Developing student ICT capability in Primary Education

What is ICT?
The term Information and Communication Technology
(ICT) is widely used to refer to computer-based and
computer-related devices. Examples of ICT would include
today the Internet, mobile phones, and digital cameras,
and plasma screens, digital video recorders, learning
objects, personal digital assistants (PDAs), pocket PCs,
podcasts, interactive whiteboards and wireless
technologies (Finger et al., 2007).
ICT in the Australian Curriculum is recognised as a tool
for students that transforms their way of thinking and
learning. Through its provisionality such as being fast,
automated, interactive and multimodal, students can use
it in a way that suits their learning styles as well as being
able to choose when and where they will learn.
The Australian Curriculum and General
Capabilites
Recognised as key 21st century skills, general
capabilities encompass the knowledge, skills,
behaviours and dispositions that together with the
curriculum content in each learning area (ACARA, 2015)
will provide students with a sound foundation for success
in life and work in their future endeavours. These skills
include ICT capability, literacy, numeracy, critical and
creative thinking, personal and social capability, ethical
understanding and intercultural understanding.
The development of these capabilities can be achieved
when students begin to demonstrate confidence in their
skills and knowledge in complex and changing situations.
Effective and appropriate choices also need to be shown
by the student if they are to progress in these areas. At
times, students can show progress in multiple capabilities
when more than one has been combined with another in
a complementary and enhancing manner.
All capabilities are considered to be general and exist
across the whole curriculum (ACARA, 2015).
Australian Curriculum: Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) Capability
To help teachers continue to understand what ICT
capability is and to maintain its integrity and significance
in the Australian Curriculum, it was decided that instead
of trying to rewrite integral information from the curriculum
website, to quote various segments regarding ICT
capability.
Development of ICT capability
Students develop ICT capability as they learn to use
ICT effectively and appropriately to access, create and
communicate information and ideas, solve problems and

work collaboratively in all learning areas at school, and in

their lives beyond school. - ACARA, (2015).
The capability involves students in learning to make the
most of the digital technologies available to them,
adapting to new ways of doing things as technologies
evolve and limiting the risks to themselves and others in
a digital environment. - ACARA (2015).
Scope of ICT capability Students develop capability in using ICT for tasks
associated with information access and management,
information creation and presentation, problem-solving,
decision-making, communication, creative expression,
and empirical reasoning. This includes conducting
research, creating multimedia information products,
analysing data, designing solutions to problems,
controlling processes and devices, and supporting
computation while working independently and in
collaboration with others. ACARA (2015).
Components of ICT Capability
ICT capability is more than just a set of techniques that is
carried out by students. It consists of a combination of
components that together constitute ICT capability. While
scholars such as Kennewell et al (2000), Bennett (2007),
and Potter and Darbyshire (2005) share similar views on
what makes up ICT capability, they all agree in its role of
enabling effective and efficient assessment. These
components are illustrated in Figure 1 and depicts the
views of Potter and Darbyshire (2005).
In relation to the Australian Curriculum, it is the ability of
students to carry out the sets of processes defined in the
attainment target level descriptors that constitute ICT
capability.
Component Descriptions
Technique: An operation which will still requires a degree
of conscious thought.
Routine: An operation that does not require conscious
thought - it has been automatized.
Concepts: The cognitive phase emphasises the
importance of conceptual understanding. Conceptual
understanding underpins the learning of techniques, and
enables transfer of learning.
Processes: Multistage procedures for achieving a
specified goal. May involve a series of techniques. The
particular techniques and the sequence are not fully
determined by the goal, and the user needs an
understanding of both the goal and the tools available in
order to make appropriate choices. Represent a
significant part of the knowledge, understanding and skills
described in the curriculum.

Higher-order skills. In order to execute processes the

student has to be able to apply higher order skills. These
include:

Recognising when the use of ICT might be

appropriate or effective;
Planning how ICT resources, techniques and
processes are to be used in a task;
Conjecturing, discussing and testing the strategies
and data to be used;
Monitoring the progress of problem solving activities;
Making and testing hypothesis;
Evaluating the outcomes of using ICT in a task;
Explaining and justifying the use of ICT in producing
solutions to problems;
Reflecting on the learning that might have occurred
during the task.

