Articles – Page 7 – Shooting Azimuths

In Digital Strategy, Educational Technology

Now you see IT Technology works best when it's invisible

I’m delighted to be participating in the iPedagogy event coming up in November. In the run-up to the event the organisers asked me to write an article for their blog, which is published here and you can read below:

Last week we handed out just short of 400 iPads to pupils in years 7 and 12 and new staff in the first phase of our staged 1:1 iPad implementation. This initial roll out was preceded by months of research, rigorous preparation and a multitude of staff training sessions exclusively dedicated to tablets and other digital tools. Pupils have also spent a great deal of the last week immersed in iPad-related vocabulary and syntax: setting up their iCloud accounts, configuring their Exchange email addresses and enrolling on our Mobile Device Management program. Witnessing how words and phrases that were completely foreign to many of us can quickly gain currency and become part of the vernacular is remarkable.

In a sense, the focus we have placed on technology over the last few months and, especially, this last week, is precisely the polar opposite of the main stated aim of our digital strategy, which is to make technology invisible – like plumbing or electricity. This is because we believe that technology is at its most effective when it goes unnoticed, when it’s just there when it’s needed, on tap. When it comes to technology integration in schools, invisibility is indeed a superpower.

However, this is much more easily said than achieved. As teachers and pupils are suddenly faced with a bewildering smorgasbord of new apps, iBooks, iTunes U courses and seemingly overwhelming array of media rich resources, not to mention ubiquitous access to the sum of all human knowledge, the technology is very much at the forefront of everyone’s minds. But this is to be expected at this stage.

The key is not to remain at this stage for long. What is really striking about schools where tablets have been around for a while is just how normal and ordinary having one is. Technology use in these schools is so ingrained that teachers and pupils are often unaware that they are using it. As far as they are concerned, they are just teaching or they are just learning – the fact that technology is being used is completely incidental.

We often refer to the transformative potential of technology with unbridled enthusiasm. But we must be able to recognise that the truly transformative potential lies within us, because it’s not what technology is used that matters, but how it is used. Or not used, for knowing when to use technology is as important as knowing when not to. Once everyone understands that technology is just a tool and and that teaching and learning are the only things that matter, technology tends to fade into the background.

This is not to say technology isn’t valuable or that its impact is minimal. Much like plumbing or electricity, truly great educational technology should only come to our notice when the supply stops. Of course it is possible to teach and learn without digital tools, but if technology is there to support and improve the processes involved in teaching and learning, why would you want to?

Education theorist Thomas Carruthers wrote early in the 20th century “a teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary”. His words still carry enormous significance today, early in the 21st century. Were he still around, I wonder if he would agree with my conclusion that great technology is that which that makes itself progressively invisible.

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In Education, Educational Technology

If I were in charge of education policy Notes for the Digitally Confident Conference 2014

Later this month I will be proudly participating in the Digitally Confident Conference 2014 at the Sage Gateshead. The organisers have asked all the speakers to provide a few thoughts about what each of us would do “if we were in charge of education policy” for a publication they’re putting together. Below is what came to my mind:

Asking me what I would do if I were in charge of education policy is probably like asking my 9-year-old son what he’d like to be when he grows up. In the same way he would like to be a Premier League football player, a singer in a rock band or a famous writer, I would like to put teachers in charge of their own profession, acknowledge that leading our profession cannot be a purely top-down technocratic affair and embrace rather than eschew the richness and range of education theory that underpins our practice.

I would also like us to accept that if a trained teacher thinks something works for them, that’s because it probably does. I would like us to start asking “where is the evidence?” not to end a conversation, but to start one. I would like us to understand that teaching is a messy combination of knowledge and skill, and in so doing I would like us to realise that quoting Freire or Hirsch makes us a better teacher in the same way that quoting Muhammad Ali makes us a better boxer.

In the field of technology integration, I would like us to stop viewing technology as an intervention or as an add-on to education. From lesson planning to lesson delivery; from transacting schoolwork to communicating feedback, technology is already woven into the fabric of teaching and learning in the vast majority of our schools. So, instead of trying to measure technology’s impact in isolation from important factors such as quality of feedback or teacher effectiveness, I would like us to start measuring how technology supports them and all the processes involved in teaching and learning.

