Terry Freedman, ed tech consultant in London, and former government worker, wrote an interesting blog post today for Technology & Learning’s new blog feature (The Blogeroti). With as many years in education as I have experienced, Freedman has much to reflect on regarding his country’s investments in classroom ICT. …and about investment, no one can deny that tech dollars have been pouring into British schools while the pathetic federal funding of education technology in the U.S. has brought development and innovation to a virtual stand-still, and in many cases taken our classrooms decades backward, because many districts rely solely on federal funding.
Comparison’s aside, Freedman suggests several truisms from his perspective and experience, regardless of how much or how little we pay for contemporary classrooms.
- Investment in any technology ultimately works or doesn’t work because of the teacher. You can give some teachers a block of wood and a piece of string, and their students’ results will suddenly go into the stratosphere.
This could not be more true, and yet, remain a mystery to so many education leaders. But Terry suggests that perhaps we need a slower pace of investment in technology. I would disagree. I’m convinced that the best staff development experience we could give every teachers is to equip their classrooms with appropriate digital technologies, remove all of the paper, and then say, “Now teach!”. Let the teachers devise, organize, and implement their own professional development strategies to become proficient in the art of teaching in 21st century classrooms. Just a thought!
- Much is made of reducing the digital divide, and making 24/7 access a reality for all students. But the best students are those who know how to ask questions and evaluate sources of information.
This is fundamental to our efforts to modernize our classrooms. It isn’t just the technology — what we teach with. It’s also what we teach. What are the basic literacy skills for prospering in an information-drive, technology-rich, and rapidly changing world. Like the U.S., education in the U.K. continues to be, “…underpinned by a knowledge philosophy, and debate often centers on what skills school-leavers need when they enter the world of work?” I think that the answer to that last question depends on whether you are considering 20th century work, or 21st century work.
- There are too many (government) strategies…
This has been an ongoing problem here in the U.S. until No Child Left Behind. We’re all headed in the same direction now. Whether it is the right direction continues to be a point of debate?
- The intervention of the government has, there can be no doubt, distorted the free market, as I wrote here last week under “Market Distortions”.
Terry Freedman started his teaching career as an economics teacher, so I’ll leave this one to him.
- The creation of materials and provision of support for national strategies has led to a situation in which only one philosophical approach prevails when it comes to the teaching of ICT.
The magic word today, in my opinion, up and down the spectrum of society, is innovate. The more that government and culture say, “do it this way,” the more behind we all look — to our children.
- There is too much emphasis on leadership — and charismatic leadership — at the expense of management. I have written about this before…
I paused to consider this when Terry wrote about it last week, at Technology & Learning, and didn’t speak out. Today I’ll just say that I agree that school needs management. What that looks like, I can’t say, because I’ve never been a principal and have never been involved in any principal training.
I do believe, however, that the secret to facilitating change in our classrooms that address the needs of today’s children and tomorrows citizens will happen because of the culture of the school, and culture is changed through charisma. Again, I’m not disagreeing with Terry. I suspect that he would agree, that we need a healthy mix of the two — management and leadership style.
Please read Terry’s entire blog at Technology & Learning and visit his web site, Information & Communication Technology in Education.
It’s not that we need to spend less in the UK on technology in education (here, inferring hardware and software) we need to spend more on training for teachers. This means training in how to turn things on and vitally training in HOW to TEACH with this technology. I always bang on about “It’s not about the tech, it’s about the teach”. Where people have the technology already they complain about not knowing how it works technically, and where people could probably envisage teaching with the tech they do not own it in their classrooms. So, more spending but on the right things. 30% hardware, 30% software, 30% training and 10% contingency.