Example 1b - Creating and recording Individual Education Plans

Teachers in a special school decided to review the way they recorded IEPs. They felt that quite a lot of what they were writing on their IEP forms was similar for a number of pupils and wondered if there was a way of cutting down the time it took to complete them.

They discussed the problem and decided they wanted to be able to:

• select targets from a bank of options
• amend the targets easily
• enter their own targets and then keep them for future use

Someone mentioned hearing about report-writing software which had banks of statements from which you selected your comments and said that sounded like just the sort of thing they wanted.
A member of staff went away and looked in the archives of the SENCO-forum mailing list (see Scenario 3 – Sending to a mailing list) to see if there had been any discussion on such software.

She found that two had been mentioned – IEP Writer where the focus was considered to be primary, and IEP Developer which had a secondary focus. IEP Developer is designed to run on a network, allowing all the staff who teach the pupil to contribute to the IEP.

The teacher sent for an evaluation copy of IEP Writer. (The school did not have a network and the pupils were taught mainly by one teacher, so she decided IEP Developer was not appropriate for them.)

The staff, while they thought that some of the targets were not appropriate for their school population, liked the ease with which targets could be amended. They also found it easy to add to the banks of targets. They liked the fact that achievement criteria, resources and classroom strategies were also included. They felt that this method of creating IEPs would make their production easier and help standardize them across the school.

Key skills and equipment

The key skills for the above example are:

• logging on
• typing in a URL
• using hyperlinks
• finding archived material
• amending and adding text within an application

The key equipment is:

• a computer linked to the Internet
• browser software
• a trial copy of IEP Writer

Example 1c - IEP writing

In another school staff room, staff were debating the same issue. Here staff were much more mixed in their views. They had met to discuss the format of their IEP and whether there was a more efficient way of completing it. Some staff said that, whatever the decision on the format, they were very happy writing their IEPs and did not want to change their way of working. They often wrote a large proportion of them during the review meetings and would find a computer intrusive in that situation. A few confessed that their lack of typing skills would slow the process down far too much. Other members of staff took a different view. They thought they would prefer to word process the information but would like a framework within which to do so. A few wanted a more automated process which would enable them to add phrases and sentences at the touch of a button.

The staff decided to create a word-processed pro forma, which could be either printed out or completed on-screen. Someone had the idea that since on-screen grids were being used successfully in the school to improve the pupils’ speed of writing, they could be used to create a bank of commonly used phrases and sentences to speed up IEP production as well.

That decision made, they began to consider the layout and organization of their existing form comparing it with others they had access to. Their local authority had produced some examples and they went to the DfEE SEN Web site www.dfee.gov.uk/sen/sencoinf.htm and downloaded the two example IEPs that had been provided there. (Please note: this web link, as published in the printed Units is out of date. Please go to http://www.dfes.gov.uk/sen/viewDocument.cfm?dID=263, and download section 5.)

They compared the models they had, decided on a format, and constructed their own pro forma using the text boxes and text frames. They saved their page as a template; a new IEP would be opened as a new document so that when it was saved there would be no danger of the template being overwritten.

Key skills and equipment

The key skills for the above example are:

• downloading a file from the Web
• creating tables and text boxes within a word processor
• saving a document as a template
• creating an on-screen grid
• using an on-screen grid

The key equipment is:

• a computer linked to the Internet
• browser software

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