Counter intuitively perhaps, we are more likely to understand and value the impact of technology when we shine the spotlight away from it and onto the pedagogy. “Woven into the fabric of teaching and learning” may not be a bad analogy after all, for technology is most effective when it is invisible.

Fanciful? Perhaps. Like my son, I may simply lack the necessary knowledge and experience to make reasonable and practical choices when it comes to education policy. However, like him, I’d like to think I may be merely unencumbered by them.

In Digital Strategy, Educational Technology

Digital Strategy: Articulating our vision to the wider school community Reflecting on our 1:1 programme

Over the past year, we have been engaging with our students, parents and the wider school community to communicate our 1:1 vision using a variety of modern and more traditional means. As well as frequent references made using social media (the School manages over forty social media accounts), we have sent electronic communications, letters and newsletters outlining our plans to roll out iPads to our students, starting this September. Below are a copy of the latest article on the subject in our termly newsletter and a video we have made to help articulate our vision:

Surbiton High School is embarking on an exciting journey to become an environment in which all teachers and students have access to tablets on a one-to-one basis over the next two academic years.

This digital strategy has arisen from our research into what makes teaching and learning successful. From this it was apparent that every aspect involved in both teaching and learning can be supported by the effective use of technology in the classroom and at home, but also from the realisation that, in order to best prepare students for life in the future, they need to learn with the tools of the present.

The focus of our digital strategy therefore takes into account how lessons are most effective and aims to put in place the means and support to enable teachers to use technology, when it is possible and appropriate, in order to support and improve the quality of the teaching and learning that starts off in their classrooms. To this aim, our staff received their iPads at the beginning of the Summer Term, ready for a School-wide roll out of tablets that will begin in September 2014, when we will see tablets and bespoke Surbiton High covers supplied free of charge to every student in Year 7 and Year 12 (the rest of the School will follow in 2015-2016) and classrooms sets delivered to the Junior Schools.

Whenever researchers have canvassed students’ opinions about what teachers can do to best support their learning, the three things that top their list are: teachers with excellent subject knowledge; feedback that is delivered sensitively and effectively; and resources that are media-rich and engaging. From this perspective, and backed by the latest research in cognitive psychology, we are devising a School digital strategy that supports staff and students in achieving the best possible teaching and learning.

Our staff and pupils contribute to the development of our digital strategy in various ways. Earlier this year, we established the Digital Strategy Steering Group, consisting of 18 members of staff with different pastoral and academic backgrounds. This group has been crucial in the development of the new policies needed to manage mobile devices and ubiquitous access to information, as well as in the procurement of new digital resources to complement the use of tablets to support learning.

Our Digital Council, made up of 16 students from Years 6 to 13, have also been key in understanding the exciting potential but also challenges involved in a School-wide tablet implementation. In regular half-termly meetings, we have explored the different aspects of this implementation, so that we are able to realise said potential whilst mitigating the challenges.

By the end of this term, the Digital Council will have devised a list of rules and expectations governing the use of tablets in the classroom. Both groups of students and teachers have been pivotal, not only in the cascading of our strategy across the School, but also in the delivery of weekly staff training sessions, ranging from helping members of staff to set up their tablets to more advanced sessions about the use of tablets to support teaching and learning in the classroom. These sessions will continue throughout the Autumn Term and into next year and will be supported by the visit of three Apple Distinguished Educators, who will train our staff during INSET in early September.

We believe that technology works best when it helps us achieve things that we would not have been able to achieve without it. As such, we envisage that tablets will be used, not instead of other resources, but, rather, as well as, when their use is justified by outcomes that would have been otherwise inconceivable and only when teaching and learning would benefit from their use.

We are also planning information evenings for parents and pupils over the next two years. Any thoughts about our strategy so far and suggestions about taking it forward would be greatly appreciated.

In Education

Evidence-based practice Is it just a buzzword?

I like a good buzzword in education: the embodiment of the zeitgeist. In recent months, evidence-based practice has been anointed as the latest buzzword adorning the altar at which teachers must worship.

This is a bit of a tricky opinion to voice. There will be, no doubt, those who will immediately assume I am “anti-evidence”, but I hope to make a more nuanced case about why we should accept every measure of what others hail as evidence with an equal measure of professional judgement.

Given its polysemic nature, it might be useful to frame this discussion by defining what I mean by evidence. Its meaning can range from unarguable fact to mere indication of something. In the context of teaching and learning, I think we would be wise to avoid zealotry in dealing with evidence, therefore I will define evidence as a sign or indication that something has been shown to work.

