ICT in Education

Question 1

Distance Learning: Advantages

Answer 1

—Don’t have to be in the same location as teacher/pupils who are ill can keep up to date.

—Students don’t have to travel / can work at home/ empowers disabled

—Can access more courses / allows access to courses not taught in your school.

—Classes can run with small number of pupils.

—Shared expertise.

—Potential cost saving to schools if well qualified.

—Flexibility of time.

Question 2

Distance Learning: Disadvantages

Answer 2

—Diminish literacy – texting.

—Cost implication of installation.

—Lack of personal support (close at hand) / immediacy / no peer interaction.

—Pupils must be motivated to achieve their goals.

—Need for equipment at home.

—Broadband problems (if qualified)

Question 3

CAL/CBT: Advantages

Answer 3

—Pupils work at own pace.

—Good for pupils with learning difficulties. (customisation)

—Pupils respond better to automated feedback.

—Can gauge their own progress / instant feedback / automatic marking.

—Engaging screens - colour/animation/sound/video.

—Automatic generation of progress reports.

—Special adaptations can be built in / Can target specific areas.

—Materials provided in different formats such as text, voice, video, animations.

—Have flexibility as to where and when they work, at home, in car, out walking/running.

—Variety of activities can motivate and maintain interest.

—Can access material using different hardware e.g. laptop, mobile phone, mp3 player, tablet. (No brand names)

—Available at any time.

—Revisit when you need

Question 4

CAL/CBT: Disadvantages

Answer 4

—Lack of personal support (close at hand) / no peer interaction.

—Cost of software/specialist hardware.

—No collaborative learning.

—Social Isolation

—Lack of motivation

Question 5

Electronic Register: Types

Answer 5

Optical Mark Readers
---Teachers are given an OMR form with class lists each week and they put a black mark whether present or absent. The form is read by computer and an absent list produced. The teacher marks the reason for the absence in the correct space on the OMR form.

Smart cards
—Each pupil has their own smart/swipe card which they swipe through a computer at the beginning of registration and every lesson. This data is sent to the office either by wireless or by file transfer

Radio tags
—As pupils enter a classroom the PC detects their presence from the tag and adds the information to the central register

Admin software on PC / laptop / tablet / phone
—Teachers take the register on their machines
and the information is transferred electronically to the central server.

Biometrics
—Each pupil as they enter the classroom they place their thumb on the finger print reader. This data is sent electronically to the office. (same for retina scanning).

Question 6

Electronic Register: Advantages

Answer 6

—Saves teachers/teaching time

—Improved attendance

— Easier to spot absence patterns

— Improved tracking of attendance cuts down internal truancy

— Automatic SMS messages to parents

— Automatic creation of statistics, automatic archiving

— Know which pupils are in and are late

— Know where pupils are all times if year tutor wants to see them

—Printout report summary to check pupils % attendance

— Multiple access points to the data

Question 7

Electronic Register: Disadvantages

Answer 7

—Wireless - Wireless coverage for all rooms / grounds may not be available.

—Any (but only once) - Initial cost of purchasing electronic equipment

—Biometric - Cost of maintenance and repair / dirt causes problems – need technical
support

—wipe cards - Pupils might swipe their friends cards into a lesson - teacher has not
checked - relied upon the machine to do it

—Any – In a Fire cannot use the system and might not know who is there

—OMR – Cannot be done sensibly every lesson, too much labour involved, paper can
easily be damaged, tends be done daily/weekly and thus can be out of date. Only 1
access point

—Any – communications failure can mean that no lists are available

Question 8

ICT Impact on Learning Features

Answer 8

CAL
CBT
Blogs
Distance learning
Video conferencing
Online learning / Internet researching / e-learning
Chat rooms
Revision programs
Authoring software
Interactive whiteboards
Specialist hardware e.g. for disabled
VLEs