CD Roms

There are two basic ways a CD Rom can be used:

as a stand alone resource - a bit like having a topic specific dictionary or encylopaedia on the shelf in the classroom

as a whole class activity in a room with enough computers for at least one between two.

Stand alone:

You could set the class work which involves finding out information, and provide them with a list of resources which includes the CD Rom which they could use just like a book.

If a particular question arises in a lesson, you could suggest that a student looks up the answer on the CD Rom.

Use it privately to increase your own subject expertise.

Whole class activity: This requires rather more work for the teacher! Technical note The CD Rom needs to be set up on a work station on your school’s own network so that all the computers can access it at the same time. You need to ask your network administrator to set it up for you (at my school they’re just learning how to do this as I write!). NB. There may be copyright problems with some CD Roms.

You could plan a set of tasks or a worksheet which will take the class on a trail through the relevant areas of the CD Rom. This does mean that the teacher has to have been through the whole thing themselves beforehand, working out questions and seeing what the CD has to offer - quite good fun, but also very time consuming - something for the Summer holiday perhaps?!

Some CD Roms have trails built in, but sometimes the questions are too simplistic - like an American school ‘pop quiz’ (computers tend to be happiest when dealing with yes or no answers - something to do with binary code, I think).

Another possibility is to get one or two students who have already studied a particular topic to prepare a CD Rom trail on it for other students - to be used with the next year’s class perhaps. This has the advantage of helping the creators to consolidate what they have already learned and feel valued, and it reduces the amount of work for the teacher.

DOs: Do make sure the CD Rom does what you want it to before buying - they can be quite expensive (see my note on prices below). Sometimes you can obtain them on inspection but more often not.
Do make sure you know what’s on the CD Rom before letting students use it (unless you want them to evaluate its usefulness for you - another possible exercise). Sometimes the information is not quite correct, or not what you’ve told them (!) or it may deal only with certain (uncharacteristic) groups within a religion. Students may feel that because it’s printed on the screen it’s ‘more true’ than what you’ve told them from your own real life experiences!

DON’Ts: Lend a CD Rom to a student to take home - you might never see it again!
Use it as a ‘reward’ for good work, or an ‘add-on’ to the subject work - its use should be integrated into the curriculum, and if it sits uncomfortably with the rest of your teaching and learning styles then it’s obviously not appropriate to use it.

What’s available?: There isn’t a vast array of CD Roms and some of them are rather odd both in content and in the way they work.

Reviews: Click here to see some reviews of ones I’ve used and RE sites listing and reviewing others available.