Week 12: Summary of Learning

As an ICT specialist I was most interested in the cross curricular links that could be made between English and ICT and the ways in which I could use my knowledge to expand on these. Children are growing up surrounded by digital technology and many encounter it before they enter formal education and continue to use it outside of school (Futurelab 2010). It therefore makes sense to incorporate digital technology into teaching practices as supported by Merchant (2007) who argues that schools must equip children to become active members of society by ensuring that they are digitally literate.

Dean (2010) suggests that literacy has become more than just the ability to read and write and that there are many areas in which children need to become literate. In my future possible role as an ICT leader I will be more concerned with the digital side of literacy and this module has helped me to build the knowledge, skills and confidence that I will need to ensure that I can deliver this over the whole school curriculum.

There are many ways in which I aspire to do this but I feel that the two which most appeal to me are the use of comics and graphic novels in the classroom and the creation of multimodal texts.

Before the session on comics and graphic novels I had thought of including them in my teaching but had few ideas as to how this could be achieved. Stafford (2009) states that children should be introduced to graphic texts in the same way as other literary texts are. Children need time to explore the texts and learn how to understand and gain meaning from them. Stafford (2009) suggests that after the initial introduction children should experiment with creating their own graphic texts either through use of a pre-prepared frame or by producing their own from a written story. Through this they will be able to learn the presentation skills needed to create a piece of work where the pictures tell as much of the story as the words.

This could then lead nicely into multimodal texts as many of the skills that can be applied to comic production, such as layout and conservation of text can be transferred to multimodal text creation. Multimodal texts also combine many areas of digital literacy such as video production and animation and are an effective way of consolidating learning (QCA/UKLA 2005).

I witnessed this during our visit to Shirley Warren School and, as mentioned in a previous blog, was surprised at the level of digital literacy that the children exhibited.

As a future ICT Leader I will aspire to create an environment in which digital technology as well as literacy is not only used to enhance learning but also viewed as an integral part of preparing the children for their future roles in society.

Dean, G. (2010) ‘Rethinking Literacy’ in Bazalgette, C. [ed] Teaching Media in Primary Schools. London: Sage

Futurelab (2010) Digital Literacy Across the Curriculum. Available online at http://www2.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/handbooks/digital_literacy.pdf (accessed 10/04/2014).

Merchant, G. (2007) ‘Writing the future in the digital age’ Literacy 41 (3)pp118-128

Stafford, T. (2009) ‘Teaching Comics’ in Duncan, D. [ed] Teaching children's Literature: Making Stories Work in the Classroom. London: Routledge

UKLA (2005) More Than Words 2: Creating Stories on Page and Screen. London: QCA