ICT perspective to analyse problem contexts, and

progression requires increasing self-regulation, strategic
planning, evaluation, deep understanding and
transferrable knowledge (Kennewell, 2003, p. 22).

Figure 2. Dimensions of ICT Capability

Primary progression in the ICT Capability

Learning Continuum
The Australian Curriculum ICT Capability framework
consists of five Organising Elements. Each element
comprises of individual aspects that make up a students
ICT capability (see Table 1 on the next page).
In the Australian Curriculum Learning Continuum, there
are six levels of progression in ICT capabilities. The
primary education levels starting with the Foundation
stage begins at Level 1 and ends with Level 4 for Year 6
student progressions. The other two levels of the
continuum are for the year levels 6 and 10.

Figure 1. Components of ICT Capability (Potter et al., 2005)

Progression in ICT Capability

As part of the Australian Curriculums Learning
Continuum is modelled on the UK ICT National
Curriculum, progression in ICT capability is best
explained by the QCA (1998, as cited in Kennewell,
2003, p21). The key aspects of the progression of ICT
capabilities include: Students:

Develop greater autonomy and confidence in their

selection and use of information sources and tools;
Develop into discerning users of ICT, with increasing
awareness of the benefits and limitations of the
systems they use;
Become able to present their ideas in an increasing
variety of ways with a developing sense of audience;
Use ICT based models of growing complexity for
increasingly complex lines of enquiry involving
progressively greater decision making and personal
autonomy;
Ability to evaluate their own work grows, and they
become progressively more able to discuss and
appreciate social, economic, political, legal, ethical
and moral issues.

Progression, according to Kennewell (2003) comprises

of two distinct groups of factors as demonstrated in
Figure 2. He suggests that the first involves using an

The Australian Curriculum recognises that ICT capability

primarily begins in and sets its foundations in primary
education. This is evident in the level structure set out in
the Learning Continuum with four out of the six levels
residing in the primary stages of education.
For the purpose of this paper, we will examine the
progression in the Creating with ICT element in the first
three levels (see Table 2 on the next page).
By examining Table 3, it can be seen that a student
cannot be judged to be functioning at level 2/3 unless they
have been applying the high-order skills. In addition, they
will need to demonstrate how they make decisions in
relation to the selecting of the type of information they can
combine in order to address the desired audiences. It is
not sufficient, therefore, to assume that a student is
functioning at a particular level if they know a technique.
In addition, Table 2 illustrates that along with the higherorder skills focusing on taking into account various
audiences and purposes, students need to be more
refined in the number of techniques they use and how
skilled they are in using them.
Planning for Progression
When it comes to planning ICT use in the classroom
there are a number of similar approaches you can take.
Whilst they might be different in various ways they all
emphasise a key point to remember when doing so.
That is, that teachers need to be clear about their

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Element
Applying social and ethical
protocols and practices when
using ICT.
Investigating with ICT.

Creating with ICT.

Communicating with ICT

Managing and operating ICT.

ICT Capability
Recognise intellectual property.
Apply digital information security practices.
Apply personal security protocols.
Identify the impacts of ICT in society.
Define and plan information searches
Locate, generate, and access data and information.
Select and evaluate data and information.
Generate ideas, plans, and processes.
Generate solutions to challenges and learning area
tasks.
Collaborate, share, and exchange.
Understand computer mediated communications.
Select and use hardware and software.
Understand ICT systems.
Manage digital data.

Table 1. The Organising Elements in the Learning Continuum (ACARA, 2015)

Level 1: Typically by the end

of Foundation Year, students:

Level 2: Typically by the end

Level 3: Typically by the end of
of Year 2, students:
Year 4, students:
Generate ideas, plans and processes
Use ICT to follow or contribute Use ICT to prepare simple
Use ICT to generate ideas and
to a simple plan for a solution.
plans to find solutions or
plan solutions.
answers to questions.
E.g. Using online and
multimedia short sequence of
E.g. Drawing simple mind
E.g. Using tables, photos and
instructions; contributing to a
maps using conceptual
sketches in planning
class digital product plan.
mapping software; using
documents.
drawing software to show
steps in a sequence.
Generate solutions to challenges and learning area tasks
Use ICT as a creative tool to
Experiment with ICT as a
Create and modify simple digital
generate simple solutions,
creative tool to generate
solutions, creative outputs, or
modifications, or data
simple solutions, modifications data
representations for personal,
or data representations for
representation/transformation
or school purposes.
particular audiences or
for particular purposes.
purposes.
E.g. Using appropriate
software to enter text, images,
audio and numbers; editing a
class-created digital product;
representing a data set in a
digital product.

