The speed of the evolution of information and communications technology (ICT) has been phenomenal. My grandfather grew up in a society with no telephone; my father in a society in which the radio was a source of wonder and television a late and expensive purveyor of black and white imagery. I live in a society that constantly expects to receive broadband Internet connectivity and my sons live in a world where music is an MP3 file downloaded from Napster.
The changes the ICT evolution has wrought affect every sector of society. My mother’s hearing aid is a miracle of miniaturisation and transistors. Without microprocessors, hospitals would have to close, airlines would be grounded and the bank is enabled to closely monitor the details of my current account through on-line banking.
The evolution of ICT has occurred in five stages:
· Computer
· PC
· Microprocessor
· Internet and
· Wireless Links
The story begins during World War II with the large electromechanical calculator Harvard Mark I. It was 50 feet long, eight feet tall and weighed 5 tons. Some years later the ENIAC was presented in Philadelphia. It used 18000 vacuum tubes and weighed 30 tons. Each task to be performed required the throwing of 6000 switches covering three walls, a mammoth machine occupying a large space. In 1947 the first transistor was invented and the use of transistors allowed for the development of smaller, more versatile and more powerful computers. “Computers” became a catchword and input-output technology graduated from punch cards to magnetic tape; new computer languages were designed to allow interaction with the new technology. Applications were expanded and the ICT evolution was underway in earnest.
The second stage in the evolution of ICT began in the 1970’s when it became possible to place processors on a “chip”, and magnetic discs were constructed. In 1977 Ken Olsen, the President of Digital asserted that “There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.” How wrong he was! At the same time, Steve Jobs and Steve Wosniak began to sell their Apple II machine and a young man called Bill Gates founded a firm called Microsoft. Within a few years the PC had changed from being regarded as an esoteric toy to a valuable work tool for word processing, accounting and later graphics. IBM first launched its Personal Computer on the world in 1981. Now the PC has become as popular as bicycles in my grandfather’s time or the radio in my father’s time.
The third part of the ICT evolution is that microprocessors have now become embedded in a myriad of products to the extent that the world as we know it would grind to a halt without the humble microprocessor. The steering systems of planes, the traffic lights on our streets, the control panels of power stations, air conditions systems all depend on microprocessors. Microprocessors control every facet of our lives; they are constantly expanding their capacity, applications and users.
The fourth evolution of ICT has its origins in the 1960’s when the US Dept of Defence drew up guidelines for a communications network among computers called ARPANET. Universities within the US and later from outside the US began to link up to this system and to use it to send messages. France developed a variant – Minitel system – at the start of the 1980’s. The US National Science Foundation set up its own network as also did a number of universities on the east coast of the US. In Europe EARN became a network among academic institutions and CERN in Geneva was crucial in the development of the World Wide Web which only got its name in 1990. Within a few years “surfing” on the net became a social phenomenon. The advent of broadband will accelerate this phase in the evolution of ICT. What is important about this evolutionary phase of ICT is that users have built social networks to make them useful and effective. Indeed the social superstructure in this instance is indeed super!
The fifth and current stage in the evolutionary process of ICT is the wireless one. This phase began with the invention of the mobile phone. The initial mobile phones were large and bulky. Reduction in size has been accompanied by a greatly expanded range of functions. Now, depending on the age of the user, mobile phones are used for talking, transmitting messages, pictures and music. Linking without phone lines is now taking place not just inter-continentally but via satellite. High frequency short-range radio transmitters that cover a specific area and “blue tooth” and infra red communication within buildings make wireless communication a world-wide phenomenon.
The speed and impact of the ICT evolution is a practical proof of Says’s Law: Supply creates its own demand. Contrary to Ken Olsen’s prediction, PCs have become a household appliance. When they became linked to a telephone line they were transformed into networks and their usefulness increased exponentially when access was available to libraries, information and email. The PC was a household gadget that became a necessity. The PC itself has become synonymous with globalisation. Components come from all continents, chips from Asia, software from America, mobile phones from Europe. Brand names are instantly recognisable all over the world.
