...a pupil in a secondary school that is effectively integrating e-learning with traditional learning techniques.

  Uzman arrives in school at 8.30 and goes straight to the open learning area. He logs on to retrieve some marked homework ready for today ’s English lesson. Last night he completed two homework assignments on his home computer and stored these in his user area on the school system. His friend Jenny had also done the same, but had borrowed one of the school’s laptops as she has no computer at home.As they look at their marked homework they discuss what they did for last night’s assignments...

  After assembly, first period is GNVQ (i.e. General National Vocational Qualification) science, in which digital learning materials on the school ’s intranet feature prominently. Currently pupils are working through these in a three-week block. Uzman works independently on the unit on physical forces and regularly discusses his experiences with other pupils doing this topic through a virtual learning community of which he is a member. However, he knows that he can e-mail his science teacher to seek help with any assessment tasks he has not understood. He also knows that, for this lesson, the teacher has prioritised direct support for another group of pupils who are having rather more difficulty with some of the ideas than he is...

  Second lesson is Geography – a straightforward traditional lesson on volcanoes with no ICT, except that the teacher uses the digital projector to show digitised news footage of a volcano that had erupted the previous day in Hawaii and provides the class with three websites for the pupils to explore either at home or in the open resource centre after school. The pupils have to identify the gaps in the information provided on these sites and then identify further sites and later on give a presentation in groups,using the interactive whiteboard...

  Fourth period and it’s off to the D&T (i.e. Design & Technology) workshop, where Uzman’s group are currently working on a CADCAM project using a sophisticated design package. Uzman gets into a discussion with the teacher and three other pupils about the design of the photograph frames they are working on. The teacher tries to get the group to develop their designs so that they are more adventurous and unusual. As a result of this, Uzman goes to one of the available machines and tries out various changes to his design. He stores these in his user area and decides to look at them later, working from home...

  Uzman is following a GCSE (i.e. General Certificate of Secondary Education) short course in ICT and this comes next. The class is currently working on the validity and bias of data. The lesson takes place in an ordinary classroom in which the teacher has access to a fixed computer on the network and the Internet. Using digital projection facilities, the teacher visits a site for an environmental lobby group and compares this with a Government site on global warming. A lively discussion ensues and the class works in small groups to identify what clues to look for in a website address and in the content available on entry to the site...

  The school operates a “Seventh Period” session in which pupils can voluntarily follow the activity of their choice. This includes a range of clubs and other extra-curricular activities. Uzman goes to the “ICT for all” club where he is working with three other pupils on the development of parts of the school’s website. They are creating pages about the school ’s sports teams and are including digital video clips that they have filmed and edited.

Possible assignments:
1. Summarize each paragraph in your own words.
2. Comment on each of Uzman's lessons and try to imagine how they would work out.
3. Under present circumstances, which of the ideas presented in the text could be materialized at your school?