Brilliant Ideas for Using ICT in the Classroom

A very practical guide for teachers and lecturers

Matt Jarvis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136180743
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Brilliant Ideas for Using ICT in the Classroom is a totally practical, hands-on guide to using ICT in and around the classroom for all secondary school teachers and lecturers in post-compulsory education. Assuming no prior expertise, it centres on software and resources that are free or very low cost, and offers step-by-step guidance and creative ideas to improve the experience and engagement of your students.

With a focus on what tools to use, what educational need they satisfy and how to incorporate them into good pedagogy, key topics covered include:

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• Effective use of presentation technologies

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• Using, producing and sharing multimedia

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• Interactive whiteboards and related technologies

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• Using Web 2.0 technologies

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• Mobile learning

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• Supporting diverse student needs through technology.

Brilliant Ideas for Using ICT in the Classroom puts equal emphasis on both technical and pedagogical issues, making it the ideal companion whatever your ICT or e-learning needs. Catering equally well for Windows, Mac and Linux users, this book is designed to give you all the confidence you need to start teaching brilliantly with ICT.

Chapter 1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780203082713-1

By the end of this chapter you should be able to:

• disentangle some of the language used to describe educational technology and e-learning;
• consider the use of ICT in the psychological context: fitting technology to how learning happens; consider the use of ICT in the policy context: what are we expected to do?;
• acknowledge what ICT can and cannot achieve for your teaching;
• be aware of some factors that might limit your effective use of ICT and some practical strategies to tackle them; reflect on the place of ICT in your teaching.

Why do we need a book like this?

Educational technology and e-learning are part of life for the twenty-first-century teacher. Using technology well undoubtedly has the potential to improve learning and teachers’ quality of life. In spite of this, however, many teachers still don’t speak of technology with affection. Let’s get some of the issues and problems out in the open from the outset.

1. There is very little consensus in the teaching profession on what technology we should be using or how best to use it. For one teacher, department or school it might be all about the virtual learning environment, for another the interactive whiteboard is king, and a third will have made the leap to extensive use of a mobile platform. It is hard to have wider professional discussions about the use of technology if we assume we are all doing the same kind of things – we simply aren’t.
2. This is easy to say with the benefit of hindsight, but we (by which I mean both managers and e-learning specialists) have largely failed over the last decade to introduce technology well to schools and colleges. By ‘well’ I mean with a coherent idea of its purpose, with sufficient training in its use and giving teachers a sense of ownership. The result of this has been unnecessary confusion, anxiety and ambivalence, with many teachers seeing technology as much as an additional demand as an opportunity to achieve things.
3. Some teachers are very comfortable with technology and others much less so. Although e-learning evangelists sometimes lose sight of this, it is actually fine! Although you can do wonderfully inspirational and inclusive things with educational technology, the technology is always just a tool and it is neither necessary nor sufficient for brilliant teaching. We enthusiasts should always remember that we have gifted colleagues who achieve just as much using alternative strategies.

Every reader will work in a different context with its own set of priorities and opportunities – and of course demands, frustrations and constraints. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for good practice of e-learning or good use of learning technology, and I haven’t tried to prescribe one here. My aim in writing this book has been to introduce a broad range of opportunities so that all readers will take something away from reading this – perhaps a new piece of software, a new teaching technique or just a better understanding of why something you’ve tried in the past didn’t work as you’d hoped. I also hope to remove some of the mystery and anxiety from e-learning. With that in mind, the first section in this chapter is concerned with better understanding the language of technology and e-learning.

The secret language of ICT: is it all Geek to you?

Would you know a Moodle from a Doodle, or Bing from Ning? Technology has proliferated to the extent that it does not have so much its own language as a whole set of languages for different specialisms. This esoteric use of language certainly doesn’t help those with little technology experience who want to add ICT tools to their teaching toolkit. Here are some of the basics explained.

ICT, ILT, educational technology and e-learning

There is a basic distinction between Information and Communication technology (ICT) and Information and Learning Technology (ILT) or learning technology. ICT is a generic term used to describe computing hardware and related communication technology such as telephone systems and networked computers. ILT is a fairly broad term that denotes ‘the application of IT skills to learning situations using ICT’ (National Learning Network, 2004, n.p.). ILT and educational technology can be used interchangeably.

