ICT Planning for schools Activity 2A

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Activity 2A: Policies and ICTs

Reading and reflecting: 1 hr
Writing your own scenario: 30 min
Discussion with group: 1 hr

2 hrs

The purpose of this activity is to alert you to issues that should be included in your school's ICT Policy.

By the end of this activity, you will be able to:

List issues around ICTs that should be decided on collaboratively and included in your school ICT policy.
Evaluate strengths and weaknesses of existing ICT policies.

We know that you are probably impatient to begin the process of implementing ICTs in your school. We urge you to be patient and work your way through this activity.

With intricate and expensive equipment like ICTs at your school, it is important to think carefully about their use and care. You will find that with careful thought and planning, you save time, money and prevent divisive disputes from taking place.

One of the keys to successful ICT implementation is the development, and implementation, of a thoughtful ICT policy.

Going through the process of developing an ICT policy is in itself a very useful process because you will think about many important points.

Just having thought about what should be in an ICT policy is not sufficient.

It is not sufficient to just have a policy on paper. It needs to be implemented.

All of the information in this activity is geared towards helping you to think about an ICT policy.

Later on in this module, once you have chosen your area of focus, you will start collecting points for discussion that can be put to the ICT team at your school, so that a policy can be developed.

Why should we have an ICT policy

Read the following school ICT scenarios, which cover a narrow range of policy concerns, but serve to introduce policy in practical terms. After reading each scenario, think about possible solutions to these situations. You may view some possible responses to these scenarios to give you a few ideas.

While having a clear ICT policy may not prevent all the mishaps mentioned in the scenarios, it provides guidelines for behaviour and it states the steps to be taken if guidelines are not followed.

Now think of your own scenario, which you either know has happened at your school, or think could happen at your school.

Participate in an online group discussion where you discuss responses to these scenarios, or describe other scenarios that you have expeirence, and solutions to these sceanrios.

Reply with a possible solution to one of the scenarios you receive from your group.

Once you have completed this activity, click here to move to Activity 2B - A vision for school ICT policy.

ICT Planning for Schools

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