Using & Teaching Educational Technology
How do we make most schools e-enabled?
By Terry Freedman
Mon, 25 May 2009, 18:00

Assuming that we think e-enablement is a worthy goal (definitions vary, but one of the most popular is that a school is said to be e-enabled if it could not function without its technology; I’m not sure that’s a good position to be in, but I get the point), how do we achieve it?

Or, to be somewhat more accurate, how do we achieve it faster? In the UK we’ve had a massive investment in technology in schools over the past decade, but many schools are still not e-enabled. (Figures vary, but the percentage of schools said to be e-enabled seems to be somewhere between 11 and 20%.)

Perhaps this is an illustration of seeing a half-full glass as half-empty. I certainly don’t wish to come across as a pessimist – I think there have been huge achievements. Nevertheless, I think it would be an incredible feat of self-imposed blindness to not wonder how come we haven’t achieved even more. At the Naace 2009 Conference, Niel McLean of Becta had a few suggestions.

Challenges

The challenges facing schools as far as the ICT Strategy (Harnessing Technology) is concerned are many (see illustration).

McLean’s suggestions included the following:

1. Move from supply-side push to demand-side pull.

I doubt that anyone would disagree with this. You actually need both forces to be able to make headway, and it’s interesting to see how the emphasis has changed over the decades. My recollection of the the mid-80s to mid-90s is that the emphasis was on the demand side. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and Becta were  continually publishing glossy booklets extolling the value of ICT for geography, history and so on, as well as collating (favourable) research from all over the world concerning the benefits of technology in education. I was even on a couple of national committees at the time, discussing ways and means of getting more teachers, and therefore schools, on board.

Then it all seemed to change and be about funding and targets, driven from central government working through local  government. That was a welcome phase too, which has eased up somewhat.

The big question though is: how do you increase the demand? The government’s approach now is to try to do so via parents, hence the Next Generation Learning initiative, part of which concentrates on encouraging parents to find out if their child’s school has been awarded the ICT Mark. This leaning towards the home as a key influencing force is not without foundation, being either based on, or justified by, research by Charles Desforge into the impact of parental involvement in a child’s education.

Types of dialogue

McLean draws on the idea that there are different types of dialogue, as shown in the photograph above. The diagram kind of makes sense, except for the double arrow between the learner and the school labelled 'mentoring': I’m not sure in what sense the learner would mentor her school. Leaving such hair-splitting aside, this does lead on to McLean’s next point:

2. Let’s start talking about rights, not technology.

McLean illustrates this with a simple (but very effective) example. If your child was learning French at school, would not a reasonable expectation on your part be that he or she has a conversation with a real French person at least once a week?

I recall expressing a similar point of view some years ago in a school. I had asked the Head of Science if he would like me to show him some science software I’d been sent. His response was that computers were not relevant to his department’s work.

I was scandalised! "Wait a second!", I exclaimed. "You're telling me that computers are relevant to the work of every university and commercial science lab in the world, but not in this school?"

I should like to point out that such a response is not guaranteed to help you win friends and influence people. Still, I stand by the sentiment of what I said, and I think this is pretty much the point McLean is making too.

The problem is, of course, that many people have low expectations of themselves as far as technology is concerned, and so there is almost a kind of silent collusion between them and the school that 'we won’t do anything too challenging'.

3. We need to recognise the post-Plowden paradigm.

The seminal Plowden Report changed the face of primary (elementary) education in the UK by emphasising 'learning by doing' (as opposed to learning by listening). Now, in the post-Plowden era, we need to move to 'learning by making'.

Want to see what would happen if a volcano erupted? Then make it erupt, using a computer simulation. Want to understand the process of movie making? Then make a movie. Want to understand French (to link this to the previous point)? Then hold a video-conference conversation via Skype with someone in France.

Conclusion

This is all very sensible, of course. But I suspect that in five years’ time we will still be pulling our hair out over the vexed question of how to get more schools to make ICT an integral part of their being.

This is Reflection #13 in the series of 25 reflections on the Naace 2009 Conference.

Wordle summary:

© Terry Freedman Mon, 25 May 2009