E.g. Using the basic

functionality of selected
software to manipulate text,
images, audio and numbers;
representing data numerically
or graphically; editing own
work and that of others.

E.g. Editing text, images, audio,

and video for presentations and
storytelling; transforming data
between numerical and
graphical digital representation;
applying editing strategies.

Table 2. Creating with ICT in the Australian Curriculum ICT Capability Learning Continuum Levels 1-3 (ACARA, 2015)

reasons for using ICT and the role in which it will play.
No matter what subject you teach this is a pertinent
factor that must always form the foundation for the use
of ICT in the classroom.
As a teacher, you need to decide:
Whether you are going to use ICT to further the
development of student ICT capability;
If ICT will be used to support the learning of the
subject context, or;
A combination of the first two points and that is that
the use of ICT in the classroom will be to develop
student ICT capability and support the learning of the
subject context.

These decisions must be made by the teacher before any

planning is undertaken.
If your decision is to develop student ICT capabilities,
meaningful activities need to be embedded in purposeful
subject-related contexts (Bennet et al., 2007). Take for
example rather than just teaching students how to use a
database, it is more effective in helping develop ICT
capabilities if the knowledge of database principles and
processes and the skills required to enter and manipulate
data, can be taught using a database to help the children
learn something useful about a subject (Bennet et al.,
2007, pp. 48-49).

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Higher-order skills

Concepts
Follow a simple
plan for solution.

Level 2

Taking into account

particular audiences
and purposes.

Finding solutions or
answers to
questions.

Level 3

Taking into account

particular
audiences.

Generating ideas
and plan solutions.

Level 1

Techniques
There are no
techniques as this is
an exploratory
stage.
The techniques
used go beyond the
above e.g.
Experiment with
ICT.
Create and modify
simple digital
solutions.

Routines

These techniques
are carried out in a
fluent manner.

Table 3. Creating with ICT at Levels 1,2 and 3 (Adapted from Potter et.al., 2005, 31)

ICT is commonly used in many projects in the primary

curriculum and the following guidelines by Bennet et al.
(2007, p. 49) is recommended:

ICT capability is best developed in the context of

purposeful subject-related contexts;
The level of ICT challenge can be adjusted to most
activities to suit the needs of the learner without
affecting the subject outcomes;
Although there is a hierarchical structure to ICT
capability, projects can be organised to provide
opportunities for basic skills and knowledge to be
acquired on a need to know basis.

In addition, the following questions should also be

considered by teachers wishing to incorporate ICT
activities into the curriculum:

What is the educational purpose of the activity to

develop ICT capability, to support learning in another
area of the curriculum, or both?
Will the children need to be monitored to identify
opportune moments for teacher intervention to
enhance their skills?
Does it provide children with experience of using ICT
as a tool?
Are there opportunities to assess childrens ICT
competence?
Will
the
children
work
cooperatively
or
collaboratively? How will this be introduced and
supported?

Bennett (1997, 65, as cited in Kennewell et al., 2000, 90).

For effective planning and being able to analyse the

current situation at your school, Allen et al., (2012, p. 32)
suggests using these questions to help you prepare to
use ICT in your teaching:

What do we know about the childrens existing

knowledge, skills and understanding in the subject?
What has been their previous experience with ICT?
What does the National Curriculum set out for the
children in this class?
What does the relevant strategy, scheme or
framework suggest?

What am I therefore expecting the children to

achieve?
How will I differentiate the activity to reflect the
different needs and abilities in the class?
What relevant pieces of theoretical writing and/or
case studies are there to support my planning?
What will be the demands on me in terms of my
knowledge, skills and understanding of ICT?
What is the resource setting for the school and how
does this impact on what I can plan for the class?
What are the additional time costs and constraints on
me when planning ICT?
What kind of grouping or organisation am I planning
for?
How do I go about the physical management of the
activity?
Are there any further cross-curricular links?
How will I go about including the whole class in the
activity?

