ICT for Schools: What you buy is what you think

When I have a difficult subject to discuss, I sometimes like to start off with a graph to visualise my ideas and the complexity of the subject. The first draft of this one was hand-made. I did it during a discussion I had with teachers about choices of ICT equipment, systems and applications. I argued that you need to have a sound framework for ICT decision-making in education.

Any choice that you can make has multiple reasons and consequences. Decision about ICT in education are always – consciously or unconsciously – based on a theory about and a vision on learning and teaching, media and society. Most of the time people are not conscious about their own theories that are guiding their choices and they rarely have a realistic idea of what effects of their decisions will have on learning, teaching and school organisation for instance.

If you are in favor of a computer lab you have a different view on learning organisation and learning processes than if you prefer distributed equipment. The same is true if you expect a wireless laptop cart to be the best solution for using ICT with your students. If you think you need specialised educational software you probably also have a different view on learning, literacy, instruction and teaching than if you prefer production-oriented software with no predefined content. In case you have a limited budget for equipment, the decision to spend it on interactive whiteboards says something about your teaching concept. It probably differs from the concept someone has, who would prefer to spend the same amount on computers with free software, cameras, camcorders, digital microscopes or robotics sets first. The second fosters simultaneous and autonomous hands on activity by many, the first promotes centralized lecture style activity of one at a time.

Most decision makers have hardly an overview on the short term and long term effects of the decisions they make. Some effects are purely financial or technical. Of course they ought to be considered even if for the moment your budget is big enough.

Some effects are organisational. A computer lab for instance is fine, if you don’t use computers on a daily bases. If the classes who use it are few and if you are near to the lab, you can use it whenever it’s free. If every teacher wants his time share for using the lab and if there are many teachers and classes, they will have access once a week or once every two weeks. If at the assigned time a technical or organisational problem comes up, you will have to come back two weeks later – unfortunately that’s when you had planned your field trip. The same logic applies to mobile systems like laptop carts.

The most important however are the effects on teaching and learning. Do the invest in ICT serve old ideas with new means or are your invests a stepping stone to new educational practices? And, what else is needed to implement new educational practices?

As an educational ICT consultant I have experienced that teachers' views are often guided by considerations of high availability (for themselves and for today), handling, short term productivity, control, fast familiarisation, and technical modernism.

Schoolboards and politicians are focused on costs and social equity, but sometimes, if the salesman has good convincing skills, their hunger for modernism overwhelms their decisions, with the consequence that costly hype equipment is bought without any noticeable effect on education.

Technicians mostly concentrate on reliability, efficiency, maintenance and standardisation, but are also driven by ideology and by the option to take control over the technology and the users.

Architects are generally concerned about budget limits – if equipment is part of the project package – about design issues of cabling and computer furniture.

In the end what is lacking is a sound framework connecting teaching, learning, equipment and software to guide people to choose from all the options that are available.

Which is the dominant learning and teaching style in our school today, and where do we want to go from here? Which technological strategy will help us develop our school? Which are the competencies that our students really need to develop, when we consider that they are three, eight or fifteen years from entering the job market or playing an active part in social, economical or political “adult” life? Which are the competencies that teachers need to develop in order to serve as guides or even role models for their students? What are the implicit and explicit “messages” to the learners and the community, of the different hardware of software solutions that schools can choose from? Are students treated as responsible autonomous learners or are they vessels to fill with information that is expected to morph into knowledge? Do we talk about standards to the learners meaning specific software that “everyone” uses in the office, or do we talk about standards in the sense of information management, communication, non-linear production processes and so forth. Are ethics, authorship and empowerment important aspects of schools considerations, and are they connected to technology, or are technological resources seen as value free “tools”? Is the learner in control of the machine or is the machine in control of the learner? And who controls the machine that controls the learner?

Such questions are never left unanswered even if they are not raised. At least the answers are hidden in the choices schools make regarding hardware, software and distribution of technology.

At times where choices have to been made, my graph doesn’t necessary simplify the task but it helps to critically analyse possible scenarios and describe the interconnectedness of some major layers that maybe considered.

Constructing oral narratives online

Ages ago, I participated in a R&D Project called TEO. I was a primary school teacher then, back in 1994. The project's main objectives were to develop a software to record narratives using a computer, and to use this application to practice oral language skills. The tool was called TEO - meaning Text Editor Oral. It worked under the old MacOS 9.

