The Whole Learner
DEEP sets out to introduce teachers and students to a wide range of classroom activities, some of them unrelated to ICT use, some incorporating or dependent upon ICT use. Teachers are encouraged to develop an understanding that they can choose to use ICT when it is 'fit for purpose' - that is when it makes pedagogy more efficient, or it extends or transforms practice in some way.
The DEEP resources include poetry, stories and paintings relevant to the project theme that can be used with students. Ideas for drama, outdoor field work, as well as strategies such as peer tutoring, brainstorming, scaffolding and modelling processes are also introduced.
Whilst learning about animals for example, learners can use ICT resources that provide information not normally available in their context, about familiar and unfamiliar animals. But they can also use folk stories, the knowledge and accounts of their communities, performance of dance and drama, art, close observation of natural specimens, poetry, story-telling, ecological field work. Into these activities ICT is threaded: as a way to access information, images, sounds, and music, as a means of capturing events and environments through photography, sound recording, note taking and data capture; as a means to present what is being learned.
Case Study: Animal Masks
Pupils at Imimoya School had been studying endangered animals with their teacher, Nolundi, using digital resources to find out about a range of endangered animals and the causes of endangerment. The pupils wanted to communicate what they had found out to their school community, and with their teacher, they decided that drama would be the most effective way to do this. For their performance, the pupils also incorporated artwork, in the design and painting of their animal masks. In the video clip below, pupils and teachers can be seen rehearsing their play, in which the animals go to people in the village to protest at the wrongs being done to them, and ask the people to treat them with respect.
