10 pts about #digitalstudies for #ukedchat tonight

As I have written fairly extensive blog posts about #digitalstudies and as many people coming in tonight probably haven’t had a chance to read up about the subject I thought it would be a good idea to write some brief points about it.

1. My name is Brian Sharland and I am a Head of ICT at an independent school with a number of years teaching state school under my belt as well.

2. I would describe myself as a campaigner for #digitalstudies – a subject which is in the early stages of being developed collaboratively using an open source framework.

3. #digitalstudies is being positioned as an ‘upgrade’ to the old ICT curriculum which includes what the UK government is proposing for the subject but goes further to include what was good about the old subject curriculum.

4. The subject includes four strands; Digital Literacy, Digital Technology, Digital Creativity and Digital Citizenship and would cover at this point key stage 1 to key stage 3 with routes into GCSE.

5. The philosophy for the subject would be collaboration and creativity through pupils working on extensive projects in what could almost be described as a ‘startup’ culture within the classroom.

6. Pupils, especially from late primary school and up, would be encouraged to create products, apps, media which are released onto the net and form part of a digital portfolio which is carried into HE and hopefully work.

7. Currently descriptions for the strands exist, ideas for topics exist and a basic wiki has only just been set up this week.

8. There is a lot more which still needs to be done (assessment objectives, project ideas etc)

9. Tonight therefore I hope will provide constructive and practical discussion surrounding the subject to see whether this has support and can have an impact.

10. Links:
http://digitalstudieswiki.pbworks.com

http://BrianSharland.com/tag/digitalstudies

http://rethinkingict.wordpress.com/

http://teachesict.wordpress.com/digitalstudies/

People to chat to:

myself @sharland

Chris Leach @chrisleach78

Nick Jackson @largerama

Nic @teachesict

Hashtags:

#digitalstudies

#rethinkingict