Assessing ICT Capability

Previously, it has been discussed in the paper what
constitutes as ICT capability in terms of the make-up of
its components. It is therefore, imperative to recognise
that there is more to ICT capabilities than just techniques.
This is despite techniques in some cases being the only
aspect being assessed. The assessment of student ICT
capability will be examined further on in this segment.
Determine the purpose of assessment
When discussing assessment of any sort, however, it is
important to first pinpoint your reasons for the
assessment. In terms of ICT capability, while the reasons
may vary in certain circumstances, they still carry the
same weight in terms of their significance. To explain
further, Potter et al. (2010) states there are three reasons
for a teacher to assess the ICT capability of a student.
These include (a) assessment for learning; (b) information
for other teachers and; (c) reports to parents.
A. Assessment for Learning
It is important for teachers to be able to plan appropriately
for their students learning experiences with the
information they gather from various sources. As ICT
capability is made up of the various components as
mentioned earlier and not just techniques, it is strongly

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advised that each of these components be assessed in a

specific way if appropriate planning is to occur.
What about focusing on processes then? Well that is the
other trap that can possibly occur. That is because when
you stand back and look at it more closely you can see
that it incorporates all the other components of ICT
capability. This might not be an issue if you were simply
doing a summative assessment. However, as Potter et al.
(2010, 188) states, just knowing a level, or even a
description of the students ICT capability in terms of
processes, would not really help in designing appropriate
learning experiences. For example, a teacher would
normally want to keep track of the students knowledge of
techniques. That is not to say though, that it shouldnt be
carried out. It is necessary to do so in the primary phase
of schooling. Teachers do need to have an idea of the
students position in relation to progression in ICT
capability (Potter et al., 2010).
An example of progression in the different components
can be seen in Table 3.
B. Information for other Teachers.
This is where proper assessment of ICT capability begins
to take on more weight in terms of its importance. By
properly assessing a students ICT capability by assigning
them the appropriate level in the Learning Continuum and
then passing that information to other teachers,
progression in ICT capability can be assured. This has the
added bonus of ensuring that students are not repeating
previous work. There would be more information needed
and this also refers to simply making reference to the level
descriptor. Potter et al. (2010, 191) gives a good example
to further emphasise this point:
For example, a teacher would need to know more than
just that a student could use ICT to generate, develop,
organise and present work; they would need to know what
media they had experience in doing this. Was it text as in
a word processor, with text and graphics as with DTP
package, with an image manipulation program (and if so
with a painting and/or drawing program)? It would also be
helpful to know which programs they had used.
C. Reports to Parents.
By ensuring that progression in ICT capability is achieved,
teachers can then pass on the correct information to
parents. This information though needs to be phrased in
a way that is easily understandable by parents. For this to
happen, there needs to be more just a statement saying
that a student was functioning at a particular level. In
addition, using level descriptors would not suffice either.
More information would be needed to properly inform
parents of their childs progress in ICT capability.
Determine student capability
Now that we have determined our reasons for assessing
student ICT capability, we now need to examine closely
the mechanisms of ICT capability and define how
students actually complete and carry out these
mechanisms. This is important because as stated earlier,

it is actually the entire mix of these components that

makeup ICT capability. This means that no single
component should determine a childs capability despite
particular components such as processes incorporating
the others. Potter et al. (2010) suggests the following
aspects for teachers to know about a student the different
components in order to effectively and efficiently assess
a students ICT capability.
Techniques:
Some questions you might ask of a student would include:
Can they perform a technique after having seen a
whole-class or small group demonstration?
Did the student require some form of support (either
in the form of a reminder or by using a help sheet)?
If this was the case, then the student would not be
making adequate progress and the cause behind it
would need to be found out.
With techniques, a checklist can be used but by not
using the clipboard approach (Kennewell, Parkinson,
& Tanner, 2000). Simple observations throughout the
lesson can be carried out in order to make
judgements and give feedback to students.
Routines:
A question you might ask of a student would include:
How was the technique executed by the student? For
example, were they hesitant, steady or fluent?
This type of information would help teachers to plan
opportunities for the student such as moving from
inserting a picture hesitantly to doing it fluently. An
observation can be made simply by the teacher to make
the necessary judgement.
Concepts:
A question you might ask of a student would include:
Did the student have any misconceptions?
A students conceptual understanding can be assessed
by the use of effective questioning and discussions
(Potter et al., 2010).
Processes and Higher order skills:
In order for a student to carry out a process they need to
be able to make decisions in other words, use higher
order skills. This can only be assessed on the basis as to
whether the student needed scaffolding or not.
The questions you might ask of a student would then
consist of the following according to Potter et al. (2010):

