ICT in Key Stage 1 Geography

Benefits of ICT

We feel that using ICT throughout this project had these benefits:

• ICT gave good opportunities for children to use the digital camera and camcorder.
• It enabled children to compare different representations i.e. drawings, digital photos and scanned pictures, and decide on the qualities of each.
• It allowed children to compare the use of ICT drawing tools with traditional methods.
• It showed the ease of taking digital photos to record a location, although printing them took a long time.
• The use of photographs and video gave the children a focus for increased descriptive writing.
• Digital images increased the scope for geographical enquiry, giving the children's questions a greater focus.
• Using maps gave the children a good perspective of where Ramsgate actually is in relation to other places.
• Coming together each week to review the work gave good opportunities for speaking and listening.
• The children gained great enjoyment and satisfaction from seeing results of their week's work.

Problems encountered

• ICT equipment which sometimes refused to work!
• A lack of teacher technical expertise increased the time spent on planning, compiling and carrying out each activity.

Things to think about:

• Children need to be taught and given practice in using the equipment.
• Children need time to increase their confidence when speaking into machines. They were very wary of the camcorder.
• It may be better to use writing programs with vocabulary support (such as Clicker
• Descriptive writing in Talking First Word tended to take too long.
  

Lucy Hawkes and Caroline Pearce
Dame Janet Infant School
Spring Term 2001