Even more thoughts on my ICT curriculum idea

A few more days have past and I've been having some more thoughts on my ICT curriculum idea:

• I think that Year 3 (along with KS1) still need to have 'normal' ICT lessons. The idea being that Year 3 will be spent consolidating a range of basic skills (e.g. typing, taking good digital photographs, doing simple web searches, basic word processing etc.) and teaching the children the skills needed to develop their ICT capability independently.
• As children in Years 4-6 will be working on different tasks each work, I've quickly designed this sheet to enable them to track which iPad they're working on and for me to quickly identify which pieces of work need taking off the iPads when finished:

• As I said the other day, I think children in Years 4-6 still need to receive some dedicated skills teaching lessons to ensure that the essential parts of the curriculum are taught - mainly e-safety and programming. For the remaining, more 'creative' parts of the curriculum, I'm now thinking that I should just give the children a list of apps/activities in order of increasing difficulty from which they choose which to do. I would probably present this as a web page accesed by a shortcut on the school iPad home screen - the idea being that when children click on an app the associated 'good'/'great'/'super' LI slide opens up (for them to see my expectations and receive basic tutoring on what the app lets you do) and that I can quite easily slot in new apps into the list when they are released. I would also provide children with any useful prompt sheets/website links for them to use as well to ensure the focus remains on ICT skills and to ensure they don't waste lesson time looking for resources (e.g. they might use facts from a sheet I've made about the Ancient Greeks to make up a: Keynote poster, iMovie video or Comic Life booklet):

• I also mentioned the other day about not knowing how to best track their progress to ensure they use a variety of apps. I'm now wondering if this would even be necessary as surely the whole idea of this new approach to the curriculum is that I'm letting the children develop their skills in strands that take their interest (i.e. I don't want to dictate what apps they have to use)?
• How will I ensure that children work to the best of their ability and are encouraged to work at 'great' or 'super' to improve their capabilities?
• How am I going to showcase the work they produce on the school website - will it be a case of 'Look at all this fantastic work the children have produce in ICT lessons independently. Can you spot what apps and tools they have used?'?

Comments

[Andy Colley (@mracolley)]

Could you have gold/silver/bronze categories for software used or criteria met? You could then link it to something like Mozilla open badges and award them as assessment.