Module: Benefits of ICT NextStep Activities

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1 connecting communities: benefits of ICT nextstep Module: Benefits of ICT NextStep Activities Introduction A NextStep activity is an engaging and fun way for a Connecting Communities delegate to develop a new or deeper understanding of the role of ICT in the community. The resources created by completing the NextStep activity should be a very useful teaching and learning tool for use in your own practice or your organisation s practice. The NextStep activity can also be used to gain credit towards the six modules studied through the Connecting Communities training programme. The NextStep activities have a higher ICT component than other sections of the Connecting Communities training programme, and rely on the commitment of the delegate to complete the task himself or herself. Many of the NextStep activities are simple tasks, whilst others require more effort and time to complete satisfactorily. There are many suggestions for your choice of NextStep activity listed in this section. You may opt to complete one of these, or choose to undertake one of your own design. Each NextStep activity can be seen as a mini-project that you can customise to suit your own, or your organisation s, specific needs. As with all the other sections in the Connecting Communities training programme, NextStep activities are optional you choose to undertake the NextStep, and you choose the topic and degree of complexity with which you complete the task. For larger tasks, you may also opt to work in a group to develop a NextStep activity as a resource for your organisation. Due to time constraints and resources, it will only be possible for you to undertake one NextStep activity. Each suggested activity is related to a section of the Benefits of ICT study pack. If a particular section has interested you, and made you think about how ICT could be used to benefit your work in this area, you may wish to undertake a related NextStep activity. For example, after studying the Achieving Visibility section, you may decide that you would like to make a website for your organisation, or for a project that interests you. In this case, you may opt to plan and build a website using FrontPage or Dreamweaver (or any other such software). Or, you may have studied the Online Learning section and would like to create similar learning resources. In this case you could use PowerPoint to create your teaching materials, and Hot Potatoes to create your own quizzes. How Does NextStep Work? NextStep activities can be used to gain credit towards the six sections you need to study in order to complete the Connecting Communities training programme. Most of the NextStep activities are worth one section, so if only five of the Connecting Communities sections are appropriate to your personal professional development requirements, then you could opt to do a simple NextStep activity. 111

2 A few activities are worth two sections; this is simply because these activities involve much more work or technical know-how. For example, you may wish to create a website from scratch. This is a large undertaking, requiring you to first gain the technical skills to create a site, then create the text, graphics and other content. In addition, a website is not really ever finished it requires a sustained effort to update and maintain the site. It can be quite a big job! Examples of how the NextStep activities could fit into a hypothetical Connecting Communities training programme are shown below: Course A 1 Achieving Visibility 2 Communicating 3 Learning Online 4 Addressing the Digital Divide 5 Free Software from the Web 6 Values and Principles of Community Learning and Development Course B Achieving Visibility Communicating Learning Online Addressing the Digital Divide Free Software from the Web NextStep Activity (one section in value) If you design your own NextStep activity, your tutor will need to agree the credit awarded with the Connecting Communities team at Learning and Teaching Scotland. Gathering Evidence If you opt to undertake a NextStep activity, rather than study a section of the Connecting Communities materials, you must provide evidence of your work. You will find it easy to provide evidence for this activity as all your resources will be in electronic format. Use the NextStep Personal Action Plan provided with this section to help you plan and record your evidence. You can provide a copy of your evidence on a disc (either floppy or CD), or (where appropriate) attach it to an e- mail and send it directly to the Connecting Communities team at Connecting Communities@LTScotland.com. If you choose the option, in order for your work to be easily identified by the Connecting Communities team, you must follow these simple guidelines: Make sure you send the from your own account. This will help us identify you correctly, and will also allow us to contact you directly. The subject of your should say NextStep Activity Tutor Name. Give your tutor s name here; again, this will help us identify you and file your work accordingly. In the text of your , give a good description of your NextStep activity. Tell us about what you have made, who you have made it for and how you would hope to use it. Add your contact details to your . Just in case the technology doesn t work and we don t receive your files! 112

3 Sometimes it may be difficult to collect evidence, particularly if you have created an online community. In this case, you should print out as much information as possible and complete a short written account of your activities. Support Materials Additional detailed support materials, and further training where appropriate, are available to all delegates who undertake a NextStep activity. You can access these materials in three ways: Firstly, ask your tutor to request the materials from the Connecting Communities team. Your tutor will ask each member of their group for their choice of NextStep support material during the delivery of the Connecting Communities training programme and send the group request to the Connecting Communities team at Learning and Teaching Scotland. Contact the Connecting Communities team yourself using and request materials. We can only these materials to you. Please ensure the subject of your reads Request for NextStep Materials, and is sent using your own address. Support materials will be periodically added to our website, and can be freely downloaded from You can attend a workshop related to your NextStep activity. These workshops will be held periodically, or at the request of a group(s) if they can guarantee sufficient interest. Suggested NextStep Activities You can choose your NextStep activity from this selection, or you can come up with your own idea. Communicating Using Microsoft Word and Excel, record the contact details of a group of interested colleagues and distribute a postal newsletter. The mail merge function available in all recent editions of the Microsoft Office suite makes this a very simple task to complete successfully. Using Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook, set up an group and distribute a newsletter. The mail merge function in the latest version of the Microsoft suite (Office XP, as supplied on the Connecting Communities tutor laptop) makes this task incredibly simple to set up and sustain. If you regularly distribute a newsletter by post, you can use the free tools available through Yahoo! that allow interested colleagues to subscribe automatically to your user group. The tools will automatically distribute your newsletter by . Yahoo! makes this a relatively simple task. Collaborating Using MSN Messenger or similar collaboration tool, create a group of friends and communicate with them over a period of time using the chat, whiteboard, file sharing and videoconferencing tools (where possible). Achieving Visibility As a personal activity, or with members of your group or organisation, plan for the development of a new or improved website that will allow your organisation to provide improved learning and communication links with your local community. For evidence, provide a detailed written plan for your site, referencing other sites that have influenced your decisions. You will not need to create your site to complete this task. 113