Was the student able to make decisions about the

certain types of media to combine? And in what way?
Was the student able to make decisions on which
series of techniques to use in order to follow the line
of enquiry to prove or disprove a hypothesis?
Was the student able to make decisions on which
techniques to use in a graphics program in order to
produce a portrait that visually represents feelings?

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A process cannot be judged using the same method as a

technique the tick box. Teachers need to make
assessments on the decisions students make in order to
create a finished product.
Higher order skills:
In the Australian Curriculum, an example where higher
order skills might be used would be recognised as Critical
and Creative Thinking in the General Capabilities. This
means that teachers can combine both the ICT Capability
and the Critical and Creative Thinking capabilities to
ensure that students use their higher order skills.
In terms of assessing, as with processes, teachers will
need to ask the how and why a student did something to
be able to make the appropriate assessment decision.

2. Decide what evidence is needed

Continuing on from the previous example set by Bennett
et al. (2007, 69), the learning objectives would include the
following:

Other information that Potter et al. (2010, p194) suggest

would contribute to the assessment of a students ICT
capability would include:

Whether or not they had access to a computer at

home this would help you understand the impact
that home use might have on the capability. In these
circumstances, teachers might use this information to
set more challenging work at school. It is important to
help the less fortunate not to fall behind because of
their lack of regular access to ICT outside of school;
Their attitude to ICT. Are they confident? Do they
dominate group activities or are they reticent? Do
they persevere or give up easily? This information is
great for when you are making up groups for
activities.
Their use of correct technical vocabulary. Are you as
a teacher introducing and using correct technical
terms in lesson;
Their level of awareness of the used of ICT inside and
outside of school. This type of information would help
teachers to identify the need to plan more
opportunities for students to reflect on what it means
to live and work in a technological society.

Identify assessment method

The next step in being able to effectively assess student
ICT capability is to identify an appropriate assessment
method. In this case, it is recommended that you use the
model (see Figure 3 on the next page) highlighted by
Bennett et al. (2007).
1. Identify what you want the children to learn
Effective teaching requires teachers to define their
learning objectives as well as being able to have a sound
idea as to what you want the children to learn. Bennett et
al. (2007) uses an example of using ICT in English to
demonstrate how this can be achieved. He states that a
teachers learning objective for a particular activity might
be the following at the end of the activity.
The children will achieve the following

Technique: import images and position them

appropriately for the text; enter, format and edit text.
Higher-order skills: decide which image(s) from a
limited selection could best illustrate an event; choose
the most appropriate styles for text to convey
meaning.
Concept (key ideas): explain how text and images
can be used to communicate an episode or event in
a story.
Skill: enter text with a keyboard, embolden headings
and the text for button labels.

Skills expected outcomes demonstrating successful

learning will include: relevant text entered from the
keyboard, including the use of the space bar, the
enter key, backspace and shift and caps lock.
Routines
expected
outcomes
demonstrating
successful learning will include: the page saved
successfully to the correct network folder; a file
correctly labelled; the page printed successfully.

Techniques
expected
outcomes
demonstrating
successful learning will include: images imported and
positioned appropriately in the text; text entered,
formatted with a range of styles to make the story easy to
read.
Concepts (key ideas) expected outcomes demonstrating
successful learning will include: clear expectations as to
how text and images can be used to communicate an
episode or event in a story and reasoned justification for
the layout of the page.
Higher-order choice expected outcomes demonstrating
successful learning will include: appropriate image/s
selected for a page; appropriate styles used to convey
meaning with explanation as to why the styles have been
chosen.
Remember that the evidence required will depend upon
the learning objectives for a given activity. During your
planning stages, you will need to consider how the
students will produce such evidence for their learning.
3. Gather the evidence
There are various methods that are best suited to
gathering evidence when assessing ICT capabilities. The
most useful of these methods are that of observation
(Higgins et al., 2004; Allen et al., 2012). As Higgins et al.
(2004) points out, assessment is a continuous part of the
teaching process. Many ICT activities and tasks can be
observed while students are doing so and this allows
teachers to be able to observe the development of
capabilities. According to Bennett et al. (2007), there are

Routines: save their page; print their page.