Take the example of a recent study by Fisher et al. about “the importance of focused attention for encoding and task performance”, titled Visual Environment, Attention Allocation, and Learning in Young Children: When Too Much of a Good Thing May Be Bad. The authors of the study found that “young children with immature regulation of focused attention are often placed in elementary-school classrooms containing many displays that are not relevant to ongoing instruction” and that “children were more distracted by the visual environment, spent more time off task, and demonstrated smaller learning gains when the walls were highly decorated than when the decorations were removed.”

Alfie Kohn, progressive extraordinaire, took issue immediately with the study’s findings and criticised pointedly its research methods and validity. Kohn wrote:

Even if we strip everything off the walls, those pesky kids will still engage in instructionally useless behaviors like interacting with one another or thinking about things that interest them. The researchers referred to the latter (thinking) as being “distracted by themselves.” Mark that phrase as the latest illustration of the principle that, in the field of education, satire has become obsolete.

What Kohn found so astounding about the study was its failure to account for affective factors. In fact, Dan Willingham, cognitive psychologist and Kohn’s sworn archenemy, joined forces with his nemesis in a special performance of the tired, old pantomime that is the traditional vs progressive debate to decry the study’s findings thus:

Even if we accept that classroom decoration brings a cost to learning, we should remember that teachers have other reasons for brightening their rooms; they want the classroom to be inviting, to feel like a social environment. Would it be more difficult to build a sense of classroom community in the sterile environment?

Hooray for common sense then. What both Kohn and Willingham are saying is that what some hail as evidence is just a small chapter in a much larger book. Children may well do better in tests if you remove all decorations from our classrooms. But is that what we should do though? Children have also been shown to do better in tests if you sit them in rows and encourage rote-learning. But is it what we should do?

Some clearly think so. Some schools, such as the newly founded Michaela School in Brent, believe, among other things, that sitting children in rows, rote-learning and strict discipline equate to academic rigour and, therefore, successful educational outcomes. And they are not alone: many traditionalist teachers subscribe vociferously to their values. And they boast to have evidence on their side.

And this is where the unfortunate dichotomies, the inevitable polarisation and the aforementioned zealotry begin. In a recent speech at the Times Educational Festival at Wellington College, Sir Michael Wilshaw, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, set up his stall by stating that “good schools ought to strive to get the best out of every pupil” and then derided “tired teaching orthodoxies that are a throw back to the sixties and seventies”. By using this clever rhetorical device, he made it appear as if you didn’t want schools to get “the best out of every pupil” if you disagreed with him about the “tired teaching orthodoxies”.

Shortly after Sir Michael’s speech, at the same event and as if to realign the festival’s karma, Guy Claxton, Professor of Learning Sciences at the University of Winchester, was scathing of “those who confuse sophistry and point scoring with understanding and intelligence”. Was he referring to the arguments made by Sir Michael? I don’t know, but his comments were certainly apposite and it felt very much like Sir Michael’s yin had met Claxton’s yang.

Sir Michael would clearly approve of Michaela’s vision. Like them, he believes that academic rigour derives from what he would describe as traditional values. Claxton would argue that there are people “who like to put their OR in” and I wonder whether Sir Michael, the founders of the Michaela School and their supporters were firmly in his sights. Either/ors, Claxton argued, don’t have a place in the real world. What children need from a good education is what he calls “results plus”.

Chatting to Martin Robinson, author of Trivium 21c, it soon becomes clear that he agrees at least this much. Children certainly need to do well in exams, but also in sport, arts, drama… To him – as to most of us – it is not a case of either/or, it’s and, and and and. Robinson elaborates:

I do not expect my daughter to leave school knowing everything there is to know, but I would like her to acquire the habit of learning on her own, of having knowledge, processes, and criteria by which to judge what she is yet to learn.

Robinson’s account in his book of a conversation with writer Bryan Appleyard is quite fascinating. Appleyard told him:

Whenever I see a scientific claim that everything is reducible to a single measurement, I know that it is wrong. Anything complex is not reducible to a single measurement. […] They should learn that science is as questionable a discipline as any other. It’s not something where you have to learn all the equations and then everything is true.

