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Aims
The overall aim of the geography SDI work was to examine the ways in which new
technologies can be used in the secondary geography classroom to enhance the learning of
geography.
Particular Aims were:
- for teachers, in partnership with researchers, to develop geography design initiatives
which focus on particular learning outcomes related to the Geography National Curriculum
and the use of new technologies;
- to investigate the process of teaching and learning geography in ICT-rich settings.
Subject Design Initiatives
Each teacher in the project carried out a mini design initiative in 2001 in order to
plan, trial and evaluate one or two lessons in which ICT was being used. The experience
gained from these small-scale interventions was then used to inform the development
of the main design initiatives. The applications represented were:
- use of the Internet for research into Antarctica with a Year 8 class,
- the presentation of research on flooding in Bangladesh using Publisher with a Year 7
class and
- a Year 7 lesson in which both Internet research and Publisher were used to investigate
and present work on Bristol.
Each teacher researcher then started to develop ideas for their main design
initiatives, picking an area of study from the National Curriculum that raises issues and
is of interest to them. These were taught and evaluated in summer 2002.
Research on Teaching and Learning
In Geography there is a widespread view that ICT has the potential to be an effective
tool in helping pupils to record, process, analyse and present information. More
problematic, however, is how useful ICT is in enhancing the skills of geographical
enquiry. Without the development of information skills, in particular, the ability to
select, evaluate, interpret and present information in a meaningful way, recent advances
in geography teaching are likely to be unsustainable. (Lambert and Balderstone, 2000).
Research questions which emerged from the work of the geography team include:
- Does the use of the internet enable lower attaining pupils to produce work, particularly
maps and graphs, that they perceive to be more satisfying?
- How far are pupils able to use ICT effectively to develop their skills of geographical
enquiry and of critical thinking?
- Is the presentation of pupils' work becoming more important than the process of learning
in geography?
- Does the use of ICT facilitate/ encourage or restrain/ obstruct collaborative learning
in the geography classroom?
- Do CD-ROMs currently available to the geography teacher enable geographical skills and
the understanding of geographical patterns and processes to be developed or are they too
content-heavy?
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