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On 05/11/10 19:42, Henry Bremridge wrote:
Had a look at the recent (Association of Teachers and Lecturers) magazine http://www.atl.org.uk/publications-and-resources/report/report-2010/feature-schools-ict.asp If you had to spend a million pounds, you'd really hope to have something to show for it. Yet most schools have spent at least that on ICT and get nothing obvious in return — aside from a few hundred PCs running Windows XP and a handful of smart gadgets. .... Valuable contact time has been offered up to teach ICT while staff training opportunities have been squandered on yet another integration of Microsoft Office or the introduction of an even newer, smarter, brighter VLE — whatever one of those might be. But no money has been saved whatsoever. Nor have we seen any obvious gains in productivity. We're not teaching larger cohorts. Pupils are not taking any more subjects or acquiring better grades. No one has identified improvements across the academic landscape that they are confident to ascribe to ICT. Indeed, for the most part — and for most teachers — ICT is at best a distraction and at worst a hurdle to the continuity of classroom teaching. .... Despite the lessons of prohibition and our extensive experience of teenage ingenuity, we still believe that we can control our students with a few lines of code and an 'Acceptable use policy', which is nice but, frankly, naïve. It only takes one smart kid to bypass all our passwords, proxies, policies and procedures. One smart kid who can set up a wireless network of their own, a proxy server in their home and a password sniffer so good it could search for truffles. And I'm betting that you have at least one smart kid in your school. ...
Actually you missed the important bit in the article"We block Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. We denigrate Wikipedia and HowStuffWorks. We ban mobile phones and digicams. We even make our students write by hand. No wonder they think we're all closet Luddites. We're cutting off our noses to spite our faces. Students are not particularly constrained by our attempts to lock them out of virtual space.
His argument is that we have invested in an infrastructure and then invested in policies that block student access to that infrastructure which I agree. The title unfortunately is misleading. Hes not saying that students don't need ICT, what he is saying is that students don't need ICT implemented the way it is in schools."
However I don't agree with :-"Teenagers upgrade their mobile phone every 12 months. Even the socially disadvantaged are one step ahead of their school's ICT. That's not a problem. That's a huge opportunity schools should grasp. It's an opportunity to save money and upgrade our thinking about ICT.
Even last year's smartphone will operate as a calculator. And a book reader. It will translate the Bible from the original Hebrew and can differentiate Sin(x). It can pinpoint both the Battle of Hastings and the Belt of Orion. It will act as a word processor, a piano and a spirit level. Not bad for a bit of kit that your school didn't purchase and doesn't maintain."
There are still kids who don't want mobile smart phones. There are still kids who can't afford mobile smart phones.And smart phones can not replace your entire ICT requirements they can only supplement it.
I challenge anyone to get blender to function on a smart phone. His final conclusion is spot on however :-"Schools don't need ICT. It's coming through our doors every day. We just need to adopt and adapt a little bit."
The only danger is that kids will get too wrapped up in the technology instead of actually learning or more importantly learning how to learn.
I am deeply concerned that after his first half of term in secondary my son has not been taught anything about good searching techniques, note taking, brainstorming or planning. What little is taught of these skills is through disjointed subject by subject exposure, in such a way that only the brightest will associate the general skills and learn the learning techniques needed to be successful. Yes English is important, Maths is Important, good reading skills are important and practically every science is important, BUT most important is having the skills to go on learning. It took me 20+ years before I realised that this was what I was missing and still my skills are not the greatest they could be in these areas. No formal education establishment taught me any of this save the study guide that the OU sent me when I enrolled.
Tom. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq