carey.peter@cathednet.wa.edu.au
I would certainly be trying to establish what level of Key Learning Technology competencies the staff might already have attained.
I would also try to involve them in the Professional Development planning by posing questions to enable them to propose/plan what level of PD support they required.
I would ask staff how they think Information and Communication Technologies could be used to achieve the school's goals for student learning? ref: A Vision for Learning through ICT Have you considered some of these strategies in your learning area: I would discuss with my staff whether they had adequate IT support services (curriculum and technicial resource personnel, and point of contact professional development?
What benefits are there for staff, students and parents in developing a learning area web page intranet service (assignments, resources, websites ...)?
webquests
Internet research
Learning Mananagement Systems (LMS) eg myclasses
Learning Object Management (LOM) eg myinternet
The myinternet, mydesktop Properties for communication eg: Notice Board, Listservers, Forum, Discussion Room, Text and Image, Vote To and Survey Properties
paperless assignments using, Office software, CD Roms, graphics, digital camera, scanner and html scripting
interviews and questionnaires using emails
collaborative research projects with other schools, institutions worldwide via the WWW
email links to people who have expertise in various subjects
video conferencing
formative assessment (student eJournals, ePortfolios etc)
subject specific hyperlinks to assist students
PowerPoint for oral presentation
graphs from excel
tables from Word
spreadsheets and databases from Office 2000
video editing for visual and auditory presentation
see the following links for more ideas Computers in Education and Integration and Standards
Brand (1997) review of the ICT specific literature supports all of the following list of principals:
Overall, the literature provides clear messages about the relationship between the strategies and purposes of effective continuing professional development in relation to the use of ICTS in education.
The key message can be summed up using the words from the recent Commonwealth Government document Teachers for the 21st Century: Making a Difference:
professional development is effective where it is identified and implemented within the school context to meet the needs of their teachers and students, for the continuous improvement of professional practice.
Central to the effectiveness of such an approach is 'the support provided from educational systems and schools to embed professional development effectively into conventional work practices'. (Commonwealth of Australia, 2000, p.11).
Educational outcomes that schools and systems hope to achieve by increasing the integration of ICTs into classroom practice
Abstract: Making Better Connections, DEST, September, 2001.
Educators are promoting ICT use in classrooms for several distinct reasons. These include:
Of these four types, the first and the second are relatively easy to accept. Parents, politicians, and community leaders are prepared to support the use of ICTs provided that the purpose is to either provide specific computer-related skills, or use computers to enhance students’ abilities to deal with the pre-existing curriculum. Who would complain if computer-enhanced pedagogy leads to improved student results on the current collection of tests that Australian student's face? However, parents, politicians, community leaders, and even some educators tend to respond cautiously when changes in the school curriculum are called for, and all react even more warily when fundamental changes in the nature of schooling are proposed.
Thoughtful educators are aware of the dangers associated with discarding the traditional skills of memorisation and practice that are such a time-honoured part of schooling. At the same time, it is necessary to acknowledge that if today’s children are restricted to acquiring only the knowledge and skills that served us well in the 20th century, they will not be well prepared for the 21st century. The current period of rapid change cannot be passed off as an aberration. The knowledge economy, the global market, new technologies, new and emerging occupations and professions, organisational change, diverse communities and complex cultures are all here to stay. Educators in every state and territory are facing difficult challenges in responding to the curricular implications of these changes.
The Goals of Integrating ICT into the Classroom
Almost twenty years have passed since the pioneers in this field proposed that the new information technologies should have a key role in the school curriculum. The earliest approaches focused on technology skills as an end in themselves, and in many schools and systems, Computer Science was introduced as a new school subject. Not long after, the focus shifted toward emphasising the computer as a pedagogical tool for improving learning (OECD 1987). Currently, there are indications that the focus is shifting once again.
ICT as an object of study
Given the imperatives of the knowledge economy, it is important that education systems are attuned to the global impacts and trends of ICT. In Australia, Learning in an online world: School education action plan for the information economy (Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs 2000b) argues that all students must leave school as confident, creative and productive users of information and communication technologies. Confidence in the use of information and communication technologies is an essential prerequisite for developing the skills young people will need for employment in the knowledge economy. The capacity to access data from multiple sources, to review it critically and to discriminate what is reliable and what is not will be fundamental for many at work, and for all who hope to function as active and responsible citizens in the 21st century.