In the last five years terms like ILT and educational technology have fallen out of favour because they imply an emphasis on the technology rather than on teaching and learning. The term e-learning, which originally referred to the delivery of whole courses online, is now more commonly used as a generic term to mean the use of technology in an educational context for the purpose of enhancing learning.

CAL and CBL

There is a range of philosophies around as regards to how e-learning should be carried out. In particular there are debates about the extent ICT should fit into the traditional classroom and the extent to which it should shape the learning environments of the future. Broadly, computer-aided learning (CAL) takes place in a fairly traditional classroom. This approach is also sometimes called technology-enhanced learning. Computer-based learning, by contrast, takes place in a computer suite or students’ own homes, with most or all activities being done on computers. Currently (although of course this may change) most developments are in the area of computer-aided learning and this is reflected in the emphasis in this book.

Intranets, CMSs, VLEs and MLEs

An intranet is really just a section of the Internet to which passwords are required for access. It is now the norm for computers in schools and colleges to be networked to form an intranet. Content may be shared on an intranet by means of a content management system (CMS). Content management systems can generally allow approved users to generate web-pages, attach files and communicate by e-mail. A virtual learning environment or VLE is a specialist content management system with education-specific tools for assessment and tracking. VLEs are discussed in more detail onp. 108. A managed learning environment (MLE) includes a VLE and a Management Information System (MIS).

Management Information Systems

All schools and colleges now use database systems to manage information about learners – and increasingly about teachers as well. This is done via a Management Information System or MIS. At one time teachers could safely leave MISs to their management, but increasingly they are now used as the main way to track attendance and achievement. The meaning of MIS had gradually changed so that, where it used to refer to information systems for managers, it now refers to systems for the management of information by staff at all levels in the institution.

Technology and effective teaching and learning

Using technology may have the potential to improve your teaching. But note the number of conditionals in that sentence! Of course a lot depends on what we mean by improvement. A 2008 JISC report highlights a range of potential benefits to adopting learning technology:

• Cost and time-saving: a good quality set of electronic resources can cut down dramatically on preparation time and save on photocopying costs.
• Recruitment and retention: an attractive and well-organised set of electronic resources can aid recruitment and retention of students.
• Transferable skills: familiarising students with a range of ICT applications helps develop their ICT skills for the future.
• Student achievement: there is some (limited) evidence to support the idea that judicious use of technology can benefit students in terms of achievement/attainment.
• Inclusion: ICT can be used to present material in ways that are compatible with particular styles of information processing, and online resources make education available to students who cannot attend classes because of health problems, social circumstances, disability or geographical factors.

If we think narrowly in terms of education outcomes (i.e. results) then we might be disappointed in the sort of impact we can expect from introducing technology. In a recent review of the impact of technology Machin et al. (2007) concluded that there were wide differences between subjects, with clear evidence to show that technology improves outcomes in some disciplines but not others. Most other reviews have reached rather less flattering conclusions about the impact of technology, and we would be very naive to assume that introducing technological solutions will have much of a direct impact on our results.

Before we get too negative, though, I would suggest that there are at least two sound reasons not to be too disheartened by this failure to demonstrate positive impact. First, it is worth considering the impact of educational technology not only on outcomes but on the learner experience. If we can make lessons engaging and congruent with learners’ experiences of contemporary culture outside the classroom we are doing something worthwhile, even if this does not lead directly to improvements in our results. There are ‘sleeper effects’ in teaching and learning, and it is likely that good use of technology in education may have direct impact in the long term, and it is simply difficult to measure this.

Second, and perhaps more important, the fact that introducing new technology does not reliably lead to measurable improvements in outcomes may say far more about the way it has been implemented than it does about its potential to improve learning. If we are simply projecting printed text on a screen instead of writing it on a board, or keeping our handouts on a Virtual Learning Environment instead of a filing cabinet, why on earth would we expect this to make any difference to our learners’ progress? Those things may be worth doing because they are convenient, but they don’t change the nature of the learning taking place. Using technology to facilitate the kind of activities that really enhance learning is a much more subtle business.

