From: "garry saddington"
a) It's not compulsary b) if you do teach it you can teach it a different way.
Agreed but I have two points: a) Can you justify not using the sample materials when Ofsted comes knocking?
Because some of them are crap ;-) I also reckon I would win the argument against said ofsted inspectors as most aren't qualified in IT. I would imagine a lot haven't taught it - Certainly not recently and it has changed a lot. I would imagine pretty much all have not done a year or so of nat strat so they would be learning from me :-)
b) How hard is your ICT advisor pushing the nat strat?
Agreed to a large extend. These *tools* take up very little time in my lessons. However, I am sure that the majority of nat strat teaching does involve
Very. I think the key word is advisor. Our advisor does not have an ICT background at all. In fact he has a primary school background. Don't get me wrong - he knows his stuff on what he has to deliver to us on the strat but subject knowledge on the chalk face must go way beyond the taught subject to push the smarty pants and even inspire some of the others. these
tools and the pupils do not have the advantage of a teacher such as yourself.
I'm not sure I can fully go along with that - the first bit that is ;-). Audacity, Flowol (win), Logo, Vid Editting, image editing. Also you don't have to teacher the units with the same software - they are just examples. In fact you don't have to teach the nat curriculum using a particular type of software. I teach simulations and modelling using game maker. Presenting information could be done with cam studio or similar. You could do some web creation using hot potatoes. There are valid learning opportunities not covered by the nat strat / qca - Tux Typing is also available for windows ;-).
I think people on the list are suggesting the norm is not what you do.
Which is strange as this is a SUSE list. I would have thought looking for alternative ways of doing things was the norm. Perhaps the opinion is weighted to office apps as some people may be contributing from industry without fully understanding what goes on in the classroom. I did ask someone here to list apps that they use as alternatives but they aint got back yet. Does any one have any suggestions for KS3? Darren Smith