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Use ICT and multimedia

Today’s children are growing up in a multimedia world. The effective and meaningful use of ICT has been proven to engage and stimulate boys in almost all of the recent studies in to raising boys’ achievement. There are many reasons for this:

• Most children are used to and confident with multimedia and ICT texts
• Multimedia texts involve looking and listening as well as reading, so to some children they feel less threatening than books
• Multimedia texts feel relevant to children and provide a link between school and the ‘real world’
• ICT gives learning a real purpose , a concrete outcome and offers immediate results
• ICT supports active and interactive learning – taking photos, making videos, creating presentations – and encourages talk, collaboration, problem solving, thinking and planning
• ICT helps children, particularly boys, overcome their anxieties around presentation of work

Photo by MTJ Media

What you can do: ICT should be used only where it adds value to the teaching and learning, and where there is a clear purpose and outcome. Don’t be tempted to do something ‘on screen’ when a book or a flip chart will do just as well. Use programmable devices such as floor turtles and roamers with young children to support instruction, prediction and sequencing skills Use on-screen or audio books to engage readers and to provide models of fluent reading On-screen versions of books can be effective tools for shared or guided reading, making analysis of a text easier through e.g. highlighting and annotation E-books can be a good way to engage readers with texts, and there are an increasingly number of children’s books available in this format Encourage children to read and respond to email such information they email to each others to support ongoing work in class Make connections between popular film and television programmes and what children are reading in the classroom Use multimedia texts to stimulate talk and writing Encourage children to use the internet – with appropriate security in place – to explore areas of interest to them, as well as those relevant to lessons.

An example of a practical activity

Children of all ages can use ICT to create their own texts – such books or brochures, presentations, web pages, short films etc. Children can use a range of skills such as manipulating text, adding pictures (scanned drawings, digitally created drawings, photos etc), making and adding audio, video or even simple animations. There are a range of excellent hardware and software tools on the market to support this sort of work.

Getting children to work collaboratively on such projects can be very effective and is great for their confidence. Boys love the challenge, without fearing failure.

If you would like more information about the reasons for some boys’ underachievement in literacy and how we can overcome this we suggest you read the Project X Handbook: Get the Boys Reading and Writing: The Essential Guide to Raising Boys’ Achievement.