Getting Creative with the KS3 ICT Curriculum

I am particularly passionate about the ability ICT has to encourage creativity and independent thinking in students, the latter being such a bug-bear of teachers far and wide, and so I thought I would share some of the projects I have introduced over the past year to try to develop not only students’ ICT skills, but their creativity, logical & critical thought and independent learning.

Creative Chip by Mr. Beaver cc attribution, non-commercial, share-alike licence

I try to use free software when I can and if it supports the learning objectives. For example, using Google Sketchup to introduce CAD and 3D modelling was an idea I stole from the marvellous Mr Clarkson and my Year 9 students have been making eco-houses this term in an adaptation of Mark’s Grand Design’s project.

I have discussed Scratch and Alice at length before and, together with Gamemaker they engage students like no other software I have taught, as they create animations and games, totally oblivious to the fact that they are learning programming skills along the way. Students are currently playing with Kodu in the computer club, having ordered a few X-Box controllers and one student has requested that Python be downloaded so he can experiment with that – great independent learning!

The advantages of using free tools of course is that students can download them at home and play around with them there. I have been both delighted and surprised when some students have brought the work they have completed at home in (and had to give them serious extension work as they have finished their entire project in one week!)  I was particularly thrilled this week when a Year 7 boy was completing his History homework on Sketchup (a roman fort) because he’d seen his brother in Year 9 completing his ICT project on it at home.

And of course, the fact that these tools can be used in other subjects is the great appeal – in ICT I try whenever I can to use tools that students can and will be using in other areas. For example, using Google Earth in our movie about the Year 7 trip and creating scientific graphs in Excel, rather than the usual explosion of colour will hopefully be of great help further up the school in Science and Maths. Using Audacity to record podcasts means they can use the software in other subjects, and of course the logical thinking required in any kind of programming is good for Maths and life in general!

In this respect, creative subjects such as Art and, in particular Graphics, are natural companions of ICT and, as web design and animation are both passions of mine, inevitably I manage to sneak a good bit of both of these into the curriculum. Ideally, students build on their existing skills and learn new ones with each project. For example, my Year 9s started off the year creating stop-frame animation, we then moved on to Flash and then Alice, so by Christmas, they had tried animating in 3 different ways. It was really great when they arrived for their assessment lesson complete with props and original ideas and began working confidently and totally independently on their animations using the most appropriate software for their idea – a real success in itself, notwithstanding the fact that some of their completed animations were excellent.

So, while I know I have been lucky to have such flexibility with the curriculum, I do believe that with a little imagination and a good look round on the web to see what others are doing, you can enliven the KS3 curriculum and make it engaging, relevant, challenging and exciting for students, encouraging them to have the confidence in their own creativity and learn independently.

Creating a dynamic scheme of work at KS3 is the aim of the DADSOW3 conference in June – updates will appear at ictcurric.org.uk and on twitter #ictcurric