4 Using Microsoft FrontPage (or any other similar website building software), design, build and publish a website that will promote the learning activities of your organisation. This NextStep activity has the potential to be quite a labour-intensive project. Learning and Teaching Scotland will provide FrontPage training for this activity. Sustain a website for your organisation. A ready-made website with feedback forms and a discussion forum will be provided for you free of charge, hosted and supported by Learning and Teaching Scotland. You will need no special programming or web design skills to create and sustain this site. There are a limited number of such sites available. Contact the Connecting Communities team at Learning and Teaching Scotland for more details. Information Access Create a list of useful websites and present them as a series of posters for your learning centre. You should create these posters using Word, PowerPoint, or a desktop publishing software package. You should select websites that best suit the interests or needs of your users learning, web searches, ICT skills development, or otherwise. Create a list of useful websites and present them as a web page (hosted on the web, or saved on each local machine) for your learning centre. You could create this web page using Word, FrontPage or any other suitable web page making software. You should select websites that best suit the interests or needs of your users learning, web searches, ICT skills development, or otherwise. Online Learning Create at least three interactive quizzes using Hot Potatoes. These quizzes can be on the subject of your choice, and targeted at the learners of your choice. Create a detailed list of websites with suitable learning content (other than those provided in the Online Learning section) and present your choices as a web page or site, or as a series of posters. You should create these posters using Word, PowerPoint, or a desktop publishing software package. You should select websites that best suit the learning interests or needs of your users. Create a presentation for use in delivering learning. Your presentation can be a simple PowerPoint introducing a topic of study, or you can explore how to make your presentation more interactive by including hyperlinks, action buttons, and audio and video. Register to access the National Leaning Network ( online learning materials. Here you will find a huge repository of subject-related material, online and ready to download to your machine. Through this site, you should find a set of resources on a subject of your choice and write some training materials to support the delivery of these resources. Using the Scottish history resources and various tools available through the SCRAN website at create a collection of artefacts that will support a local history project. Creating Online Communities Visit the discussion forum at the Connecting Communities website. Either as a personal activity, or with members of your group or organisation, start a new discussion (or thread ) on a subject of your choosing issues related to your youth work, art or music projects, local history groups the choice is yours. You could even use the discussion forum to talk about ways of supporting your learners using an online forum. You can use this discussion to make contact with Connecting Communities participants from across Scotland, many of whom will enjoy contributing to your discussion topics, and may bring new ideas to your practice. 114

5 Supporting Inclusion through ICT Request demo software from the many publishers detailed in the Supporting Inclusion through ICT module. Evaluate each software title you receive, and create learning resources to support the use of these packages with your target user group. Attend a Supporting Inclusion through ICT workshop held periodically through Learning and Teaching Scotland. Identify and evaluate appropriate software titles and items of computer hardware. Use this evaluation to form a plan for future action for your organisation, detailing which items would be most useful for your groups, and how you would implement them in your delivery of learning. Media Magic Use any or all of the suggested activities in this module with a youth group, art or music project, or any other appropriate group of your choice. Create support materials that will allow your users to create simple and effective multimedia resources of their own. This could take the form of a video diary, CD-ROM, website, photo diary, poster series. The choice is endless. Create a resource base of your own workshops centred around using digital media (scanners, cameras, printers, etc.) in your own community context. Printed examples of these workshops can be provided as evidence. Your Own Choice of NextStep If you choose to devise your own particular ICT-related NextStep activity, make sure you complete the planning section of this module as clearly and in as much detail as possible. NextStep Personal Action Plan The resources you create will be useful to both yourself and your organisation. Before you embark on a NextStep, it is important that you plan your strategy for undertaking and completing your task, before you begin. Not only will this help you evaluate what you set out to create, but it will also give your colleagues a better idea of what you have created and how you intended it to be used. Complete this table for your chosen NextStep activity, detach it and enclose it as part of your personal evidence pack once you have completed your task. An electronic copy of this document (in Word format) can be downloaded from the Connecting Communities website. 115

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7 NextStep Personal Action Plan Your name: Your tutor s name: Proposed project start date: Proposed project completion date: Describe the NextStep activity you are about to undertake. Describe the learning resources you hope to create or sustain. Describe how you aim to use your NextStep results to promote learning. What software, websites, or other ICT equipment will you need to complete your NextStep activity? Will you need training on how to use the software, websites, or other ICT equipment you wish to use? If so, describe the training you require. 117

8 If you are working in partnership with other members of your group, give their names here. After you have completed your NextStep activity, complete this second part of your personal action plan: Describe the resources you created. Describe how you have used these resources to promote learning within your practice. Could you improve on the resources you have created or sustained as part of your NextStep? If so, give details of what you would like to do. You will need to provide the Connecting Communities team with a copy of, or access to, your resources. How have you provided this evidence? Give any further information regarding your task here: 118