Only coming to your post now after a tough holidays. It’s been interesting reading it again after Gove’s speech especially as I think you have predicted some of what was going to happen.

On your concerns about #digitalstudies and its nature as a ‘rebrand’ I can see your concerns. I think I am now seeing #digitalstudies as an ‘upgrade’ rather than a rebrand. I know I may be guilty of playing word salad here but a rebrand I think can be seen as a whitewash of what happened before whereas an upgrade keeps what was good about the previous version and incorporates new features (eg programming).

I think with Chris Leach’s forthcoming conference on #digitalstudies this may have legs as a true open source curriculum as opposed to what may come from facebook and google et al.

cheers
brian

@Brian: My plan is to start with the assessment strands by having all involved parties contribute to level descriptors that fit them. This will then be our starting point for writing projects – as all primary school ICT is to be taught by non-specialists, I want to try remove as much of the confusion that has reigned with current assessment methods as possible. It should be absolutely clear from the outset that “in this project, we’ll be largely looking at strands 1, 2 & 3, so the descriptors you need to be looking out for evidence of are…” – I’m not sure it’ll work, but this is the starting point. It could evolve into something entirely different by the time we’re through.

@ Zoe: Would you stick to level descriptors, or go with something else entirely? Right now nothing is out entirely, but I see the value of APP as a planning tool, to ensure we aren’t overly heavy in one particular strand… any thoughts you have would be appreciated!

@ Mark: I do agree – by breaking it down into chunks over a year you may not be able to cover those skills in as much detail as you would in one large project, but if students have to wait a year between looking at spreadsheets (or databases, etc) they’re unlikely to remember much from first time around. I think a potential solution to this is to drop the idea of one project per half-term, and have larger projects – one per term. The only risk there with 14-16 lessons on average is choosing projects with longevity, that are suitably different from each other to ensure we aren’t simply repeating the same stuff in different contexts.

One thing that does worry me slightly with the integrated project approach is that you don’t have as much time to focus on one area. I do think that putting tools together is vital, but if students only use a model or a database for 2 lessons out of a 12 week project, for example, then you’re going to struggle to build any rigour into it and it becomes easy to gloss over.

Please don’t get me wrong – I think the integration of strands is very much the way forward, I’m just interested to see how you deal with the above issue, and to see whether you even agree that it is an issue.