ICT as a tool for learning
A considerable amount of research has been conducted over the past twenty years in an effort to ascertain whether new technologies can function as a tool for enhancing student outcomes. Much of this research has focused on problems and topics which are difficult for students but which are central to the subject matter of the school curriculum, and much of it has reported positive results (Perkins et al. 1995; Mann, et al. 1999). For example, in the 1980s, Bob Tinker and his team at TERC (http://www.terc.edu) plugged motion sensors and temperature probes into computer ports. After some experimentation they produced direct graphical representations of physical phenomena, in real time, on computer screens. This ‘hands-on’ approach to the physics of motion has proved a resounding success; it has now even been adopted by the NSW Board of Studies as the ‘standard method’ for teaching this topic in HSC Physics.
Whether one turns to science, to mathematics, or to literacy, the story is the same. When careful software development is combined with the key elements of a good implementation plan (teacher education, adequate ICT resources in schools, and supportive educational leadership) substantial learning gains can be achieved. For example, over a ten-year period, in several large US states, significant efforts were made to infuse ICT into public schools. These efforts were carefully evaluated and reported in what has become known as the Milken Family Foundation Study (Mann et al, 1999). The results are particularly compelling: the researchers found that clear gains in literacy and numeracy resulted from this innovation, and they concluded that these gains were achieved more cost-effectively than in other interventions such as class size reduction .
In the UK, the focus is on when to use and when not to use ICTs for teaching and learning (Teacher Training Agency 1998). ICTs are available for supporting approaches where the classroom pedagogy remains largely unaltered but, depending on teacher and school preference, ICTs are also available to support where the pedagogy is radically altered. In the former case, teachers remain very much ‘in charge’ of their classrooms, in the traditional didactic sense. For example, teachers may prepare classroom presentations using Powerpoint software and a laptop computer that they are encouraged to take home. Presentations such as these represent a convenient substitute for chalkboard work, and in some cases, go far beyond what might be achieved by this ‘old’ technology. In another example of a similar approach, a teacher may link the laptop to a projector and take the class through an interactive exploration of a useful web site.
These didactic applications are in many ways at the ‘conservative’ end of the spectrum. In them, information and communication technologies are ‘integrated’ into classroom use, in the sense that teachers in a wide range of subject-matter areas are using new technologies, yet the pedagogy remains much the same as in the past. At the more ‘radical’ end of the spectrum, one finds examples where the teacher is more of a coach than an instructor, where the students are actively engaged in gathering data, aggregating their data with those gathered by other students, and making meaning of the results. They are writing to students on the other side of the globe about their findings, and seeking opportunities to engage with local political leaders regarding the implications of their work. In classrooms where this happens, children are becoming ‘apprentice knowledge workers’. Information and communication technologies are, in these projects, integral to pedagogy.
Educators argue that the integration of technology into classroom practice also supports a wide variety of modes of student learning. As student populations become more diverse, this goal increases in importance. There is mounting evidence that communication technologies and computer applications can be used to allow students to learn in ways that are congruent with their abilities, cultural backgrounds, learning styles or special needs. For example, recent work in Western Australia indicates the use of electronic student portfolios can improve the quality of interaction between the school, students and Aboriginal families in remote communities (Celebration Conference 1999). Whether the purpose is to improve literacy and numeracy scores, make difficult subjects more accessible, or make learning more inclusive in recognition of the growing cultural diversity of learners, all the approaches referred to above are ones in which ICT becomes a ‘tool for learning’ rather than an object of learning.
ICT as Integral to Both Subject Matter and Pedagogy
In 1996, the OECD published the results of a six-year study of key innovations in science, mathematics and technology education (Black & Atkin 1996). Almost all the innovations described in the report, Changing the Subject, awarded a critical role to some combination of technologies such as new software applications, graphing calculators, multi-media resources, and new communications networks that are used to link students over considerable distances. New curriculum content and new approaches to learning are both integral to these innovations. This poses a formidable challenge for teachers (Black & Atkin 1996). The traditional assumptions about learning in the classroom are deeply rooted in pedagogical practice. For example, the assumption that effective learning begins with memorisation, followed by practice exercises designed to develop familiarity with a concept or theory. Traditional learning also begins with abstract principles, leaving the business of practical applications to a later stage.