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two types of observation that can take place informal

and structured.
Informal Observation
It can be used to monitor the ways in which different
children respond to an activity.

Managing ICT in the classroom

In the previous sections, we discussed how you as a
teacher can help develop and achieve ICT capability in
students. Now we will examine how you can ensure that
ICT capability is achieved by making sure that you
maximise your resources and time.

At the end of the ICT lesson, think back to how children

responded to the task. Clearly defined learning objectives
will allow you to decide who was able to complete the
activity with the minimum of support, those who needed
considerable support and those you lay somewhere
between the latter two. Logging the childrens progress as
soon as possible after (or even throughout) a lesson will
provide you with invaluable information about the
childrens performance to remind you when you come to
plan the following weeks activities.

Organising ICT in the classroom

Studies have shown that the way a classroom in
organised can have a considerable impact on the
potential of ICT capability development. For example, if
the access to the ICT resources was difficult, irregular or
conditional this would have created a barrier to the
development of the ICT-capable classroom (Kennewell
et al., 2000). It is important therefore, to have
computers in the classroom so as to maximise the
opportunities for curriculum activity.

Structured Observation
A structured observation can be carried out in the
following ways:
Observe the whole class to gain an overview of its
progress.
Observe a different group closely each week to
gather more detailed information on individual
attainment.
Target your observations on particular skills.

The Classroom Computer

Having a computer in the classroom allows both the
teacher and student to have access to the computer
when it is needed. For example, if the Internet is needed
to search for information, the student can do so quite
easily under supervision by a teacher assistant. The
other advantage would be for the teacher. Computers in
the classroom are fantastic tools for supporting teaching
especially if they have a data projector, plasma screen
or interactive whiteboard attached to it. Of course, there
are also disadvantages of having just one computer in
the classroom. Management and organisation is an
issue in this area as there can be insufficient numbers of
computers in the room for all students to do ICT work
simultaneously. Bennett et al. (2007, 90) suggests that
when managing a computer in the classroom, the
following points need to be considered:

If you choose to use the structured method, you will need

to have well-prepared observation schedule which you or
a colleague can complete at intervals during a lesson.
Some teachers prefer to use a coding system to enable
them to log particular responses. Below is an example of
a coding system you might use.
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.

Applied with confidence

Needed some help.
Needed considerable help.
Attempted but unsuccessful.
Not attempted.
Not observed.

It is important to include the final category (or leave

blank). This will allow you to identify any children that you
were not able to observe the lesson. For planning sake,
these students can be prioritised for the next lesson.
4. Record the evidence
As mentioned in the above section, a teacher can choose
to either do an individual observation or a whole class
observation. The following are checklist that you may
wish to use.
5. Use the record to plan, target and focus
As well as ensuring progression in ICT and targeting your
assessments, a teacher can also structure their
assessment opportunities if they set clear objectives. For
example, skills, routines and techniques are more difficult
to assess than a students grasp of a concept/key idea as
they require careful observation to make judgements on
the approaches used by the student to complete a task
(Bennet et al., 2007).

Where the computer will be located.

What software will be installed?
How and when the children will use it?
Who will maintain and manage the computer?

Location:
Where are the sockets?
Does the screen reflect unwanted light?
Is the computer going to distract other children?
Is the furniture appropriate?
Software:
What ICT activities will the children be doing?
Do you have the relevant license to install the
software?
How and when the children will use it?
Who will use the rota system?
Will they use it as continuous resource?
Will it be used for teaching?
Who will maintain and manage the computer?
Who will replenish consumables (e.g. paper and ink
cartridges)?
How and where the children save their work?
Who will start up and shut the computer?

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What system will you use for introducing new skills

and handling software problems?

Grouping students for activities

When grouping students into pairs the following factors
need to be taken into account (Kennewelll et al., 2000,
101).

