Title: Developing a locality resource using ict to support staff development and primary children’s geographical thinking
Author
Moore, John
Position and address
Principal Lecturer
Nottingham Trent University
Presentation locale
Paper given at a Charney Manor Conference, , Oxfordshire,
Published in ‘Researching Primary Geography’ Ed Simon Catling and Fran Martin Special Publication No1 Aug 2004 London Register of Research ISBN 0-9538154-3-9 Available from The Editor, 9, Humber Road, Blackheath, London SE3 7LS
Abstract
This is a study of geography staff development activity in relation to jointly developing new computer technology with studying a local area.. A partnership between the Humanities Curriculum team at Nottingham Trent University and the teachers in two local Primary schools was initiated to develop a locality package based on a shared need to know more about the Clifton Estate which, when constructed in the late 1950’s, was Europe’s largest council estate.
Research centred around gathering a comprehensive range of visual and factual information related to the physical, human and environmental aspects of the Estate’s geography. The aim was to initiate the use of ICT to develop geographical thinking in primary aged children; and to support this, notes were written to help the non specialist primary teacher of geography make the most of the learning potential inherent in the immediate locality. All this information was eventually organised and formatted onto a CD Rom.The disc itself was a set of resources about a particular place which, when used inconjuction with Textease, offered the opportunity to challenge children to problem-solve scenarios created by the teacher.
Address for correspondence
John Moore
Principal Lecturer
Nottingham Trent University
Ada Byron King Building
Clifton Lane
Nottingham NG11 8NS
E mail
Developing a Locality Resource Using ICT to Support Staff Development and Primary Children’s Geographical Thinking
John Moore
Introduction
The context for this research project began initially as the result of an approach by the headteacher of a local primary school to a humanities tutor in the Department of Primary Education at Nottingham Trent University. The school had been invited to join a project to develop twinning links with a school in Harare, Zimbabwe in the summer of 1998. Earlier in that year a member of the management committee of the local Development Education Centre (DEC) had visited Nottingham’s twinned city in Africa, with a view to identifying two primary schools in the suburbs of Harare that might be interested in making links with schools in Nottingham. On returning to Nottingham the DEC committee wrote to several schools asking if any would be interested in being involved in developing a school link. Two Nottingham primary schools agreed to become involved and coincidentally were based together on the same campus on the Clifton Estate, which is adjacent to The Nottingham Trent University Clifton Campus.
Three events occurred almost simultaneously that created the context for this study. The first, briefly mentioned above, when the head of one of the two schools contacted the humanities education tutors to seek help with the development of a locality resource park based on the catchment area of his school. This approach coincided with the announcement that the Department of Primary Education at Nottingham Trent would be relocating some half a mile to the main campus which would ultimately necessitate the adaptation of the humanities programme and the focus of the local studies module. The third event was the intention by the University to initiate a partnership programme focusing on developing joint research activities with local schools and to therefore invite bids for collaborative project ideas.
In liaison with humanities tutors a bid proposal was submitted to the Project Committee of the Faculty of Education by the two schools, for consideration under the title of:
Resourcing the local area: a collaborative approach to using the locality as a foundation for the development of global citizenship.
The aims off the project were to:
· Develop high quality resources with a geographical perspective for the study of a local area;
· Provide opportunities for school-based staff to develop their knowledge and understanding of how local area resources can be used to support children’s learning in geography;
· Provide the context for university staff to further their knowledge and understanding of how primary aged children make sense of their local area and in particular to deepen their understanding of progression from Key Stage 1 to Key Stage 2;
· Provide a relevant context for university and school staff to develop specific Information and Communications Technology (ICT) skills;
· Provide an opportunity for the students to develop subject expertise in a context which is relevant to their professional development;
· Further develop the links between partner schools and the department of Primary Education;
· Support the development of links between two Nottingham Primary schools and two primary schools in a suburb of Harare.
The bid was accepted and £2,500 was allocated to the project, the majority of the money being mainly for teaching cover in order to enable one teacher from each school and two university tutors to have time to plan, investigate and produce the resource pack.
Review of the literature
The teachers from the two schools wanted to create a locality pack based on the catchment area of their two campus schools so that the children in Harare would have some idea of the environment in which the majority of English children lived. The project initially appeared to be a straightforward task of collecting a series of photographs and maps on the local area and putting some background contextualisation together. At the planning stage it was decided to model the resource pack on ones that had already been professionally produced.
In the last decade there has been a plethora of published material on locations both near and far and the better locality packs have provided a range of high resolution A4 photographs of various aspects of everyday life, in small locations on most of the continents. The initial aim was therefore to identify those that had been produced by the Geographical Association [GA]. The GA had published distant locality packs on Kaptalamwa (Weldon, 1994) and Malawi (Bowden & Trill, 1995) which offered models to consider. However, Jackson & Morgan (1994) produced a contrasting UK locality pack that offered the most useful way forward.
It was important to ensure the theoretical basis on which the pack would be developed was based on sound educational and geographical criteria. Geographers ask questions about places and an enquiry approach was fundamental to the study of the Clifton location. Storm (1989) indicated there were five key questions when studying a location, which provided a structure for a geographical investigation. Good practice in geographical education recognises the learning needs of primary children and stresses that children’s learning about a distant locality should be based on a sound knowledge and understanding of their local area. Both the Clifton schools involved their children in studying aspects of their local environment and had collected a range of local photographs. However, these were neither comprehensive nor of the quality required to be included in the pack. A review of the general literature on this aspect indicated that photographs should represent the typical range of houses, shops, amenities, parks and play areas in the immediate vicinity the schools.