The development of new products and services has been to the forefront of burgeoning economies over the past ten years. The development of the World Wide Web and the Internet has led to the development of an interactive network of individuals. It is by and for interacting people. This epitomises what the ICT evolution has been all about. It has been about spotting opportunities and inviting everybody to participate and to make good use of them. The ICT evolution has been an evolution in learning. The individual has realised the potential of the new tools and has introduced them into his/her home. As an evolution in learning, ICT has transformed the available technologies; the means of studying, the modalities of school operations, investment and expenditure on resources, and the way we think about what education should be.
The development of the Web and the Internet and the increasing availability of broadband will allow schools to post course material on the web, assignments can be communicated and received via email, and teachers can be accessed at any time. Indeed the new technologies will allow schools to reach out to many students who up to now might have slipped through the educational net. Distance education is now a reality.
The evolution in ICT should make us question the way we think about organised education. ICT liberates the provision of education from time and place constraints. Education and training can be customised by allowing materials to be adapted to individual needs and paced according to individual progress.
In Ireland we have been on the cusp of the great “leap forward” into ICT-based learning since the late 1990s. Those years of energy-charged enthusiasm have now petered into a déjà vu sense of “where did we go wrong?” Teachers have been trained in the use of ICT; computers have been put into schools, but why has the educational system not been transformed? My personal opinion is that it is far too soon to say the revolution has failed. After the hype there must be a “bedding-in”. Many teachers are only now coming to terms with ICT. Only when teachers as individuals begin to use ICT for email and begin to make use of the Internet for personal research, will they fully comprehend what an awesome tool they have for teaching and learning. It’s an evolutionary thing, which is where I think I began this essay!
Friday, August 24, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Status of ICT in Irish education in 2007
The primary rationale for the introduction of ICTs into Irish education was to affirm the professional skills of teachers and the personal growth of students. This would mean the integration of ICTS into educational aims at a national level and at local level, ICTs would have to work in tandem with the development of school development plans. This is not currently the reality. There is no discernable policy of integrating ICTs into the curriculum. There have been four years of in-service at primary level and there has been scarcely a mention of ICTs other than in passing.
Furthermore school development planning cannot take place in a vacuum! How can any principal teacher plan meaningfully, for the integration of ICTs into curricular areas, when s/he has no idea from year to year if there will be funding to replace obsolete hardware or to replenish/replace software?We are now in the ludicrous situation of broadband and networks being placed in schools that for the most part are equipped with a stock of ageing computers that date back to 2002 at the latest, or in many cases, right back to 1997.
The role of the National Council for Technology in Education (NCTE) has been emasculated from the beginning. NCTE was never established on a statutory basis. Personnel in the NCTE are retained on annual contract; there is no guarantee of employment from year-to-year. Personnel are on secondment from their teaching positions and may be recalled by their boards at any time. A primary task that NCTE was charged with was to deliver in-service training to teachers. This has been successful in producing training courses and putting “bums on seats” in attendance at courses. However there has been no corresponding transfer of skills to the classroom.
Too many NCTE courses concentrated on the acquisition of computer skills, and insufficiently on the use of ICTs as a tool for teaching and learning. There has been a change in the content of courses being offered in recent years, with an increasing emphasis on using ICT as a teaching and learning resource, and the acquisition of skills as an integral part of the process of doing the course. However the experience of teachers in the early years of NCTE courses has meant a sharp decline in numbers attending courses.What needs to be done to ameliorate the situation?Planned funding in line with industry’s best practise; technical backup regionally from education centres; ongoing in-service that will place emphasis on the use of ICTs as a teaching and learning resource; integration of ICTs into curricular in-service; curricular developments that encourage the use of ICTs ; funding for new technologies e.g. interactive whiteboards.
