ICT for Teaching and ICT for Learning: They are not the same, Robert Douglas, Howick College, Manukau, Auckland. I include an extract from the article below which looks at the conclusions that the author has come up with.
Conclusions
Schools
need to be very clear in their thinking and communication regarding ICT
for teaching and ICT for learning. Their communication to the students’
parents and the wider community must be very clear on the form of ICT
that is envisaged. A New Zealand Herald article (Binning, 2011) suggests
that in fact Orewa College is wanting its Year 9 students to be
provisioned with IT for Learning yet the nature of the device is
required is more ‘personal’ in nature, suggesting a move toward ICT for
Learning. It is conceded that it may not be easy but every
effort should be made by schools to ensure their communication clearly
identifies the intended use the ICT in question.
I
contend that schools need to decide very carefully what capabilities
they desire in student-centric devices and publish these widely among
the student and parent communities. This set of capabilities must be
relatively simple and easy to achieve on a wide range of cheap devices.
Ability to access wireless networks would be a fundamental to reduce
costs to the student and enable functionality in the school. Such things
as the ability to display 3G video and take text- or voice-based notes
would be appropriate whilst ‘must be able to display PowerPoint
presentations’ may well not be. Once communicated, students and their
parents can make their own choices around the device and the school will
have a baseline capability to work with.
The
school may also suggest a suite of applications that the students are
to have loaded on their device. Obviously this would imply that the
students own a device that runs a specified operating system however
with the rise in Android and Windows-based devices, as well as the
iPhone, there exists a strong potential for a range of applications in
appropriate formats to be made available to the students. This may well
increase the anticipated capability in the classroom and provide some
crossover to ICT for teaching. Careful selection of cheaper or free
applications would limit the cost.
If
schools require or wish to empower ICT for learning they will need to
have a suitably robust infrastructure to do so. This will mean robust,
high capacity wireless access that is carefully managed to avoid abuse
by students. ICT for teaching will also be further enabled by such
infrastructure.
Schools
must be very clear about when ICT for teaching is appropriate and how
to provision this in the school. This suggests that schools need to
consider the nature of the computational devices they own and how these
may be empowered for use in the classroom to support the teachers in
their teaching.
ICT
for teaching and ICT for learning are not mutually exclusive. Rather,
each enhances the other and creates a strong learning environment for
students when they can perform tasks as directed by teachers, then take
the learning with them out of school and continue working with the task
at times and locations that suit them.
Widely communicated and enforced protocols on the use of ICT for learning are a must.
I
suggest that schools will not cease to own computational devices but
rather will start to purchase specifically targeted devices to
facilitate teaching whilst preserving teacher sanity. Teachers should be
able to use school owned and managed devices with confidence that they
are provisioned for the task intended.
Final Comments
The
recent controversy regarding Orewa College’s requirement for students
to have an iPad or other computational device (Binning, 2011) and the
media publicity it gained showed how important it is for schools to
consider carefully what they wish to achieve and to communicate this
clearly to parents.
Schools
that attempt to provide a crossover device that is both learning and
teaching centric run the risk of achieving neither. In class use will be
problematic with equipment failures from flat batteries to software
corruption to physical failures. Student use may be hampered by the way
the device is prescribed by the school and locked down to facilitate
easier management.
Finally,
it should be noted that ICT for learning and ICT for teaching are
device neutral in that it is not the device that is important, rather,
it is the use to which the device is to be put that categorises the ICT.
Schools need to be very aware of how they wish to use ICT and to
provision and resource the ICT accordingly. Great pains must be taken to
ensure that parents understand what the school is endeavouring to
achieve
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