IT Skills Audit for a Stress-free Teacher
The purpose of this audit is to allow you to assess what skills you should develop in order to be an efficient teacher.
This audit is only useful if you approach it with the right mindset. You should not just seek to convince yourself that 'you know most of this stuff'. You are, in effect, searching for a needle in a haystack: some piece of skill or knowledge which might delay you in your work, compromise the quality of your teaching, or cause you stress. Of course, finding it isn't enough - when you find a problem, you need to fix it...
You should have a well-established routine for managing passwords, creating passwords which are easy for you to remember, but impossible for others to guess.
You should understand the importance of virus-checkers and be able to protect your home PC or laptop and any other device (eg hard-drive, ipad) which holds material from work.
You should understand the basic ideas of backing up and archiving data, and have a routine which would allow you to carry on working if a disaster happens.
Assess: you should not have to write passwords down, or get prompts, reminders or help. You should remain pretty well entirely virus-free.
You should never lose significant data.
You should be familiar with the Help features of a standard computer and understand enough technical vocabulary to seek help and to learn new skills when necessary. This includes words like: task-bar, window, toolbar, icon.
Assess: you should use 'Help' routinely before asking a colleague.
You should be able to organise your electronic resources. This means that you should be able to create, rename, and delete folders and sub-folders; you should understand the idea of version management; you should know how and why to backup your work, you should understand the basic idea of file associations, file types and the difference between programs and data.
You should understand the issues involved with having different copies of data in different places (for example: home PC, laptop, memory stick) and be able to use file sizes and date-modified to identify old versions.
Assess: you should be able to find electronic resources quickly in your electronic folders, and restore them if they are accidentally deleted. If you are given a file of data, you should be able to guess which program to open it with.
You should be able to produce, from scratch, a well-presented word-processed document. This means that you should understand basic formatting conventions and be able to use the following features with confidence: font size and style, lists, text alignment, line spacing and indenting, page numbering, headers and footers, simple graphics and symbols, and tables. You should know how to select text, cut, copy, find, replace, spell-check and print.
Assess: you should be able to review the drop-down menus and toolbars in your standard word-processor and know, with reasonable confidence, what each of them does.
You should be able to create, from scratch, presentations of near-professional quality. This means that you should be able to use the following features with confidence: text-boxes, images, graphics and colour; master slides, slide designs and layouts. You should understand the conventions of slide design, aesthetics and readability.
Assess: you should be able to prepare an acceptable presentation on a familiar topic in less than five minutes. Your presentations would require no correction or improvement to be shown to an adult audience of the general public.
You should be familiar with common Web browsers and be able to search the Web quickly and effectively; you should have an up-to-date library of reliable web-sites that you can use to seek resources and help.
Assess: With the exception of your long vacations (when you may be doing extensive research) you can quickly find information and download resources without help.
You should be able to carry out a simple mail-merge to produce personalised worksheets for a class.
Assess: Given a worksheet and a spreadsheet list of names (and a printer of course) you should be able to produce personalised copies in less than five minutes
You should recognise the standard navigation keys and icons used in database management systems and be able to navigate, find, edit and enter records quickly, and create simple queries to search for data.
Assess: You should be able to use the tab keys, enter key and standard icons in any standard system,and search for records quickly.
You should be able to enter text, numbers and formulae into a spreadsheet; format cells to display correctly; use simple functions and conditional formatting, set print areas and print a sheet with headings.
Assess: You should be able to produce a simple printable class marksheet (after exporting a list of names) in less than 20 minutes.
You should be able to create, reply to and forward e-mail messages, you should delete or file all messages, with attachments. You should be able to use .cc. You should understand the conventions of business e-mails and be able to communicate concisely and effectively.
Assess: You should handle your incoming e-mail quickly, keep your inbox small, and be regarded as an effective communicator by your peers.
You should be able to play audio and video on a PC. You should have a basic knowledge of media file types, media players software and hardware..
Assess: You should be able to use video and audio in your lessons, with less than five minutes preparation each time.
You should be able to include graphics (clipart, simple hand-drawn diagrams, photos, borders) in your documents and presentations.
Assess: Your resources should be visually rich and interesting to look at.
You should have a working knowledge of any available hardware which can be helpful in your teaching (eg interactive whiteboard, printer, scanner, visualiser, photocopier).
Assess: You should be able to use these, understand the operating controls and carry out basic troubleshooting without assistance.