Keeping the focus on principles of effective learning

However sophisticated our understanding of the technical side of educational tech, we should always bear in mind that all technology is simply a set of tools, and that what we do with it should conform to principles of effective learning just like any other mode of teaching. It is easy in our enthusiasm for new software or hardware to forget this (for geeks like me, anyway)!

Developmental psychologist Seymour Papert has pointed out that education has always been a theoretical battleground between two camps. On one hand are those who emphasise the learner’s active development of an understanding of the world (we can call these constructivists). On the other hand are those who place their emphasis on the curriculum rather than the processes of learning and see teaching and learning more in terms of transmission of information. This approach is sometimes called instructionism or the ‘transmission’ model. As Papert says, the development of learning technology has widened rather than narrowed the gulf between these two philosophical positions. Elsewhere (e.g. Jarvis, 2011) I have tried to abstract from education research a set of broad principles that underlie effective learning and teaching. These are pragmatic and include elements of both instructionist and constructionist positions.

• Learning should be an active process rather than a passive process of taking in information. In the context of e-learning this can be achieved when students use software themselves, for example searching for and presenting information, running simulations or communicating and sharing through social media. Use of popular culture, for example via YouTube, can serve to improve engagement and hence activity levels. Introducing some gentle competition via quizzes can similarly enhance engagement, and there are many technological solutions that lend themselves to facilitating this type of activity.
• Learning should be an interactive process. Interactions take place with teacher, peers and software. Teacher interaction can be in the form of whole-class discussions following the stimulus of a presentation or of scaffolding search, simulation and data analysis tasks. Web 2.0 technologies (see Chapter 5 for a discussion) are designed entirely around the ability to facilitate interaction, and therefore have tremendous and (at the time of writing) largely unexplored potential to enhance learning.
• Learning should be made as relevant as possible to the learner. Something can be relevant because it has personal salience to the learner’s life or because it has clear strategic value in supporting the learner’s goals. This is a further good reason for involving popular culture in lessons via multimedia technology.
• Learning should be memorable in order to prepare for exams. Material tends to be memorable when it has been deeply processed (i.e. extensively thought about) and visualised, and when recall has been practised. Software can help with all these as long as its use is well planned.

These principles become important when we start to consider some common practices such as using presentation software in the classroom (Chapter 2) or populating a virtual learning environment with handouts (Chapter 5). This is not to say that using presentation software or VLE technology is wrong (far from it!), just that we need to think carefully about these practices in terms of how learning takes place if we want it to impact positively on our learners.

One of the things technophiles have often done wrong is to encourage teachers to work differently in order to accommodate technology. Actually with a bit of lateral thinking we can usually find ways to use technology to help us work in the ways we would like to. Also we should acknowledge that there are some situations where there is no particular advantage to using a high-tech solution, and others where the old-fashioned way is actually the best. If you want to randomly select class members for a task it will always be as quick and effective to draw strips of paper out of an envelope as to use a randomisation app (and requires much less set-up time).

You may face particular issues if you teach subjects where creative thinking and practice are especially valued. English teachers can be forgiven for getting bored with e-learning trainers telling them that texts can be read in electronic format. So what? If that doesn’t impact on the quality of the reading experience why should English teachers be impressed? The potential for creativity in multimedia and communication in Web 2.0 applications is much more likely to get creative teachers buzzing.

The policy context

Teachers are great pragmatists and we are no strangers to adapting to what the powers that be (hereafter referred to as PTBs) require us to do. The days when all observed lessons had to involve ICT but no one really minded what you did with it as long as the technology box (Q17 in the 2008 Teaching Standards) could be ticked are gone and not particularly lamented.

The current Teaching Standards (Department for Education, 2012) and current Ofsted Observation Framework (Ofsted, 2012) no longer make direct reference to the use of technology in or around the classroom. At first sight this might seem odd but it is actually quite congruent with a modern understanding of e-learning. It does not mean that the importance of technology and e-learning has declined. Rather it means that it is now assumed that our understanding of learning and our use of technology are sufficiently mature that technology can be integrated into teaching and used as and where appropriate. If further evidence is needed that e-learning and educational t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Presenting on a screen
• 3 Working more imaginatively with text
• 4 Introducing multimedia
• 5 Taking learning online
• 6 Personalising the learner experience with technology
• Afterword: where next for education tech?
• Appendices
• References
• Index