Differences in ICT capability: When a pairing

positions a more capable child as mentor to one who
is less capable, the less experienced child learns
more if the mentor has a clear idea of the role and the
teacher interacts occasionally to reinforce this role.
The personalities of children: Dominance by one of
the pair can lead to disengagement from the task by
the other, and dominant students should be paired
together when possible.
Sex: Single-sex pairs generally cooperate more
successfully, but some pairs of boys tend to take
turns rather than work together. The gender mix of
younger children is less important to learning than it
is with other children.
The nature of the task: will both children be
collaborating on one outcome, or will they be
assisting each other with their individual pieces of
work?

If you would like to know more about developing

student ICT capability in the primary curriculum,
we provide quality assured teacher workshops in the
Australian Curriculum General Capabilities
(ICT Capability).
All 1 hour workshops provide particpants with
workshop information and a Certificate of
Participation. All workshops are aligned with the
standards set by the Australian Professional
Standards for Teachers.
Contact us now for a quote on 07 4630 9203.

Adult helpers can have a considerable impact on student

ICT capability development. Here is some advice given
by the British Computer Society Schools Committee
(1999, as cited in Kennewell et al., 2000, 101).

Invite the children to plan ahead;

Listen to what the children say and encourage them
to share their ideas;
Help the children to understand that it is acceptable
to try out their ideas and make mistakes;
Give the children time to work out their answers;
Take every opportunity to praise the childrens
success when completing an exercise or developing
a computer skill.

Conclusion
The development of student ICT capability is imperative
in primary education as it sets the foundations for further
development in later schooling and beyond. It is important
that teachers understand that ICT capability is more than
just techniques but a set of components that together
make up the capability. In addition, effective assessment
of this general capability in the Australian Curriculum is
vital so to ensure that progression is maintained as well
as passing on meaningful information to parents.
As a 21st century skill embedded in the curriculum, the
Australian Curriculum aims to ensure that students make
the most of the technologies that are available to them
whilst limiting the risk it may bring to themselves or to
others. This is important in a knowledge-based society
where ICT has become part of our home, social and work
life. The ability to be empowered by technological
developments is and will be the key to the future success
of students in the economy.

www.ictesolutions.com.au

References
ACARA. (2015, February 26). General Capabilities. Retrieved from Australian Curriculum:
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/generalcapabilities/overview/general-capabilities-in-the-australiancurriculum
ACARA. (2015, March 3). Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Capability. Retrieved from Introduction:
<http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/GeneralCapabilities/information-and-communication-technologycapability/introduction/introduction
ACARA. (2015, March 4). Introduction. Retrieved from Information and Communicaiton Tehnology (ICT) capability:
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/generalcapabilities/information-and-communication-technologycapability/introduction/introduction
Allen, J., Potter, J., Sharp, J., & Turvey, K. (2012). Primary ICT:Knowledge, Understanding and Practice. London: Sage
Publications.
Beauchamp, G. (2015). ICT and Assessment. In S. Younie, M. Leask, & K. Burden, Teaching and learning with ICT in the
Primary School (pp. 313-320). Routledge .
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http://syllabus.bos.nsw.edu.au/support-materials/integrating-ict/
Finger, G., Russell, G., Jamieson-Proctor, R., & Russell, N. (2007). Transforming Learning with ICT: Making IT Happen.
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Kennewelll, S., Parkinson, J., & Tanner, H. (2000). ICT in the Primary Classroom. In S. Kennewell, J. Parkinson, & H.
Tanner, Developing the ICT Capable School (pp. 90-111). Routledge Falmer.
Potter, F., & Darbyshire, C. (2005). The Nature of ICT Capability. In F. Potter, & C. Darbyshire, Understanding and
Teaching the ICT National Curriculum (pp. 17-24). Oxon: David Fulton Publishers.
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the ICT National Curriculum (pp. 186-203). Oxon: David Fulton Publishers.
Simpson, D., Toyn, M., & Todd, I. (2011). ICT as a Core Skill. In D. Simpson, M. Toyn, & I. Todd, Primary ICT Across the
Curriculum (pp. 12-25). Exeter: Learning Matters Ltd.

ICTE Solutions Australia

www.ictesolutions.com.au