We used TEO in primary school but tested it also in special needs education and in Kindergarten. In primary school, students aged from 7 to 12 used it to record self invented narratives in French, which is the 3rd language that is taught in Luxembourg from 2nd grade up, after Luxembourgish and German.

In TEO, the narratives could be edited by adding and deleting recording parts, or by rearraging them using drag and drop. Each recording was represented by a simple icon that could be used for these manipulations, there were no complex soundwaves or timelines. The icons were automatically numbered so that you could easily tell if the recordings had been rearranged, if parts had been added or deleted.

The theoretical framework of the project was a constructivist view on second language acquisition, embedded in a multilingual context and based on a concept of 'Storying' - meaning a narrative approach to language production. Collaboration, using and sharing implicit language knowledge, students' voice, self-evaluation, students' control over their productions and autonomy were major tenets of the framework.

The tool was great and so easy to handle, that very young children had no difficulty to work with it without any assistance from elders or adults. The project was e great success, which means that students made enormous progress in oral French without a lot of instructive teaching. They eagerly constructed narratives with the knowledge they shared and were not at all afraid of expressing themselves in a language they hardly mastered, mainly because they were not forced to speak in front a class and they had full control over their recordings. If they were not satisfied with the sentence they produced they could just drop it and have another try without leaving traces of "failure". Anyone knows that this is reassuring but you seldom work under such conditions in school.

Of course you could misuse the application for drill and practice exercises but the overall project's framework and the teachers' views on language acquisition prevented such an approach.

The project lasted one year and was documented in a written report, three videos showing children at work and a multimedia CD-Rom explaining and illustrating the framework. Unfortunately the documentations haven't been reedited yet or put online, so that they aren't available any more except for my own report of that time which can be found online on my other website. http://www.fiermonte.lu/resources/wiki/Education/TEO.shtml

After the official R&D project was over, two additional Windows PC versions had been developed with the funding of two other projects, and a few teachers continued to work with it although the PC version was hardly running stable. There was no large scale implementation, promotion or distribution of it after that.

TEO was not forgotten but it didn't last long as nobody seemed to be interested to finance software maintenance in order keep pace with the development of operating systems, and software libraries. But that's the way things often go with R&D projects.

In the early years of EducDesign we wanted to develop a new version of the application for the Ministry of Education in Luxembourg but we got no funding for that either, so we finally decided to do it on our own.

Instead of TEO we called it Tiparlo which in Italian means "I speak to you". We created an online browser based version of the tool and added also some great new features like export into mp3, adding images and comments and setting access rights. It works fine with most common browser in their latest versions. Up until this year Tiparlo could not be used independently of a global OLEFA CMS/IMS based Website in which Tiparlo is part of an online software suite called Collaboration Server which contains other modules like Storyboard, Painter, Webbook and Wiki.
As some people asked us if there was no other way to get it, because they had no support from their schoolboard or the Ministry of Education to get an OLEFA based website, we decided to give it a try and offer Tiparlo separately. Well, it's online now and it can be found at http://www.tiparlo.com.

Its main objective is still to encourage authentic oral expression, communication and language reflection. Tiparlo is very helpful to keep track of someone’s language development or second language acquisition. It fosters cooperation and autonomy, peer tutoring, learning from one another, self-evaluation and critical thinking.

Tiparlo is perfect for minimal invasive language "teaching" and for second language acquisition in multilingual contexts where students share their explicit and implicit language knowledge in meaningful situations.

I know that a lot of teachers would prefer closed applications where students listen to phrases and words, repeat them and get a right or wrong, and a score. With such tools students can also work on their own and you don't need to spend to much time on their productions. The number of rights and wrongs says everything you need to know. But that's not the way I like to promote IT in school.

With Tiparlo it's different. It's not the teacher or the tool that controls the production and the learning but the students themselves. To evaluate the learning processes, you need listen to the narratives, consider the context in which the production process took place and have a discussion with your students. Now and then it may be interesting to film or to record the discussions among the students during the production process. Not with the "big brother is listening" approach but with permission of the authors, if you want to get a somehow authentic work and have a respectful relationship with your students. Such "teaching" demands a lot of effort, much more that if you use closed ready made applications, but the results are worth it and have much more impact on the language acquisition progress than forever popular drill and kill exercises, which in my view are an insult to the intelligence and the creativity of children, who always prove to be born language learners when embedded in a language rich context.

