Primary Bits and Bytes

(Posted by Fiona)

Here are the documents from the Subject Leader meeting on Thursday afternoon:

Smart Notebook Presentation

Draft Revised ICT Level Descriptors

(Posted by Fiona)

A consultation on the proposed changes to the primary curriculum will run until Friday 24th July 2009 on the QCA website. You can register and complete the questionnaires online.

(Posted by Fiona)

The final report of the Rose Review of the Primary Curriculum was published last Thursday, and many of the recommendations include ICT. I’m sure you will all have heard the news headlines of ‘more use of the internet’! The report itself says far more than that, here are the main recommendations:

• ICT should be one of the core ‘Essentials for Learning and Life’, along with literacy, numeracy and personal development
• ICT should be taught as a discrete subject, and will also be included in each ‘area of learning’ where it directly contributes to learning in that area
• We must work to bridge the ‘digital divide’ of ICT haves and have nots
• All schools should ‘use and apply technology to maximum effect’
• The QCA is working on revised level descriptors for ICT that reflect the raised expectations set out in the report

I agree with most of the recommendations; what I’ll be most interested to see in the draft curriculum is to what extent discrete ICT is included, and how much it is incorporated into the other areas of learning. I am also hoping that the terminology used will be general enough to be future proof, as the pace of technology development gets ever faster!

 (Posted by Fiona)

I have been intending to finish off my curriculum support materials and put them on Ednet for months, and I have finally managed it! The Primary ICT Curriculum Support Pack is there for teachers who want to bridge the gap between the QCA scheme of work and the new National Curriculum, due to be implemented in 2011. The support pack provides a structure for including new technologies, and raising expectations in line with the Literacy Framework, which moves the goalposts in terms of ICT skills and applications used.

The pack includes progression from Foundation Stage to Year 6, planning tools and lesson exemplars. I will be putting assessment tools on next week. Instructions for use are included in the pack (finally! It was just a set of documents before as I hadn’t put on the all important explanation), but please contact me if you need any further explanation or support.