In the innovations described in the report, these assumptions were often overturned. For example, as information and communication technologies were used to bring the outside world into the classroom, the students’ work generally became more strongly connected with important community problems such as acid rain or waste disposal. Students also learned through an initial focus on realistic problems, as in the ChemCom curriculum, which teaches year 11 and 12 chemistry by beginning with industrial applications and ‘mapping backwards’ to the underlying theory. Students and teachers involved in other projects found that the demands of interacting across international boundaries (for example, through the National Geographic Kids Network) created a need for much more clarity and precision in their written work than they were accustomed to. The benefits of these innovations are amply documented by the OECD’s authors. Yet at the same time they stress that ‘to achieve [these benefits], teachers will have to change almost every aspect of their professional equipment. They will have to reconsider themselves entirely: not only the structures of their material and their classroom techniques, but even their fundamental beliefs and attitudes concerning learning’ (Black & Atkin 1996, p. 63).
ICT as Integral to the reform of Schooling: pedagogy, content, and the organisation and structure of schooling
In the past 20 years, across many nations, there has been some fundamental rethinking of schooling, of the profession of teaching and the nature of curriculum. In the US, this questioning has generated a strong ‘centralising’ movement focused on standards and accountability, but it has also supported significant movements for school reform. It has only been in the last five years or so that connections have been made between the school reform movements and the use of information and communication technologies in education. With this connection, ICTs are becoming integral to a fundamental changes in the nature of schooling; these changes encompass curriculum and assessment frameworks, modes of school organisation, the nature of the work students and teachers do together, and the teaching profession itself. The US Department of Education recognised this when it linked the use of new technologies to school reform in the research project Technology and Education Reform (Office of Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, 1998). In its report it spoke about the role of ICTs in facilitating:
To date, these types of changes in Australian schools have been most visible in Australia in individual technology-rich schools such as MLC and Bendigo College in Victoria and project schools such as Navigator and Discovery Schools in Victoria and South Australia. Internationally, the ACOT schools project is a well–researched and reported example of effective school reform and ICT integration. Other examples found in the literature refer to individual schools or educational settings where other aspects of schooling are also being challenged in computer-rich learning environments: for example multi-age, multidisciplinary teams of students working together (Papert 1999).
Alongside these ICT focused reforms, there are now examples of projects where school reform is the main agenda but ICTs are considered integral to the process. In the Coalition of Essential Schools Network, ICTs are seen a key strategy in achieving the fundamental goals of school reform (Muncey & MacQuillan 1993). ‘When Essential schools plan backwards from their goals, they see technology as a tool, not an end,’ says David Niguidula, who has worked for several years with technological issues at the Coalition of Essential Schools. ‘Member schools are usually striving to break down the professional isolation of teachers, to reach and challenge kids at very different levels, to assess student progress in rich and concrete ways-all things that technology can greatly help achieve’ (Coalition of Essential Schools, 1994).
In Australia, the New Basics project in Queensland (Education Queensland 2000) envisages simultaneous and inter–related changes in the nature of the tasks that students undertake, the literacies and technologies they are expected to master, the curriculum frameworks and the assessment regimes that structure their daily work, and the roles of students and teachers. All of these examples provide clear frameworks for understanding the interconnectedness of school reform and role of ICTS in changing what is learned and how it is learned. This concept is taken even further when challenging the notion of how schools are internally structured (Reil 1997) and whether schools will continue to exist in their current form or be replaced by multi-age community learning centres in the foreseeable future (Beare 1997). The challenge for education systems is to bring together the various strands of their work, on school improvement, on quality teaching and learning and on the effective integration of ICTS to support student outcomes.
Many Roles of ICT
Each of the four types of use described above has emerged on the educational landscape at different times and in response to different needs in various countries and systems. In some countries there has been, to some extent, an evolutionary succession from one approach to the next. In others, strategic plans have been put in place to move schools toward a particular approach. It is important to note that the progressive evolution from the first type to fourth is one in which ICT seems to be acquiring additional educational roles over time without shedding any of its previous roles.Thus, in some areas of the curriculum, ICTs are clearly seen as an essential pedagogical tool, yet at the same time, the idea that students should know something about the technology itself continues to be a relevant objective. In the quantitative disciplines, the emphasis is now shifting towards a view of technology as integral to the subject matter itself. In some curricular areas and in some schools, all three types are espoused simultaneously. In the schools and networks of schools described under the fourth category, ICT has become integral to the reform of schooling itself.
The simultaneous existence of these four types complicates the task of assessing models of teacher professional development. It is difficult to say which models best support the integration of ICTs into educational practice without at the same time clarifying which aspects of ‘integration’ are on the agenda in any particular school or system, because:
Each approach has its place – that is, the literature indicates that distinctly different models exist, and that these tend to be associated with different approaches to defining what is required from ICTs.
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