And this brings me back to evidence-based practice. Those who make an eloquent and persuasive case for the need to base practice on what is known to work, like Rob Coe, Professor in the School of Education at Durham University, are careful to use words such as “currently” or “it appears that” when evaluating what the evidence suggests. In his lack of zealotry, Coe is at his most compelling and I wonder if, like me, he finds the certainty with which evidence is used to justify ideological stances about how we should be educating children so utterly disquieting.

If after all this you think I am “anti-evidence”, then I have not made my case well enough. I believe passionately that knowing what works is the most powerful engine to drive a teacher’s professional development and to improve educational outcomes for children. However, I don’t want evidence to dictate my practice. I want evidence to inform my practice. There’s a better buzzword for you: Evidence-informed practice.

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In Education, Educational Technology

If you want to improve education, get rid of all the computers! —Are classroom teaching and technology incompatible?

Americans love the Finnish education system. But they’re puzzled by it. It tops them in international rankings and they just can’t figure out why a tiny Nordic country is so much more awesome than they are.

They don’t view the Finns with quite the same hostile suspicion they reserve for Chinese or Russian athletes who do better than them in the field of sport, but one gets the feeling they definitely reckon these pesky Finns are up to something and they just need to know what the heck it is. If I were a Finnish entrepreneur, I would seriously consider opening a chain of burger joints to cater exclusively for the hordes of American educationalists and journalists that travel to Finland every year after the OECD publishes its PISA results in search of the Finnish secret to a good education.

Earlier this week Caitlin Emma, in an article for Politico titled Finns beat U.S. with low-tech take on school, and flaunting a quote from a Finnish minister who says they’re not interested in iPads, appeared to claim after her obligatory visit to Finland that she had discovered said secret, which, apparently, involves not using technology and using a lot of “good old-fashioned pen-and-paper note-taking”. Her opening salvo goes like this:

At the start of morning assembly in the state-of-the-art Viikki School here, students’ smartphones disappear. In math class, the teacher shuts off the Smartboard and begins drafting perfect circles on a chalkboard. The students — some of the highest-achieving in the world — cut up graphing paper while solving equations using their clunky plastic calculators.

From the start, Emma establishes a direct correlation between good academic results and lack of technology use. But there is a problem: there is absolutely no evidence that this is the case. It’s just a spurious correlation. She might as well have said that Finns do better at school because they eat more reindeer than Americans.

To be fair to Emma and to Finland, she concedes later on that Finns have plenty of technology at their disposal (Smartboards, mobile devices, laptop computers – they’re even developing an educational cloud-based service in collaboration with Estonia) and that they are actually making good, discerning use of it. And this is perhaps where her criticism ought to have been focused.

You see, like her, I expect smartphones to be safely put away for morning assembly and I even think that pen and paper are the best tools in many circumstances. But I also expect, most of all, that technology be used appropriately and effectively when its use is justified by improved educational outcomes, which, by the way, encompass but do not consist solely of examination results.

Despite all this, the implication is clear and the connection is made in the minds of many. Finland is not doing better than the U.S. despite the lack of technology, it’s doing so because of it. Diane Ravitch, influential educationalist and Research Professor of Education at New York University, who is deeply suspicious of the push to integrate technology in the U.S., blogged about Emma’s article and echoed her message writing that, in Finland, “teachers are not depending on educational technology. By contrast, American schools are spending billions of dollars on tablets, laptops, and other devices.”

In a brief twitter conversation with me after he tweeted in support of Emma’s article, popular educational author Doug Lemov repeated the mantra that results are driven by good teaching. Again, the implication was clear. It’s good teaching stoopid, not the technology!

And this is where, given the number of authoritative figures from both sides of the Atlantic who are lining up lately to contribute to the smorgasbord of anti-tech sentiment, I appear to be missing something. It is, of course, true that good teaching is one of the most important contributing factors to improved educational outcomes, but it would, in my view, be naive and shortsighted to suggest it was the only factor or that technology and great teaching are somehow incompatible.

Surely what we all want is great teaching supported by effective use of technology, isn’t it? It doesn’t have to be great teaching or use of technology, does it?

Perhaps I should pack my bags and head to Finland to find out. Does anyone know of a good Tapas Bar in Helsinki?

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In Educational Technology

The “young people suck” school of social criticism Steven Pinker on technology use

“High school is a time of discovery. Figuring out a bit more about the world, yourself, and what you think the future might hold.”

