Information Technology in a Global Society SL

What makes this online course unique

Our online ITGS courses cover the same content and prepares students for the same assessments as traditional face-to-face courses. However, the online environment presents students with some very unique learning opportunities. We asked our course developers and teachers to tell us what they think is special about our online ITGS courses (both SL and HL), and to give us some concrete examples of how assignments take advantage of the online environment. Here are some of their answers:

“What is special about taking IB ITGS online?”

An international classroom:

• “Classmates from all around the world bring the ideals of internationalism and the IB alive.”

Independent learning skills:

• “Of course it’s impossible for the online academic year to perfectly align with school calendars around the world, so there are occasions when the course stretches over school holidays. Teachers try to be flexible, but online study does require a greater degree of self-discipline from the student than would a typical face-to-face course. The good news is that students who develop the necessary time management skills find they have much more freedom for other activities – academic and otherwise. And time management is a skill that will stand students in good stead for the rest of their lives.”

Student-centred learning environment:

• “With 24/7 access to course content, students are able to follow their own pace on a week-to-week basis.”
• “In a face-to-face classroom, some students can ‘hide in the crowd’ and get away with being passive. That’s not possible in an online classroom. There’s nowhere to hide, and to be successful you must be an active participant. On the other hand, online forums and discussions provide a ‘level playing field’ for kids. Students enjoy greater equality in discussion than they would have in a face-to-face classroom. They have more confidence because being online is a more comfortable setting online. They’re not self-conscious about being ‘put on the spot’ by teachers or classmates.”

Relevant learning experience:

• “The online learning environment is ideal for the subject of ITGS. Students are actually doing what they are learning about. Every lesson features a practical opportunity to investigate a wide range of Web 2.0 communication tools.”
• “The whole concept of using online tools is an important part of this course. Giving the students the opportunity to use these tools helps their overall understanding of the technology and its implications.”

What specific online tools are used in delivery of the course, and in what ways?

• One of the key aspects of the course is analysis of current news articles. Diigo® is a social bookmarking tool that enables students to share links and annotated web pages with each other. This is done via the ITGS Triangle model, with the analysis and a link to the article uploaded to Diigo and shared with the rest of the class.
• Blogs provide the medium for students’ online journals. These are used for guided reflection by the student on material covered in the previous week or two. The focus is more on personal thoughts and opinions of both the material covered and how different aspects of the course are going, including their own opinion of their own efforts.
• Google Docs® is used by the students for the storage of documents. As students work collaboratively on team tasks and developing group responses, Google Docs enables easy collaboration and an understanding of how to work in the cloud.
• Podcasts are used as an alternative method to communicate for certain assignments during the course.
• Netvibes® is used as a way to aggregate a large number of feeds from different web pages that bring together topical technology-based news articles for students to read. Netvibes is split into a number of pages and will also focus as a browser desktop with communications links, and a further feed of Diigo links.
• Online Concept Mapping is used for collaborative revision of major topics in the last semester.
• This year the students will have access to e-textbooks. One text, “Tomorrow’s Technology and You”, is used for the technical side of the course (Strand 3: IT Systems) and for some scenario work (Strand 2: Applications to specified scenarios). The other textbook, “A Gift of Fire”, is used for the social and ethical aspects (Strand 1: Social and Ethical significance) and for further scenario work. These e-books allow for easy note-taking as students progress and support students in the revision process as well.
• The Atomic Learning® site provides site provides software tutorials which the students can use throughout the course. Tutorials cover such topics as spreadsheets, databases and web-related tools.
• Wikis will be used extensively by students to bring together a large repository of knowledge over the two years, including a full ITGS glossary and work on the Paper 3 Case Study.