One of the main aims of the project, particularly for the tutors, was to develop ICT both in the production of the pack and in personal terms, for the tutors. Digital cameras were becoming more accessible and affordable thus offering an alternative to the usual photographic approach. New computer software enabled easy and quick downloading of images into a computer, creating an inexpensive way to store and edit the photographs. Developing this aspect of the project was essential from both the tutors’ and the teachers’ point of view, especially as Pickford (1999) contends that ICT can support children’s learning by enabling them to carry out mundane and time -consuming tasks quickly and easily which ultimately allows more time for in depth analysis and drawing conclusions. Also several writers in May (2000) justify the increased use of ICT to develop geographical skills, knowledge and understanding. In the article ‘Our Street’, Ryan (May 2000, 13) summarises the range of cross-curricular learning opportunities that also arise from linking ICT and geography.
The tutors needed to develop ideas and strategies to integrate ICT into their humanities modules, and developing the knowledge and the basic ICT skills was an important consideration for the future planning of the teaching programme for students. Many of the schools in which the students undertake their School Based Training [SBT] placements were developing ICT suites and it was important to ensure students were both knowledgeable and confident in using this new technology to develop geographical thinking. However before this could be introduced into the course, tutors had to become confident and conversant with these new developments and getting familiar with digital cameras was an appealing starting point.
Research methodology
The first meeting of the teachers and tutors began by considering the proposed aims for the project. These had been developed as a ‘best guess’ in order to meet the deadline for completing the bid. The detail had now to be discussed and agreed upon in order to move forward. The initial discussions were related to how the local area might be represented and how the data could be gathered. It was felt that the first National Curriculum Geography Order (DES/WO, 1991) provided the most effective breakdown of geography and it was decided to use the five distinct geographical categories within the Attainment Targets to study the locality. Skills (1), Knowledge and Understanding of Places (2), Physical (3), Human (4) and Environmental (5). The latter three categories were seen as useful ways of initially dividing the task of gathering information and best fitted the strengths of the team. Human geography would be the largest section given the range of services on the estate and the two teachers decided to focus their data gathering on this aspect. The two university tutors each took one of the remaining two categories- physical and environmental geography. The estimated time for undertaking this initial photographic survey, which involved familiarisation and walking the area around part of the estate, was half a day each.
The next item for discussion was ICT support. It was evident that no one was knowledgeable or proficient enough to develop the ICT resource aspect of the project, so it was decided to approach a university technician in order to give guidance and advice.
Setting some deadlines and a notional time scale was discussed but no definite decisions were made. We had nine months to complete the project but until we had more information and data, those decisions had to be left to the next meeting.
Four weeks later we reconvened having completed our individual data gathering. During this period several technicians had been approached but none were available. It was therefore decided to approach an IT consultant. There were several possible contacts in schools around Nottingham but it was realised that obtaining their services would have an impact on the budget. The most likely candidate was a recently retired head teacher who was at the forefront of ICT developments within the LEA. He was available and was invited to the meeting. His involvement proved to be very significant in terms of determining the future direction the project would take.
Figure 1: The area of the Clifton Estate, Nottingham
The map in Figure 1 indicates the area that the team was initially investigating. The Clifton Estate was built in the 1950’s and when completed was the largest council estate in Europe. It was a green field site where planners visualised an estate that catered for 30,000 people with schools, shops, and services conveniently located and interlinked.
The IT consultant felt that to only focus on one part of the estate would not give a true picture of the locality, especially as it was built as an entity and should therefore be studied in its entirety. This suggestion, whilst appropriate, meant a significant ‘ratcheting up’ of the project in terms of the demands on time as well as the knowledge required to address the original criteria. An increase in the ICT element was also essential if all this new information was to be recorded in a manageable and organised way. It was argued that the children on the estate as well as the children in Harare should be able to access the information using the latest available technology.
The team felt these suggestions were valid but were concerned that the proposed budget would not meet these new initiatives. There was uncertainty that if this new proposal was accepted by the group there would not be the money or the time to complete the project. Assurances were given that the available technology was more than capable of managing the increased amount of information. All the photographs, maps, documents would be stored on a CD-Rom which would eventually be able to produce the paper version in a visually stimulating way.
Debate centred around the most effective way of representing the mass of information that would be generated by more than doubling of the area to be studied. The IT consultant had a very clear idea from the outset as to how the data would be represented. His ideas initially were conceptually difficult to grasp especially as the team was still struggling with the complexities of ‘computer speak’. A comic strip approach was used in order to explain how a series of visual filing cabinets would be formatted in order to help to organise and store the information.
It was finally agreed to increase the study area to the whole estate and whilst the extra data was being gathered, the IT consultant would create a CD-Rom and install the information already gathered in order to demonstrate, at the next meeting, the structure and layout of the data.
The thinking behind the project was moving from just providing a ‘paper pack’ for the children of Harare towards a more general ICT resource database for use by children in all the primary schools on the estate as well as students. This shift in emphasis is not untypical of most projects as the potential inherent within them is realised. The initial idea to create a small-scale locality pack was now becoming one part of a much bigger project.