As many of you know I have been spending the past few months rethinking our ICT curriculum – dividing it into four strands: Digital Literacy, Digital Creativity, Digital Technology and Digital Society. The reason for this was to try and address some of the issues that people had with ICT in its current form. As I have been working on my plans I became aware of others doing something similar and it became clear we were all reaching similar conclusions and we began to share ideas via Twitter, blogs and email. This is all very well but what I really wanted to do was to be able to get together with these people, sit down and actually discuss these ideas and this is where the idea of a one-day conference was born.
Yesterday I was given the go ahead by my Headteacher to organise a conference in July to discuss ICT which seems even more important following Michael Gove’s “It’s all over to you” speech yesterday. I envisage a day in which anyone interested in teaching ICT from primary, secondary, independent schools can get together and brainstorm ideas on what the ICT curriculum should look like. This could be based around a Teachmeet model in which people share some of the things they are currently doing, followed by workshops and brainstorming sessions where we sit round a table and a big piece of paper and just write down ideas.
I also think that following Gove’s speech there will be even more need to support schools who are already struggling with their ICT. ICT in primary is quite often praised for being more innovative and engaging but there are many primary schools who do not have a specialist ICT co-ordinator – many having someone with that role simply because they have to have one. How do we support those schools? My suggestion would be an informal network of ICT teachers willing to go and offer training, support, INSET sessions in other schools. This list of people could be available online for others to see and request help.
These are only the initial thoughts but ones I really hope to develop. Gove has given us a huge opportunity to make a difference and we need to grab it while we can.
Chris Leach 