So, you're responsible for the use of educational technology in the school, but its use and principles are taught across the curriculum rather than as a discrete subject. In other words, by non-specialists in all likelihood. How can you maintain high standards in ICT and the use of educational technology in such a situation?
In this article I look at 14 suggestions.
You may not know this, but there is not a lot of difference between a Lee Oskar diatonic harmonica (the type used by blues and folk musicians) and a Hohner Blues Band harmonica. The Lee Oskar is said to have been engineered to give a “sharper” edge to the tone, which suits the blues sound, whereas the Marine Band, being slightly “softer”, works well for folk music too. Unless you’re a purist, there is probably not much in it. As someone once said:
“A difference is only a difference if it makes a difference.”
Interesting approach to encouraging teachers to use technology in their teaching, specifically Web 2.0. It is similar to what some teachers told me about how they encourage their colleagues to use interactive whiteboards more effectively, whilst I was doing research for an article recently.
Sometimes you need to convince colleagues to think about using educational technology in their lessons, or to identify where in their scheme of work they could incorporate it. This list is a starting point: you may find one or two points that would "resonate" with your co-worker, and grab his or her attention.
For an interesting discussion with your students on the effects of technology on society, consider the impending solar flares.
As the article states:
The so-called "X-flare" could also cause radio signals to jam, satnavs to fail and electrical power grids to falter. Electromagnetic storms are already reported to have stopped shortwave radio communications in southern China.
The big challenge facing ICT leaders in schools is often not to do with providing the facilities, but in encouraging teachers to use those facilities – and to do so in a meaningful way. We’ve all seen examples of where students are allowed to play on the computer if they’ve finished their “real” work, or where students whose regular teacher is not in school, and for whom no work has been set, get to do the same.
Listen to Shelly Terrell giving us her ideas on how to get other teachers using technology in their subjects. Drew Buddie and I are running a series of Teachshares -- online discussions with guest speakers.
Here’s a great example of the danger of using code to suggest related articles without having someone check the results. In an article in the UK’s Daily Telegraph entitled “Education secretary Michael Gove admits he was beaten at school”, there is a panel headed “Related Articles”. This is what it lists:
First, a quick translation. What we Brits call an ICT Co-ordinator, our American cousins tend to refer to as a Technology Co-ordinator. It’s all very confusing, and would never have arisen had the USA not broken away from us a couple of hundred years ago. But I digress.
All over the country, indeed all over the world, ed tech evangelists are bending over backwards helping, training and cajoling their colleagues into adopting the use of technology in their own curriculum area. Let’s be honest, most of the time it’s a thankless task. The hapless ICT Co-ordinator
Here’s a photo that was taken circa 1990. It shows a history lesson in progress, in one of the computer rooms. This is the sort of lesson I really like. As you can tell from looking at the picture, which was unposed, all the kids are fully engaged. The history teacher can be seen to the left of the photo, almost out of shot – literally a guide on the side. The topic, as you may have gathered, is the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the students, who were 14 at the time, were using a variety of sources, both digital and paper.
I’ve annotated the photo with letters. Here’s what they indicate.
A: The history teacher.
B Two girls collaborating on researching a database.
C Girl making notes on her findings, on paper, for use in a presentation later.
D Screenshots from the JFK database showing photos that were taken at the time.
E You can’t see it very well, but that’s a box of printer paper for use in a dot matrix printer. The paper was a ream of pages joined up and perforated, like toilet paper, with sprocket holes down the sides.
F A camera. I used to use cameras in my lessons to capture what went on. Note that this was pre-digital camera days, so the camera took…
G … Film.
H Newspapers, just one of several types of resources we used in the lesson.
I It’s not very clear, but that’s a 3.5” so-called “floppy disk”. That one could hold around 740 kilobytes of data.
J A monitor. It looks very quaint now, but I’d equipped the room with Atari ST computers. Although mainly associated with games, there was a range of office and educational applications available. All the programs shared common menus, which made it very easy to learn new applications – remember, this was around the time of Windows version 1. The monitors were high definition, with black text on a white background, unlike certain other computers at the time. They were fast too.
K As far as I can tell, this is one of only two girls in the entire class who was actually listening to the teacher at the time; well, be fair: they had work to do!
If you think I’ve missed some bits which need explaining, please let me know.And please let me know if you find this sort of thing interesting.
Do advertisers know something we don’t? Some years ago a soft drinks company brandished the slogan “Our bottles are sterilised with steam!” – omitting the fact that all soft drinks companies used that method. I was reminded of this yesterday whilst in a hardware store (the old kind of hardware, ie nuts and bolts and things). On sale was a fly swat whose packaging proudly declared: “Poison-free”. That’s right: there wasn’t even an exclamation mark, which would at least have hinted at self-irony.
Tell me something I DON'T knowHave ICT Co-ordinators and others whose job it is to bring other colleagues on board with using technology missed a trick? Perhaps posters could inform people that computers do things automatically, or that word processors have built-in spell-checkers.
Actually, I know I’m being slightly cynical, but on a serious point, where do you draw the line? For example, I am pretty sure that a lot of people don’t realise that spreadsheets let you run the same basic calculation over and over again without your having to enter all the information again – unlike with a calculator, once you have set the spreadsheet up all you have to do is change the numbers (variables) you use.
I’m fairly confident that most people know that spell-checkers are a feature of word-processors, but what about the outlining feature, which allows you to see only the main headings? And if aware of that, are they further aware that by changing the order of those headings, they will automatically move all the text under them?
People don’t know what they don’t know. It may be worthwhile trying to think of things your colleagues don’t know about the computer facilities in your school – and then telling them all about what, to you, is obvious.
Terry Freedman, Educational ICT Consultant