Says the blurb from a video by the technology giant Google, commemorating this year’s high school graduation and highlighting everything that high school graduates, their teachers and their families have achieved this academic year.

In recent articles, I have been exploring how we appear to be culturally biased against the use of technology. The discourse surrounding our use of technology in popular media is littered with threats, warning, fears and concerns, many of which – though not all – are unwarranted and depict an unnecessarily dystopian vision of how technology is and will be affecting our lives.

One of the most worrying aspects of this cultural bias is adults’ propensity to vilify young people and view them as different from us. We disapprove of the way they behave, speak and write and, above all, we dislike intensely the tools they use to do so. Indeed, their use of technology often is the target of our condemnation and the source, more often than not, of our misunderstanding.

And this is the reason why I really like this video, because it portrays young high school graduates as full of the same aspiration, hope and insecurities that my generation left high school with well over twenty years ago now. School leavers today are not different, they are the same in all the ways that matter.

And, despite our often unfounded concerns, they have managed to integrate technology in their lives with overwhelmingly positive results. Just like we did before them. Sure, there are challenges as well as opportunities now as there were then. They are kids and will need our guidance, which is why it is so insanely crazy to pretend that modern technology and means of communication do not have a place in education, as many schools and scholars still do to this day.

But don’t take it from me. Below is an extract from an interview in the Harvard Gazette, in which Steven Pinker makes this point much more persuasively and authoritatively than I could ever hope to:

Having once been a young person myself, I remember the vilification that was hurled at us baby boomers by the older generation. This reminds me that it is a failing of human nature to detest anything that young people do just because older people are not used to it or have trouble learning it. So I am wary of the “young people suck” school of social criticism. I have no patience for the idea that because texting and tweeting force one to be brief, we’re going to lose the ability to express ourselves in full sentences and paragraphs. This simply misunderstands the way that human language works. All of us command a variety of registers and speech styles, which we narrowcast to different forums. We speak differently to our loved ones than we do when we are lecturing, and still differently when we are approaching a stranger. And so, too, we have a style that is appropriate for texting and instant messaging that does not necessarily infect the way we communicate in other forums. In the heyday of telegraphy, when people paid by the word, they left out the prepositions and articles. It didn’t mean that the English language lost its prepositions and articles; it just meant that people used them in some media and not in others. And likewise, the prevalence of texting and tweeting does not mean that people magically lose the ability to communicate in every other conceivable way.

So, there you go, young people these days, eh?…

In Education

The problem with evidence based practice A miracle formula for teachers to consume?

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance – Bertrand Russell

There are no references at the bottom of this blog. No bibliography. It’s just a reflection concocted after a rather average Chinese takeaway and an exceptionally good glass of white Rioja. If you’re looking for something a little bit more academic and rigorous, then you probably ought to stop reading now.

You’re still here. Brilliant. Thanks for the vote of confidence. So, what is the problem with evidence? After all, evidence is proof, confirmation, verification, substantiation, corroboration, affirmation, authentication, attestation, documentation; support for, backing for, reinforcement for, grounds for. Nothing wrong with that.

Or is there? Actually, in education, there is. Evidence based practice is all well and good if the evidence – both quantitative and qualitative – is sound, comprehensive and substantive. However, unlike other fields of science, evidence of what works in education remains patchy – the best and most comprehensive bodies of educational research and evidence have come from attempts to synthesise the myriad of small scale research studies. To makes matters worse, some of the most convincing evidence in education is qualitative, and it is promptly rejected by the those who focus, shortsightedly in my view, merely on quantitative data. In education there is no equivalent of the laws of thermodynamics, nor will there ever be.

Why not? Because, in practice, there is an infinite number of variables involved in researching any aspect teaching and learning. I have a personality. So have you. So have your pupils. I have a set of biases. So have you. So have your pupils. And their parents. All of these factors and others ranging from class size to ability profile, from social background to time of day, ensure that what works for me might not work for you and vice versa.

So, is it the case that evidence in education cannot prove, confirm, substantiate or support teaching and learning? The answer has to be an ambiguous yes and no. Yes because it can certainly shed light on the wider practice of teaching and the larger-scale processes involved in learning. But also a cautious no. Because of the innumerable factors at play, the analysis of evidence in education lends itself to a great deal of subjectivity. Hence all the I’m right/you’re wrong arguments.

