Developing the creative use of ICT in secondary history
The rationale behind the project
The rapid development of new technology in education has meant that it has been difficult for
teachers to keep up and integrate all these innovations into their schemes of work and day to day
teaching, on top of keeping up with everything else.
The project was based on the idea that it would be helpful if a way could be found to give a
group of history teachers TIME to think how to develop the use of ICT in their subject teaching
and THE OPPORTUNITY TO MEET UP AND TALK TO EACH OTHER about how the
use of ice might be developed to help improve teaching and learning in History.
What we did
A group of about a dozen history teachers met up for a day in an ICT room at the School of
Education, UEA. We shared ideas about the ways in which ICT had the potential to help teach
history more effectively (and in a way which would motivate and engage pupils).
Unsurprisingly, people had different ideas and experiences of using ICT, some had mainly used
the internet to get hold of good resources (such as collections of pictures on particular themes),
others had explored the resources on particular history websites in depth (such as
schoolhistory.co.uk), others had experimented with the use of powerpoint, databases, the
interactive whiteboard etc.
It was agreed that people would pursue their particular interests, and funding provided the
opportunity for some supply cover to give time for the development of the projects.
Next Steps
We will be coming together again at the end of June (almost a year on from the initial meeting)
to compare notes and share developments. Projects include:
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Using collections of paintings and images in digital form to help engage and motivate
pupils and provide more powerful ‘impact’ resources in lessons.
The development of a ‘Revision’ website for pupils
The development of a template so that pupils can quickly design their own webpages on a
particular historical topic
A collection of ideas for using the electronic whiteboard in history lessons
A collection of deas about how to make PowerPoint presentations less boring, including
general guidance, the use of hyperlinks and an ‘idiot’s guide’ for blowing up bits of
pictures in PowerPoint.
A collection of examples and a guide to educate pupils about the comparative reliability
of resources on the internet, including information about how to read URLs.
A collection of digital resources to teach pupils about democracy and to develop their
‘information literacy’.
Implications for networking
At the end of June meeting, we will also be discussing how best to share these ideas
effectively. Should we try to put them on the web in some form, make a CD rom and give it
to all network schools, or does genuine/effective transference require face to face meetings
and more ‘teacher time’ to think about how to integrate some of these ideas and resources
into classroom practice?
It will be interesting to see how easy it is to transfer the ideas and
resources which have been developed over the past year.
Past experience suggests that actually having time- a day, a half dayto work together and practice doing things, experiment, is the most
helpful way of disseminating new ideas and practices, but even then,
often people forget things, good intentions do not translate into
action, and much of the development work gets lost. It’s even harder
transferring such ideas across networks. Our experience suggests that
giving teachers more time to think about what to do with ICT is more
use than simply bombarding them with ‘more stuff’.
Terry Haydn, School of Education, UEA
September 2004 The outcomes of the project
A) Product
The end of year workshop
At the July 2004 meeting, 13 teachers attended the session, with two others sending their
apologies for absence. Two attendees had not attended the original meeting by came from
schools which had originally been involved in the project.
Twelve of those attending the session had some form of ‘product’ which had stemmed from their
involvement in the project, and some form of story to tell about how the product had been
developed and how the department had progressed in ICT over the course of the year.
Two departments had used the time to develop departmental websites, which were demonstrated
and described in front of the rest of the group. In one case, the launching of the site had been
accompanied by major in-school publicity, website T-shirts and general fanfare, and the three
teachers who had been involved (across two schools) obviously felt that the process of
developing the sites had been very enjoyable and rewarding, and that their pupils were making
substantial use of the sites.
Four other teachers had devised a range of ways of improving PowerPoint presentations by the
use of an archive of sound clips, the use of ‘hotspots’ to teach interpretations, the blowing up of
sections of portraits and cartoons to focus on particular elements and the development of an
archive of pictures on particular historical themes.
Another department had focused on the development of templates which enabled pupils to
quickly make an embellish their own web pages without wasting too much time on technical
issues, and another had focused on the use of databases and wordprocessing. Other materials
focused on developing pupils’ ‘internet literacy’ and understanding of visual sources.
If you are interested in the use of ICT secondary in secondary
history and would like a copy of the CD-rom with the resources
which emerged from the project, e-mail Terry Haydn at
t.haydn@uea.ac.uk.
B) Process
Although we hope that the collection of materials assembled on CD-rom will be an interesting
and useful collection which might help other schools to move forward in the use of ICT and
develop creative approaches of their own, the most striking aspect of the project was the extent
to which participants had enjoyed undertaking their action research and development activities.
In the course of the end of afternoon discussions, two factors emerged as particularly important.
First, teachers enthused about the luxury of time which the project afforded, time to work on
something that interested them. One of the teachers who had designed one of the departmental
websites stressed that the process was only made possible by the funding received from the
Creative Partnerships Project: ‘Our school is well resourced in terms of equipment, but the
funding bought us time. We feel that time is one of the crucial components teachers lack because
of the extensive workload. We were able to take three days to plan and design the sites,
something that would have been otherwise possible without financial backing.’