The question of planned funding is fundamental to the development of ICT. Schools must know what funding will be available to them on an annual or two yearly basis. it is no longer sufficient to starve the system for years and then to pump in some funding because there is an election pending, this helps only to politicise the system and does absolutely nothing to encourage good planning and prudent spending. The DES needs ot be cognisant if the old adage "as ye reap so shall ye sow"
Furthermore school development planning cannot take place in a vacuum! How can any principal teacher plan meaningfully, for the integration of ICTs into curricular areas, when s/he has no idea from year to year if there will be funding to replace obsolete hardware or to replenish/replace software?We are now in the ludicrous situation of broadband and networks being placed in schools that for the most part are equipped with a stock of ageing computers that date back to 2002 at the latest, or in many cases, right back to 1997.
The role of the National Council for Technology in Education (NCTE) has been emasculated from the beginning. NCTE was never established on a statutory basis. Personnel in the NCTE are retained on annual contract; there is no guarantee of employment from year-to-year. Personnel are on secondment from their teaching positions and may be recalled by their boards at any time. A primary task that NCTE was charged with was to deliver in-service training to teachers. This has been successful in producing training courses and putting “bums on seats” in attendance at courses. However there has been no corresponding transfer of skills to the classroom.
Too many NCTE courses concentrated on the acquisition of computer skills, and insufficiently on the use of ICTs as a tool for teaching and learning. There has been a change in the content of courses being offered in recent years, with an increasing emphasis on using ICT as a teaching and learning resource, and the acquisition of skills as an integral part of the process of doing the course. However the experience of teachers in the early years of NCTE courses has meant a sharp decline in numbers attending courses.What needs to be done to ameliorate the situation?Planned funding in line with industry’s best practise; technical backup regionally from education centres; ongoing in-service that will place emphasis on the use of ICTs as a teaching and learning resource; integration of ICTs into curricular in-service; curricular developments that encourage the use of ICTs ; funding for new technologies e.g. interactive whiteboards.
The question of planned funding is fundamental to the development of ICT. Schools must know what funding will be available to them on an annual or two yearly basis. it is no longer sufficient to starve the system for years and then to pump in some funding because there is an election pending, this helps only to politicise the system and does absolutely nothing to encourage good planning and prudent spending. The DES needs ot be cognisant if the old adage "as ye reap so shall ye sow"
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
CESI Editorial 2006
As I look back over 2005 and contemplate 2006 I cannot phrase it better than Charles Dickens and I can only reiterate that it was “the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…”
The revised Irish Primary School Curriculum published in 1999 was a response to changing needs, particularly in the areas of science and technology. In its general aims (p.7) it states that "In a rapidly changing society effective interpersonal and intrapersonal skills and skills in communications are essential for personal, social and educational fulfillment".
ICTs are emphasised throughout the guidelines. It states in the Teacher Guidelines for English Language, for example, “Computers and other items of information and communications technologies enrich the teaching and learning of language considerably" (English Teacher Guidelines, p.91).
The primary rationale for the introduction of ICT into the Irish school system is that it should complement the achievement of broader educational aims, which affirm the professional skills of the teachers and the personal growth of students. At a national level this should mean that ICT integration correlates with wider educational aims. More importantly, at local level, ICTs must work in tandem with the implementation of school development plans. The Minister for Education and Science launched his IT initiative with the publication in 1997 of the policy document IT 2000 A Policy Framework for the New Millennium.
What saddens me enormously is the apparent lack of “joined up thinking” by the DES. With the ending of the IT 2000 initiative the educational system was left in a policy vacuum as far as ICT was concerned. When is the last time that you heard a Minister or even a high profile politician speak about the values of ICTs in education? The IT 2000 policy document was launched with the usual fanfare of trumpets and photo calls. Schools received grant money to purchase hardware and software. Since 1997/98 what funding has been received? Schools are now struggling to maintain a range of outdated and outmoded computers at a time when the DES is spending a vast amount of money introducing broadband to schools!
The general rule in other EU countries is that schools are allotted money for maintenance, purchase and repairs to computer equipment in a planned manner. Schools know in advance exactly how much money they will have to spend. In Ireland grants come sporadically, if at all! In the context of School Development Planning, how are school principals expected to plan for the integration of ICTs when they have no money and have no idea of when or if they will receive funding? Lack of vision and leadership is compounded by a lack of funding!
For six years primary teachers have invested an enormous amount of time and energy in attending in-service on the principles and methodologies of the revised curriculum. ICTs rarely get a “look in” at these inservice days. Such mention as there is will refer teachers to lists of websites, but there is scarcely an acknowledgement of the fact that ICTs are a powerful medium for collaborative activity-based teaching and learning. Inservice days thus serve to act as a negative reinforcement for the many teachers who regard ICTs as largely irrelevant to their work in the classroom.
I have pointed out already that the lack of planned funding places schools in an invidious position with regard to devising a comprehensive ICTs school policy that its inclusive nature requires. The general lack of resources is compounded by the glaring lacuna of indigenous interactive software with material specific to the Irish curriculum in the areas of history, geography, Irish language and culture. Talk of developing the knowledge society rings hollow when we fail to use the wealth of talent that exists in Ireland to produce at home indigenous content for the curricula at primary and secondary levels.
But enough about the “worst of times” and the “winter of despair”; let’s get on to the “spring of hope”! “Nature”, as my old science teacher used to say, “abhors a vacuum”, and the deafening silence emanating from the DES in terms of an ICT policy is now being actively filled by experienced practitioners, i.e. teachers. One such initiative, to be launched early in the New Year, is the Digital Schools Initiative (DSI). You can read about the DSI in an accompanying article in this newsletter by Robbie O’Leary, whose brainchild this scheme is.
CESI as a representative body of teachers who actively use ICTs on a daily basis, as a tool for teaching and learning in the classroom is also in a renewal phase. We have done a serious bit of navel gazing in the past year to see how we as an organization can actively encourage teachers, in the absence of any initiative by the DES, to use ICTs as a tool for teaching in the classroom.
CESI has decided to encourage best practice in the classroom by:
· Inviting practicing teachers from primary and post primary levels to present at our annual conference in February how they implement the curriculum in the classroom through the use of ICTs
· Reinstituting the Student Fair as an integral part of the Education Show that takes place in the RDS from 6-8 April. The Student Fair allows students from both primary and secondary schools to showcase projects they have undertaken using ICTs in a non competitive atmosphere. All participants will receive a certificate.
· Organizing a number of workshops/presentations as an integral part of the Education Show to demonstrate best practice in ICTs
· Holding urgent talks with the DES on the formulation of future policy on ICTs. We would welcome the views of teachers on any aspects of the current situation so that we will have an informed view in approaching talks with the DES.
Finally I remain sanguine that with a modicum of goodwill from all the partners in education, all of the problems that I have alluded to above can be addressed. It is past time for a well thought out policy to be put in place that addresses the pedagogical, structural and financial problems if the benefits of the technological revolution are to be reaped by the current cohort of children in our schools. If this opportunity is not grasped, then not only will we have failed our children but we will also have failed our economy and our country.
Matt Reville
The revised Irish Primary School Curriculum published in 1999 was a response to changing needs, particularly in the areas of science and technology. In its general aims (p.7) it states that "In a rapidly changing society effective interpersonal and intrapersonal skills and skills in communications are essential for personal, social and educational fulfillment".
ICTs are emphasised throughout the guidelines. It states in the Teacher Guidelines for English Language, for example, “Computers and other items of information and communications technologies enrich the teaching and learning of language considerably" (English Teacher Guidelines, p.91).
The primary rationale for the introduction of ICT into the Irish school system is that it should complement the achievement of broader educational aims, which affirm the professional skills of the teachers and the personal growth of students. At a national level this should mean that ICT integration correlates with wider educational aims. More importantly, at local level, ICTs must work in tandem with the implementation of school development plans. The Minister for Education and Science launched his IT initiative with the publication in 1997 of the policy document IT 2000 A Policy Framework for the New Millennium.
