Curriculum and personalizing learning - Teaching with Technologies: The Essential Guide - page 155

to support learning use a pedagogical model where technology tools

are used to:

• developproblem-solvingskills
• encourageindependentthinking
• promoteimaginationandinquisitiveness
• supportmultimodalandmultimediaassessmentofindependentprojects
• encouragecollaborativelinkswithexperts.

The teaching profession in England is showing a significant shift away from a
focus on content and move towards the process of learning, with particular emphasis
on teachers' roles as facilitating the learner. Teachers contributing to the Education
Futures research identified three key areas for development for curriculum subject
software that related to the process of learning rather than content:

• More web-based suites of programs are needed for group teaching, but they
needtobedevelopedwithteacherexperts-forexample,'packages'covering
subject areas and curriculum-specific content.
• Moresoftwareapplicationsareneededthatwoulddevelop personalized learn-
ing without losing face-to-face elements of teaching where pupils engage in
dialogue with teacher experts who have important, interesting and stimulat-
ing things to say about their subject.
• Aconcentrationonsophisticated search tools .

Web-based curriculum suites

Teachers specifically made the point that leading institutions are moving away from
the purchase of software packages towards subscription-based, Web-stored curricu-
lum resources and cross-curricula programmes purchased by subscription, where
subjects are integrated into an overall curriculum vision and design paradigm (see
Leask and Williams (2005) for a vision of cross-curricula working at secondary school
level using supporting technologies). Teachers contributing to the Education Futures
research wanted more cross-discipline learning activities for all phases, drawing on
constructivelearningexperiencesintheFoundationStage(earlyyears,aged4-5in
theUK)andcontinuityandprogressioninWeb-basedsuitesofsubject-specificsoft-
warethroughouttheNationalCurriculumkeystages.

Personalized learning

Technologies support a move towards personalized learning, and innovative teachers
are increasingly using different input devices, varied locations and Web spaces for
individuallearneruse.Thegrowthofinclusivetechnologydesign-thatis,designs
whichincorporateSEN(specialeducationalneeds)-alsosupportspersonalization
(for example, software that provides opportunities such as vision-enhancing tech-
niques for those with poor eyesight), inclusion of neighbour detection, graphical