AREA OF LEARNING
ICT
The CASS ICT unit was set up in 1987 and continues to give high quality
ICT curriculum support and advice to schools of all types in the Board
area. Over the last 10 years, the unit has contributed to the success
of a number of large-scale initiatives including the Connecting Teachers
to ICT scheme, New Opportunities Fund ICT training for teachers and the
provision of the C2K managed ICT service.
In 1997 the Department of Education launched its Education Technology Strategy for Northern Ireland and the ICT Unit was actively involved in implementing this strategy in the schools in the Board. In 2004 this was supplemented by ‘Empowering Schools,’ the ICT component of the ‘Entitled to Succeed’ strategy, which set out a plan for curriculum ICT until 2020. This has been further cemented into practice by the ‘Every School A Good School’ school-improvement framework.
Currently the ICT Unit is heavily involved in the continued development of ICT as one of the three cross-curricular skills identified in the Northern Ireland Revised Curriculum. This work continues a long programme to fully embed ICT into all areas of the curriculum in every school. The ICT Unit delivers training to CASS officers as well as to schools in order to build capacity within the service for ICT development through all subject and phase support.
The unit has been supporting schools in the self-evaluation of their provision of curriculum ICT since 2004. This work began as a way to link existing self-review frameworks with the Education and Training Inspectorate’s ‘Together Towards Improvement’ initiative, but this has since developed into the province-wide ICT Mark scheme, which provides a nationally recognised award for schools that are achieving best practice in ICT through structured and monitored development.
E-learning empowers students and is seen as the way forward for providing greater flexibility and wider choice in in-service provision. The unit has a wealth of experience in the field and a number of CASS officers have completed the Online Learning for Teachers and Educators (OLTE) e-learning course provided by the Regional Training Unit.
The unit has made use of the LearningNI virtual learning environment provided by C2K and is able to provide support to schools wishing to develop their own on-line courses. LearningNI provides facilities such as shared workspaces, discussion forums, homework boxes and learner tracking for every school pupil in Northern Ireland.
As the Department of Education implements the ‘Every School a Good School’ initiative over the next few years the role of ICT in monitoring and evaluation will become crucial and the ICT Unit will be in a position to assist schools make the best use of their curriculum ICT to maximise student potential.
KEY AREAS OF SUPPORTPost-primary Self-evaluation in ICT |
Special Education Self-evaluation
in ICT |
Primary Self-evaluation in ICT |
Nursery Support with integration of ICT into pre-school curriculum |