What saddens me enormously is the apparent lack of “joined up thinking” by the DES. With the ending of the IT 2000 initiative the educational system was left in a policy vacuum as far as ICT was concerned. When is the last time that you heard a Minister or even a high profile politician speak about the values of ICTs in education? The IT 2000 policy document was launched with the usual fanfare of trumpets and photo calls. Schools received grant money to purchase hardware and software. Since 1997/98 what funding has been received? Schools are now struggling to maintain a range of outdated and outmoded computers at a time when the DES is spending a vast amount of money introducing broadband to schools!
The general rule in other EU countries is that schools are allotted money for maintenance, purchase and repairs to computer equipment in a planned manner. Schools know in advance exactly how much money they will have to spend. In Ireland grants come sporadically, if at all! In the context of School Development Planning, how are school principals expected to plan for the integration of ICTs when they have no money and have no idea of when or if they will receive funding? Lack of vision and leadership is compounded by a lack of funding!
For six years primary teachers have invested an enormous amount of time and energy in attending in-service on the principles and methodologies of the revised curriculum. ICTs rarely get a “look in” at these inservice days. Such mention as there is will refer teachers to lists of websites, but there is scarcely an acknowledgement of the fact that ICTs are a powerful medium for collaborative activity-based teaching and learning. Inservice days thus serve to act as a negative reinforcement for the many teachers who regard ICTs as largely irrelevant to their work in the classroom.
I have pointed out already that the lack of planned funding places schools in an invidious position with regard to devising a comprehensive ICTs school policy that its inclusive nature requires. The general lack of resources is compounded by the glaring lacuna of indigenous interactive software with material specific to the Irish curriculum in the areas of history, geography, Irish language and culture. Talk of developing the knowledge society rings hollow when we fail to use the wealth of talent that exists in Ireland to produce at home indigenous content for the curricula at primary and secondary levels.
But enough about the “worst of times” and the “winter of despair”; let’s get on to the “spring of hope”! “Nature”, as my old science teacher used to say, “abhors a vacuum”, and the deafening silence emanating from the DES in terms of an ICT policy is now being actively filled by experienced practitioners, i.e. teachers. One such initiative, to be launched early in the New Year, is the Digital Schools Initiative (DSI). You can read about the DSI in an accompanying article in this newsletter by Robbie O’Leary, whose brainchild this scheme is.
CESI as a representative body of teachers who actively use ICTs on a daily basis, as a tool for teaching and learning in the classroom is also in a renewal phase. We have done a serious bit of navel gazing in the past year to see how we as an organization can actively encourage teachers, in the absence of any initiative by the DES, to use ICTs as a tool for teaching in the classroom.
CESI has decided to encourage best practice in the classroom by:
· Inviting practicing teachers from primary and post primary levels to present at our annual conference in February how they implement the curriculum in the classroom through the use of ICTs
· Reinstituting the Student Fair as an integral part of the Education Show that takes place in the RDS from 6-8 April. The Student Fair allows students from both primary and secondary schools to showcase projects they have undertaken using ICTs in a non competitive atmosphere. All participants will receive a certificate.
· Organizing a number of workshops/presentations as an integral part of the Education Show to demonstrate best practice in ICTs
· Holding urgent talks with the DES on the formulation of future policy on ICTs. We would welcome the views of teachers on any aspects of the current situation so that we will have an informed view in approaching talks with the DES.
Finally I remain sanguine that with a modicum of goodwill from all the partners in education, all of the problems that I have alluded to above can be addressed. It is past time for a well thought out policy to be put in place that addresses the pedagogical, structural and financial problems if the benefits of the technological revolution are to be reaped by the current cohort of children in our schools. If this opportunity is not grasped, then not only will we have failed our children but we will also have failed our economy and our country.
Matt Reville
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