Week 5 Group Task --- Explore curriculum in IPPUT HU Jiani (Janey)

Types of curriculum focus in IPPUT:
        There are three types have been mentioned in the class last week: Single subject focus,Thematic focus and school-wide focus. As I have searched some cases through the Internet and connecting with my own study experience, I think curriculum focus in IPPUT can also have these types as below:

1. Needs or demands focus - ICT supports pedagogical practices which is suitable to individual demands. This is widely used in distant education area. Online schools which offered distant education courses design the curriculum which can suit individual learning requirement.

2. Area focus - According to the cases given in IPPUT, they also have different types according to the academic areas.ICT is used to improve the learning methodology in different areas no matter economic area or literature area.

3. object focus - ICT used to facilitate the implementation for different people. When the curriculum being designed, it should be considered in the factor of objects.

Roles of curriculum in IPPUT
It is hard to describe. As far as I can consider about, it plays roles as below:

1.Catalyst - the curriculum in IPPUT cannot stay as same as what they are now, it should keep the speed with the requirements or demands current learner will change,and suitable to the future learners. And it should keep developing with the society. It can be a catalyst towards both ICT innovation and learners while it become better and better.

2.Productor or director - as my group mate William said,"Utilisation is the final goal of all the education", curriculum in IPPUT can play as a productor or director who could lead learners to equipt with utilitarian skills,technology or knowledge.

Week 5 Group Task --- Explore curriculum in IPPUT WU Hao (William)

Curriculum, by definition, refers to the course offered by an educational institution or a set of courses constituting an area of specialization (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

When the types of curriculum focus were mentioned, the categories of curriculum should be firstly discussed.

Types of Curriculum

1.       Traditional

This is the traditional teaching approach with textbooks familiar to the public school attendants. It is comprised of  6-7 unrelated subjects with a different book for each.

Learning Style Match: Visual and Auditory

Advantages: More likely to cover the basic teaching objectives and the lesson planning could be laid out

Disadvantages: Time consuming, difficult to teach students with different grades or learning experiences.

2.       Thematic Unit Study

This is also known as “thematic learning” or integrated learning. Basic school knowledge in school are now studied in light of a particular topic, theme or period instead isolated knowledge segments.

Learning Style Match: Multi-sensory

Advantages: Different grades and ages could collaborate together, specific teaching in relevant area of interest

Disadvantages: Lesson planning tends to be more flexible and requires more structure, lacks test taking skill in content areas.

Week 5 Group Task--Explore curriculum in IPPUT: Qi Yang (Carol)

According to English (2000), “curriculum is any document that exists in a school that defines the work of teachers by identifying the content to be taught and the methods to be used”. Curriculum innovation can hardly be successful unless teachers ‘conceptions and beliefs about teaching and learning are taken into account. Teachers and administrators often focus on the Big Three, the written, taught and tested curriculum, in order to maximize the learned curriculum (Glatthorn, 1987).

Improved curriculum types generally include:

-Aligned: use the right methods to bring the written, the taught, the supported, and the tested curriculums into closer alignment, so that the learned curriculum is maximized;

-Concept-Based: the conceptual transfer of knowledge includes the application of concepts or universal generalizations across time, cultures or situations;

-Differentiated: teacher proactively plans varied approaches to what students need to learn, how they will learn it, and/or how they can express what they have learned in order to increase the likelihood that each student will learn as much as he or she can as efficiently as possible;

Week 5 Group Task--Explore curriculum in IPPUT HUANG Luyi(Louise)

1.Types of curriculum focus in IPPUT

Except for the single-subject focus, thematic focus and school-wide focus these three types of curriculum focus ,there are some curriculum focus in IPPUT. 

In fact , I think we can divide the type of curriculum focus in different aspects. So I will divide the type of curriculum focus according to different learning outcome , so there are :

Skill focus : The curriculum is tend to focus on information skill,collaborative skill or other skills , the ICT provided as the tool for mastering these skill.

Knowledge focus: The curriculum focus on the knowledge and concepts about a definite aspect, ICT provide materials and scaffolding for knowledge building and facilitate the understanding to the knowledge.

Emotion focus: The main goal of curriculum is to nurture the attitude,emotion and values to some problem, ICT create an environment for nurturing the emotion.

2.Roles of curriculum in IPPUT
Roles of Curriculum in IPPUT is difficult to describe. But anyway, the curriculum cannot remain static.  It must be responsive to changes in society and the economy, and changes in the nature of schooling itself.

1. Adapt and implement IPPUT. Curriculum provide a container for the alignment of innovative practices.  The curriculum goals are the purpose for innovative practices, the schedule of curriculum is the implementation of innovative practice.

2.Curriculum is the promotion for IPPUT. The innovative practice can be experimented in curriculum , the experience can spread though teachers of curriculum. Teachers can know what's the influence and how students reacted during the innovative practice and get the supportive feedback. That would help the improvement to the IPPUT.  It also help to promote the innovation to other teachers .

3.Adjust the IPPUT. Curriculum are a small concept, it would help to adjust the IPPUT in a specific environment, to modify the IPPUT to different situation , to different culture, different students and schools.

4.Nurture the IPPUT. All in all, curriculum are implemented by different educators, teachers will share their teaching experiences and hold their curriculum in a personal way, that kind of pedagogy is the very beginning of innovative thoughts. When the ideas become more and more structured and are experimented in real teaching, it would eventually become the structured model of innovative practice. In this way, the curriculum could nurture the IPPUT and make it more sophisticated by the practice.