Other teachers talked about the impetus to try things out which derived from talking together,
looking at things and discussing ideas, examples and possibilities. In spite of the absence of
intermediate meetings or contact, the combination of some time for teachers to just get on with it
and work on their own, and some time to get together and share ideas appeared to have worked
well. All the teachers who had been involved in the project had obviously enjoyed being
involved, exploring creative approaches to ICT use, and coming together to present their work
and look at the work of others. Some teachers said that they had been ‘inspired’ by talking and
working with colleagues; there was an obvious contrast with their experience of NOF training.
Several factors seemed to us to emerge as having an important influence on the degree to which
teachers had been able to engage in creative approaches to teaching.
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Time
Teachers’ time has emerged as one of the most precious and stretched resources in education.
Time seemed to be perhaps more influential than any other factor in enabling or inhibiting
creative approaches to teaching and learning. Stenhouse (1975) argued that ‘the most serious
impediment to the development of teachers as researchers – and indeed as artists in teaching – is
quite simply shortage of time.’ In addition to the question of whether the DfES would recognise
the phrase ‘artists in teaching’, it is worth noting that teachers’ workload has increased
substantially since 1981, nor are one year and one term secondments for teachers’ to attend
university courses and give them ‘thinking time’ part of the educational landscape in this
country.
In all three strands of the project, teachers felt that ‘lack of time’ was a key deterrent to
creativity and innovation. A majority of those involved felt that without the day of cover and
two days to meet and talk, their personal project would not have got off the ground.
Agencies committed to embedding ICT in subject teaching have continued to argue for more
support and guidance, more web-help sites, ‘more stuff’ to be provided for teachers, but perhaps
some of this money might be invested in simply giving teachers some free time to reflect on the
(ample) resources which already exist. The idea of simply giving teachers free time, with a fairly
general brief to come up with something creative in an area of interest goes ‘against the grain’ in
these audit-heavy and target infested times, but it seemed to us that teachers were so thrilled to
get even these modest amounts of time that they regarded it as a wonderful luxury that should
not be abused.
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Chance to talk and work with other teachers
In the end of year workshops, teachers in all three groups felt that the combination of being given
some time to work within their own departments in school, and some time to ‘bounce ideas off
each other’, and demonstrate their work in progress and receive feedback on it from others, had
been more helpful than having one or the other option. Fullan’s observation that ‘teaching suffers
from the lack of opportunity that teachers have as individuals, and particularly in interaction
with other teachers, to reflect, to observe, to discuss, to plan.’ (Fullan, 1982: 259) is probably
even more valid now than it was in the early 1980s. As one teacher remarked:
‘We did feel inspired and energised after talking with everyone during the first meeting, it was
the stimulus of this contact and interaction that started us going, and got us beyond the ‘good
intentions’ stage. Sharing the outcomes and meeting up again was also really enjoyable and
interesting, and has set us off on new tracks.’
As participant observers in the workshops, it was clear that the teachers valued the process of the
project as well as the chance it had offered to accomplish some of their pedagogical aspirations.
There was some resonance with QCA’s (2003: 9) observation that teachers see being creative
having ‘as much to do with the quality of thought taking place and the process or journey as with
what is ultimately produced.’
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Autonomy
Within the broad parameters of the project strand titles, teachers were free to pursue whatever
they wanted and we made no attempt to systematise zones of enquiry. No targets were set and
there was not requirement to come up with a ‘product’ to attend the final workshop meetings.
This seemed to have an important positive impact on the ‘climate’ of the meetings. There may
have been some ‘losses’ in terms of the ‘shape’ or breadth of the outcomes, but the fact that
teachers felt positive about involvement, and clearly enjoyed being part of the project may have
had (difficult to quantify) a helpful influence on the degree of commitment which they accorded
to the project. Woods’ idea of ‘relevance, ownership, control and innovation’ being catalysts for
creative activity seemed to be borne out by the experience of our project.
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School management
Throughout the project, teachers were dependent on their senior management team’s blessing to
allow them out of school, or off the timetable for a day. This is a difficult area for schools and
many schools in the county have made concerted attempts to reduce the burden of staff cover,
placing strict limits on the number of teacher who are to be allowed out of school per day. This
inhibited meeting times in some cases. One participant wrote in his end of project report:
‘Another important factor was the legitimacy that the project gave to the work that we were
doing. Senior management were more than willing to take on board the results when it was to be
seen county wide and was part of a bigger forum. Heads and deputies like prestige – this system
creates that. Other departments have seen the results of our work and are now developing their
own sites, so a longer term benefit has been that pupils will be able to access materials from a
variety of subject areas and therefore learning across the school will improve.’
Teachers were creative. They also obviously enjoyed the opportunity to be creative. The cost of
the project was not inconsequential (approximately £7,000 for each strand of the project), but the
costs of other forms of intervention, such as NOF training, and DfES directed ‘strategies’ are
substantial. It is possible that simply providing teachers with time to think, and to talk to each
other, is a comparatively cost-effective form of educational investment.
If you want further details of the project, we wrote up the outcomes
of the project and presented it at the BERA conference in
September 2004. If you want a copy of the paper, e-mail Terry
Haydn at t.haydn@uea.ac.uk