We have been busy in P45 improving our ICT skills through a process of shared skills peer learning, research and direct teaching.  I am very impressed with how quickly most children pick up skills that took me ages to refine, and some of the best teaching in my class recently has been by the children passing on skills to each other, embedding and refining the skills as they progress.  Talking about and reflecting on learning is a major part of this topic; we have found ICT skills are tools to help learning about anything, but how we use them helps us understand how we learn.

In order to track our skills development we have the web.  The web uses Blooms Taxonomy of digital skills so the children can track their skills development and ensure they are getting a breadth of experience.   Using spiders to chase skills ‘flies’, they note skills achieved on a ladder, earning a sticker if they successfully teach to someone else.  I worry for my job with the speed and success of these teaching sessions!  They record their learning in a plan do review format that requires evaluation of the learning process as well as their success at acquiring the skill.

Recently acquired skills include bullet pointing, making tables, transferring information onto a memory card, printing, taking and editing photos, down loading music and pod-casts, deleting files and creating their own blogs on Glow.   Children have chosen how they demonstrate these skills initially, but eventually we hope to create an online space for recording a potted history of Port Ellen from local residents whilst teaching them internet and ICT skills they may find useful, applying their skills in a real life context.