Being clear about what we are aiming for in the field of ICT and school history: what does ‘meeting the Standards’ mean in ICT and history?

It is still possible to meet people involved in teacher education who think of proficiency in ICT as a matter of the personal technological capability of trainees (i.e. can use PowerPoint, can use Word etc). Although the ability to use ICT applications is part of using new technology as a teacher, it is now widely accepted that there is more to it than personal competence in ICT and that there are several ‘agendas’ which need to be addressed if we are to prepare trainees to exploit optimally the potential of ICT for enhancing learning in history.

These include:

• Developing trainees’ awareness of the ways in which various ICT applications can be have a positive and negative impact on teaching and learning in history (see Ofsted, 2002, Harrison, 2003). (This also extends to developing an understanding of the ways in which particular ICT applications can be helpful in approaching different facets of pupils’ historical understanding; their visual and information/media literacy, their understanding of interpretations or causation, their ability to select, organise and deploy information.)
• Developing trainees’ awareness of the ways in which ICT can provide learning experiences which are genuinely ‘interactive’, in terms of promoting ‘high-order’ historical thinking, as against comprehension and retention exercises (see Haydn, 2003).
• The importance of trainees’ attitude and general overall approach to exploring the part that ICT might play in improving teaching and learning in history?
• The importance of trainees’ ability to handle the logistics of the ICT room and the skill with which they can integrate the use of ICT into ‘ordinary’ classroom teaching.
• Trainees keeping up to date with what is happening in the field of ICT (e.g. by reading Teaching History, the Times Educational Supplement and other relevant journals).
• The need for trainees to be ‘open-minded’ about the use of ICT in subject teaching. They don’t have to be committed technology fundamentalists. Indeed a healthy degree of scepticism to some of the wilder claims for ICT might be in order, but if they are utterly closed to the possibility that ICT has anything to offer teaching and learning in history (see, for instance, Summers and Easdown, 1996, Easdown, 1997), is that not a problem?

Activity 10.2.1 Experienced tutors on ‘meeting the standards’