ICT and Computing in Education
Originally uploaded by phill.d
At school we have a licence that allows us to show any film to students for no charge.
Thinking about extra-curricular activities, it would be great if kids understood what it was like to have to use dialup to connect to another computer (War Games), or how people viewed the internal workings of a computer (Tron).
I’m thinking about having a monthly #ictfilm screening and encouraging students to come along, bring some popcorn and gain a bit of ICT insight.
Throwing suggestions open to Twitter I got the following suggestions (in no particular order).
War Games
Tron
Short Circuit
The Matrix
Avatar
Sneakers
Hackers
Johnny Mnemonic
The Social Network
The Pirates of Silicon Valley
Terminator
Terminator 2
AI
I, Robot
Bladerunner
War Games 2
Wall-E
Minority Report
2001
Silent Running
Avatar
Weird Science
Gattaca
Total Recall
Fifth Element
Source Code
The Last Starfighter
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
The Net
I’ve not seen all of those, and I’d have to check certificates (is there a way I can exempt the certificate with parental permission as it’s for education purposes, I wonder?).
Any other ideas?
A colleague of mine in another school wanted to start an extra-curricular club involving a media project. As this could easily hit a number of cross-curricular themes, one of the Deputy Heads suggested he go and see the Head of English, Head of Drama, Head of ICT and the G&T Co-ordinator.
This got me thinking. And looking around. We have a number of school clubs. The ‘traditional’ clubs – sport, music, drama – all seem to have the usual cohorts of the very sporty, the very musical and often the more disenfranchised, respectively. But the other clubs all seem to draw almost if not exclusively from the G&T register.
As a teacher, there are advantages to this – you get the more able students, the more enthusiastic students, the more independent and hard-working students. This means that the outcomes are likely to be better and there will probably be fewer side-issues to deal with.
It seems to me though, that excluding the 90% of students who aren’t on the G&T register is a little unfair. Yes, the majority of those 90% would probably exclude themselves – but at least that is their choice. Why should only the academically gifted be given the best opportunities?
Drama is a case in point. Some of the students that struggle academically, and often those amongst the most challenging students we face suddenly thrive and find a place to participate and add value, both to their education and to the school, in the Drama department’s productions.
I have no doubt that targetting and stretching the more able children is important, but I just can’t help but feel a bit eliteist if I support the idea of G&T only opportunities.