Jacques Duez : The pleasure of the real questions

I have completed the list of the interview transcripts below, that have been published on the website on http://www.desimages.be/spip.php?article404

• 01 - le chemin pour devenir professeur de morale
• 02 - l’invention d’une pratique vidéo avec les enfants
• 03 - ne pas garder de savoir en réserve
• 04 - la caméra introduit de la distance
• 05 - rencontrer l’humanité à travers un écran
• 06 - la correspondance comme effet de montage
• 07 - une égale capacité à dire ce que l'on ressent
  
• 08 - le savoir et le vivant
  
• 09 - paroles de proximité, paroles populaires
• 10 - l'existence de ceux qui ont la parole
• 11 - les rencontres avec des artistes
• 12 - le plaisir des vraies questions
• 13 - problèmes des retrouvailles
• 14 - sauver sa peau face au pouvoir
• 15 - l’univers infini des personnages
• 16 - ne pas faire du journalisme
• 17 - être vivant, se casser la figure, faire ce que l’on ne peut pas (published sept. 7th 2010)
  
  

I find chapter 12 very interesting and also funny. Translated it's entitled "the pleasure of the real questions" It includes a reply to to a child saying "Jacques, with you we haven't learned anything." - absolutely great!
I reminds me of a situation where Frank Trierweiler and I coached a group of teachers who were supposed to reflect on an evaluate their teaching strategies and concepts. In the final session one of the teachers said that she hadn't learned anything out of all this. I don't remember my reply but I remember that I was frustrated. Jacques in his situation wasn't. Read it for yourself it's worth it.

The picture has been taken by Christian Schwarz during the evening dedicated to Jacques Duez on April 15th. Thanks to you Christian.

Jacques Duez has died

Jacques Duez has died Monday 2nd of February 2010.
It's difficult to find words to express how sad I am that I will not have the chance to meet with you again as we planned to do it the last time we met, and the last time we talked on the phone.
I'm thankful that I had the chance to know you and that you followed my invitation to Luxembourg for a presentation of your work on 19th of June 2008.
With your death, the world of education has lost a charismatic figure. You had the sensibility and the intelligence to give room to children's voices like only few people I have met could do it.
Thank you for the marvelous work you've done and which will continue to inspire me.

I'm planning an evening dedicated to Jacques Duez on Thursday 15th of April in the Cultural Center in Bivange, for all those who had the pleasure to meet him in Dudelange (L) 2008 and for those who don't know his work yet. Help me spread the word and send me an email if you plan to come: In Memory of Jacques Duez

My post on Jacques:
http://www.pinofiermonte.com/2008/06/jacques-duez-on-listening-to-children.html

Read the authentic words of Jacques Duez
by Massart on http://www.desimages.be/spip.php?article404

• le chemin pour devenir professeur de morale
• l’invention d’une pratique vidéo avec les enfants
• ne pas garder de savoir en réserve
• la caméra introduit de la distance
• rencontrer l’humanité à travers un écran
• la correspondance comme effet de montage
• une égale capacité à dire ce que l'on ressent (nouveau)
  
• le savoir et le vivant (nouveau)
  

Also available as Feed:
feed://www.desimages.be/spip.php?page=backend&id_rubrique=112

Biographical article written by Jacques and published 5th July 2007:
http://philohorsclasse.free.fr/article.php3?id_article=10

Some interesting extracts of Jacques' interviews can be found on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jacques+duez&search_type=&aq=f

To me one of the most impressing video sequences by Jacques Duez is the following one, in which Jacques interviews one of his former students who has become a young man and who reflects on himself when he was a child and on his experience in Jacques Duez lessons.



Announcement of Jacques Duez's death on Arte TV-channel:
http://www.arte-belgique.be/mensuel/EM_300810

http://www.telemb.be/content/view/5827/166/

A way out of pseudoscience

Science education is non-existent in Luxembourgish elementary school. We do a little bit of geography and history in fifth and sixth grade and we have a science curriculum for first to sixth grade. But, as far as I can observe, natural science is often reduced to filling out work sheets and doing personal projects where students individually or in groups look up information on the Internet or in science books to produce a short work on a topic they choose. Common subjects are dinosaurs, an animal, natural phenomena like tsunamis, volcanos and hurricanes, a social problem like alcohol and tobacco consumption, and so on. The production of these pieces of work are usually referred to as "project work" although most of the time they are limited to a few text pages with pictures and illustrations downloaded from the Internet. The situation in secondary school is not much better - sometimes even worse.

