Improving the use of ICT in Foundation Stage case study: Oxfordshire

Case study evidence 2: From a Foundation/Year 1 class in a small primary school

• Date: Feb 2007
• Focus: Using ICT to capture children’s learning in order to plan the next steps for children, and to record the learning in a format that can be shared with practitioners, parents and other professionals.
• Number in series: 14
• Phase: Early Years
• Key stage: Foundation Stage
• Local authority: Oxfordshire

The practitioner leading the project was already using digital photographs as evidence in Foundation Stage profiles, but had never used digital video before. She was very enthusiastic about the potential digital video had to offer and identified opportunities in her planning where digital video could be used for assessment. She used the digital movie maker effectively for taking video clips and photographs, using the digital movie maker software to annotate them for evidence in Foundation Stage profiles.

The practitioner used the video clips that had been taken particularly effectively to share observations of children with another practitioner. One particular example of this was work a practitioner had been doing in the outdoor area, which she recorded using the digital movie maker and then later reviewed and discussed with the practitioner leading the project. The practitioner leading the project commented on how useful this had been in enabling her to both support another practitioner to identify how to move the children’s learning forward and support her in how the clips and photographs could be used as assessment evidence in the Foundation Stage profiles. The impact of the use of digital media for assessment was that both practitioners were able to make observations of children, which could not be captured as effectively in any other way.

One practitioner said, I fully understand the importance of it, and added that she just needs more practice, while the other practitioner said that using digital video and digital photographs had made her more aware of what she could keep as evidence of children’s achievements.

The practitioners also used the digital photographs and video clips for children’s recall of events, with children deciding on annotations to add to the clips when they were shared with the whole group using an interactive whiteboard.

In moving forward with the use of digital video the practitioners plan to provide opportunities for the children to record their own work.

Children in this setting and a nursery (case study four) took part in two video conferences with each other, to share songs and nursery rhymes and to talk about what they had been doing in their respective settings. The two settings were contrasting in their environments, one a large city nursery, the other a small village school. The practitioners in the two settings are very keen to continue this relationship and develop their video conferences with each other, particularly to share different environmental and cultural experiences.

Despite sound problems during the first session, practitioners in both settings felt very positive about the experience and said that having an audience for the children of other children was particularly powerful in developing their speaking and listening skills.