Hang on, are you saying evidence isn’t valuable? No, of course not. Evidence is really valuable. But is it always relevant? I would suggest that teachers handle the evidence thrown at them with care and that they would be well served by exercising their professional judgment and their right to doubt, which they have earned through their own practice.

I do worry that the recent proliferation in evidence-based practice proponents, whist clearly well-intentioned, are simply reducing teaching to a set of rules to follow, a miracle cure to the disease they perceive us to be suffering from. Do it this way and you’ll be alright, they promise. However, as I hope to have established, teaching and learning are much more nuanced and sophisticated than that.

So, should we be mixing second-hand evidence into a miracle formula for teachers to consume? Or should we be encouraging and empowering teachers to turn the concept on its head and pursue practice-based research instead of research-based practice?

I also worry about the notion of teachers as consumers of evidence. I’d much rather belong to a profession that is evaluative and flexible, rather than dogmatic and intransigent about what works or doesn’t and for whom.

In my mind evidence ought to plant the seed of doubt. Evidence should always be the beginning of a journey, not its completion. If you find the concept challenging, then forget you ever read this and go back to the comfort and safety of your certainties.

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In Educational Technology

Is technology rewiring our brains? Technology continues to get a bad press

Technology is a gift of God. After the gift of life it is perhaps the greatest of God’s gifts. It is the mother of civilizations, of arts and of sciences – Freeman Dyson

In recent blogs I have explored how technology gets a very bad press. Despite the massive positive impact that modern technology has in all of our lives, the accepted mainstream discourse surrounding technology often evokes a dystopian reality where technology does more harm than good.

Nevertheless I find it surprising that most educators, seemingly undeterred by overwhelming evidence to the contrary, continue to view the use of technology with suspicion and incredulity as, from this perspective, focusing on doubt, scepticism, danger and concern appears to be the sensible thing to do.

However, I believe this kind of thinking is based on the deeply flawed assumptions that, from the teaching angle, technology does not offer any real benefit to education, and that, from the learning angle, we would be better advised to tightly control children’s access to technology in any case. One of the often cited causes for concern is the suspicion that increased technology use might be adversing affecting brain development in children.

But we’ve been there before.

Take Marc Prensky’s thesis that digital natives’ cognitive capacity has changed as a response to living a technological world and that teachers ought to take this into account. This notion has been demolished by John Hattie and others on the grounds that the human brain is just not as malleable as Prensky implies. As Hattie says “the notion that Internet usage itself will occasion alterations or deterioration in cognitive capacities has no genuine support from within the known research literature”¹.

In fact, according to leading neuropsychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons the brain’s wiring “is determined by genetic programs and biochemical interactions that do most of their work long before a child discovers Facebook and Twitter.”²

Yet the concept that the technology is indeed changing our brains – in a bad way – continues to be propounded by popular neuroscientists such as Susan Greenfield, who are vociferous in expressing their concern about “brain changes” and the negative impact technologies may have on our cognitive ability.

Hang on a minute. Either technology changes our brains or it doesn’t. You can’t have it both ways.

My inkling is that it doesn’t, so I suppose what I’m asking is this: Is a constant focus on the negative aspects of technology preventing us from exploring the true potential of the effective use of technology in education? My research, experience and instinct are all telling me that the answer is yes and that we’ve irresponsibly convinced ourselves it is sensible to hold back the tech, whereas the sensible thing is actually to push on and explore how technology can support the processes involved in teaching and learning.

As Chabris and Simons conclude “there is simply no experimental evidence to show that living with new technologies fundamentally changes brain organisation”, whereas there is plenty of evidence that teaching and learning benefit from technology.

What do you think?

Your feedback and comments are always welcome.

Photo credit

Hattie, J. and Yates, G. (2014) Visible learning and the science of how we learn, London: Routledge ↩
Chabris C. and Simons D. (2010) Digital alarmists are wrong {Online} http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jul/25/opinion/la-oe-chabris-computers-brain-20100725 {Accessed 20.02.1014} ↩

In Digital Strategy, Educational Technology

Digital Strategy: Using tablets to support teaching and learning

Our school aims to gradually become an environment in which all teachers and students have access to tablets on a one to one basis over the next 2-3 years. This objective has arisen mainly from our research into how effective teaching and learning takes place (see previous post), which helped us understand that every aspect involved in both teaching and learning can be supported by the effective use of technology in the classroom and at home, but also from the realisation that attempting to rationalise why we shouldn’t use tablets had become much more difficult than trying to justify why we should.