When teachers want to offer "real science" and scientific experiences to their students they go to the museum of natural history and science once or twice a year where expert animators take over. Subjects range from fossils to robotics, and from astronomy to chemistry. Most of the time, the teacher's activity is reduced to accompanying their students during the bus trip to the external expert institution. They seem to act according to the principle: If you don't know something yourself, at least you should know where you can find it. Why not? If students have fun and learn, it is better to leave the job to someone who knows something about science, and who is passionate about it, than to try to teach something you don't master yourself, or something you are not interested in. But, back to school, the experience is soon forgotten and nobody seems to care a lot about that.

There are some obvious reasons why science isn't valued that much in Luxembourg. It could well be that the majority of elementary school teachers' interest in science is as low as their knowledge about science because they have experienced a school system where science wasn't valued. Then, there is the fact, that Luxembourgish language curriculum (with German, French and Luxembourgish) has such a high status, that there seems to be not much time left for science - and I don't expect this to change in the near future. Another characteristic of Luxembourgish elementary school is, that more and more teachers are female, which by "tradition" seem less interested in science. There's no doubt that this is a serious gender issue, but only few seem to care about it so far.

Recently some think, that science teaching should be taken more seriously. The reasons are obvious. The worldwide economic crisis has left its footprint on the Luxembourgish economy which, since the decline of the steel industry, is characterized by a low degree of differentiation and a high dependency on the financial sector.
A second cause has been the PISA-Test (Programme for International Student Assessment) where Luxembourg scored as low in science as in math. Finally, compared to its neighbours, Luxembourg has not enough young people choosing careers in science and engineering. Nowadays, where scientific literacy seems to be more important than ever, this turns out to be a serious issue.

So how could schools respond to this challenge? If teachers aren't passionate about science, forcing them to teach more of it will not necessarily bring the effect that stakeholders hope for. Bringing the students to science labs or museums once or twice a year doesn't seem to have that lasting effects either.

Maybe a new way to teach science would be to just leave most of the "teaching" to the students themselves. Even and sometimes due to the absence of direct instruction from teachers, students can learn by themselves and develop knowledge through experimentation, self-instruction and by peer-sharing knowledge.

For this to happen schools should provide time to students to investigate in scientific questions engaging in long-term open activities, room for experimentation, and some material.

Putting to much emphasize on factual knowledge which is often thought to be the same as scientific knowledge is definitely not the right way. Nor do I think that designing a new curriculum with prescribed topics, just to make sure that all important areas of science are covered makes much sense.

Teachers (and politicians) should have more confidence in children's will and potential to learn. Interventions from adults should not be invasive but marked by their interest in the ways children question the world and deal with challenging thoughts. Answers and solutions are not what they should expect from their students, neither should giving answers and quick solutions be expected from teachers. Their main contribution should be curiosity, dialogue, collaboration and awareness for possible networks between children and connections between fields of inquiry.

Of course, when questions get really challenging teachers should provide guidance to their students so that they - themselves - can get in touch with scientific experts. Such experts could then be invited to school, not to bring answers but to help scaffolding scientific thinking.

In my view, letting children take over science education would cause no more harm than letting teachers continue to teach science, as long as many of them don't know

• that if the ice on the Arctic Ocean melted, sea levels would not rise,
• that the cause of the Moon's phases is not the shadow of the Earth, http://home.hiwaay.net/~krcool/Astro/moon/moonphase/
• that if two falling objects don't reach the ground at the same time it's not due to their difference in weight,
• that if species evolve it's not due to the transmission of characteristics individuals have acquired during their life, http://www.csicop.org/si/show/getting_the_monkey_off_darwins_back/
• that the cause of the low temperature in winter is not due to the distance between the Earth and the sun, ://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/time/seasons.htm
• that the complexity of an ant colony has nothing to do with the "intelligence" of ants, http://nirmukta.com/2009/08/22/complexity-explained-2-swarm-intelligence/

It's fine with me if children do an experiment with baking sodan and vinegar to simulate an erupting volcano. But it's problematic if teachers rely on such a scientific experiment to demonstrate and explain volcanic activity - without questioning the experiment.

One last word on Wikipedia or the Internet in general as a source of information. I use both a lot myself, but I don't think that it's the place where students should begin their project work. Being able to find the "right" information is important but it's not equal to constructing knowledge or to thinking scientifically.

Title image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2006-01-15_coin_on_water.jpg