. They really didn’t like the unpredictability of my method…. however… I didn’t like the idea of going to each of my year groups and telling them what they would be doing. I knew I would be met with opposition and “buts”. I also didn’t want to tell my ICT technicians – who were extremely busy with other jobs, that I needed new software installed and hardware checked for all the new units of work.
So what was my plan to avoid chaos? Read all.
Mrs Homewood, Leader for ICT, Engayne Primary Teaching School, Upminster, London Borough of Havering.
Claire Tomkies Coads Green Primary School
As part of our School Development and Improvement work for the academic year 2010/11, we had identified the need to further develop the use of ICT across the school. We wanted pupil self esteem and confidence within ICT to rise, and therefore equip pupils to confidently use ICT skills to support and extend learning in all areas of the curriculum.
Discreet teaching of ICT was taking place across the school on a weekly basis and initial work had begun to increase access to the laptops to encourage independent and cross curricular learning for pupils.
A significant amount of work had already taken place on our school curriculum. We had addressed the need to make it more creative and exciting for the staff and pupils. New topics have been devised to include innovative and inspiring content…. Read how Coads Green implemented Switched on ICT
Claire Tomkies, Headteacher, Coads Green Primary School, Launceston.
Iain Gunn St Peter's CE Primary School
Switched on ICT was an answer to our prayers. We have been putting off updating our ICT curriculum for the past two years because of a lack of time and expertise. Then Switched on ICT came into school. It was just what we needed. As an outstanding school we were keen that any new curriculum kept our children up to date with the latest programmes and also recognise the fact that children are now better at ICT than they were 5 years ago. We used to be able to wow year 6 with Power Point but now year three are using it easily. Read more.
Iain Gunn, Head Teacher at St Peter’s CE Primary School, South Weald, Brentwood, Essex
Ian Addison St John the Baptist Primary
I have written a couple of times (here for example) about the ICT curriculum. It is a difficult subject and the more I speak to teachers the more I am thinking about what I want to do and what needs to be done. In my school I want a cutting-edge curriculum with website design, game design, green screening and other such stuff. But I am there to lead it, I frequently get new ideas from Twitter and I want to try things out. Lots of schools aren’t like that so what do they do? Where do they begin? This post is aimed at the schools that want to revamp their curriculum but need a helping hand. Read the rest of Ian’s blog post.
Ian Addison, ICT Co-ordinator, St John the Baptist Primary School, Southampton.
Teach Primary review of Switched on ICT
Katy Thompson Oakridge Junior School
Quotes from children:
- Brilliant programme which helped me make my own music.
- I am going to produce a backing track for Mrs Cameron to sing along to and then she can give up her day job.
- Can we do it again?
- My mum and dad really enjoyed having a chance to create a piece of music which I showed them how to do.
Katy Thompson, Oakridge Junior School, Basingstoke, Hampshire
Danny Nicholson The Whiteboard Blog
This is a slight departure for the blog since I usually talk about online resources, but I think this is something that will definitely interest Primary ICT coordinators so I thought I’d share it here.
I have been taking a look at the Switched on ICT scheme from Rising Stars. This is a set of ready-made ICT plans that cover Years 1-6. Key Stage 2 is available now. Key Stage 1 will be published in the Autumn. Read Danny’s blog post.
Danny Nicholson for The Whiteboard blog