It is to my mind undeniable that tablets are a formidable teaching, learning and communication tool. Their ability to be preloaded with and allow instant access to engaging, interactive and multimedia content is indeed one of their main attractions. However, as well as means for content consumption, tablets incorporate software, cameras, microphones and other sensors that allow teachers and students to create and instantly share their own media-rich content, all the while helping to keep compelling records of learning and progress.

Nevertheless, the adoption of tablets can feel enormously demanding and daunting for both students and teachers who are often unfamiliar with and/or unaware of the new opportunities and challenges presented to them when tablets are introduced into the learning environment. So, in order to inform our digital strategy and think ahead of our plans to roll out tablets to staff and students, we decided to carry out a SWOT analysis on the perceived the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats by asking the members of our Digital Strategy Steering Group (18 staff) and our Digital Council (23 students from Year 6 to Year 13) the following question: how can tablets be used most effectively to support teaching and learning? Below are their responses:

In Education, Educational Technology, Modern Foreign Languages

Traditionalist nonsense or progressive flimflam?

Innovation is desirable in every other aspect of life. The constant tinkering, tweaking and adjusting that makes for faster trains, safer aircraft and life-saving surgery. “No, Doctor, I don’t want any of that newfangled key-hole surgery, I want to be ripped right open just like in the good old days” said no one, ever. But not in education. Oh no. In education we’ll have none of that (spits) progressive flimflam.

The latest twitter spats and blogging battles seem to be being fought on the right by traditionalists who support a teacher centred approach where the student is a passive recipient of knowledge vs. progressives on the left, who espouse a child centred approach favouring change and innovation.

Just like when recently you were being asked to pick between teaching knowledge or skills (because, apparently, it had to be either or), now you need to pick between being a traditionalist or a progressive. And if you can’t or won’t, that’s because you’re probably either a little too simple -ah, bless- or you lack principles.

The thing is, when I think about my own teaching style I’m pretty traditional. I’m very much a starter/presentation/guided practice/feedback/further practice/plenary kind of guy. There is actually quite a bit of direct teacher instruction and didactic teaching in my lessons. A stickler for tradition, me. Why? Because it works.

But there is also quite a bit of group work, peer assessment and self assessment about my lessons, much of it supported by innovative use of technology. These are activities that lend themselves very easily to more a progressive approach to teaching and learning. Why? Well, for the same reason. Because it also works.

You see, I’m a languages teacher. I find grammar is best taught in a didactic manner in my setting. Lots of teacher input; clear explanations. But, in order to ensure that new vocabulary and structures are acquired and used and reused appropriately, students need a great deal of deliberate practice, which, in a classroom setting, is often best supplied by carefully planned group work. It’s really effective and, to boot, I have a bookshelf full of books that explain why that is so. Traditionalist chaps who have spent all this time deriding group work in their blogs will just have to take it from me (and the no-doutb-in-their-minds progressive blob who wrote those books) that, in languages, group work works and yes, they do learn from one another.

The use of new technologies and peer assessment are also often met with disapproval and a not insubstantial amount of condescension. “The only tablets my pupils need are the ones prescribed by their psychiatrist” I once read on twitter. Pretty unprofessional stuff, I hope you’ll agree. Not just because of the disdain shown to students, but also because of the sheer, wilful, proud lack of understanding of the potential new technologies have been shown to have.

Take this example. Year 8 writing and speaking. In Spanish. The work is started in class, finished for homework and completed with a peer assessment task, making the most of the available technology, in this case the faculty’s blog. The comments left by students for other students are beneficial per se, but what’s really valuable is the way that the comments help to tell me, the teacher, what progress the students have made, thus informing any future lesson planning. And it so happens that the student’s work and their comments are recorded as evidence in blog format for parents, inspectors and whoever else would like to take a peek. Yet some on twitter try to assure me that this is worthless progressive nonsense. Well, I respectfully disagree.

So, forgive me if I refuse to be made to choose between traditional and progressive teaching, because I am a well informed professional who knows what works in my classroom and can be traditional when I must and progressive when I need to be. I thought that was what all good teachers did.

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