Recently I received an email from an ICT Lead Teacher in a school in another region asking me if I could pass on my ideas or any weblinks that would help her with ICT assessment in her school. How could she know if student use of ICT was making a difference? It seems that the principal had made the collection of this sort of data part of her job. Maybe it was to justify to the school’s Board of Trustees the ongoing expenses of hardware and broadband charges (I’m guessing.) In my reply I wrote that I have never believed in, or done any ICT assessment – not even in the ’90s when ICT was thought of as a subject and assessing everything to the max was the way things were done! (Remember all those tick boxes?!) My justification? … Learning is done through ICT – back then we called it integration. I was using the technology of the day as a teaching and learning tool. After all, did we ever worry about whether pencils, ballpoint pens or the OHP made a difference (or how?)
So it was with interest that I read a post by Wesley Fryer on his blog ‘Moving at the Speed of Creativity’ titled ‘Good teaching with technology DOES make a difference’. He says: “K-12 teachers have historically seen themselves as content experts. That era has past. Yes, we need teachers with content knowledge, but today more than ever thanks to the Internet and the wealth of high-quality digital curriculum there, teachers don’t have to be the content experts anymore. Teachers need to be PEDAGOGICAL EXPERTS much more than they need to be content experts today.”
How true! However for good teaching to happen, teachers do need good ICT skills. They can not say (as many do) ‘I don’t know much about ICT. My students know so much more than me and they teach themselves the skills.’ Is the reality of teaching in the 21st Century being avoided by some teachers?
To provide a framework to identify required teacher ICT skills and the outcomes of using these, schools in the Wanganui ICT PD Cluster have each developed a Teachers ICT Learning Plan – teachers-ict-learning-plan.doc (example.) These reflect each school’s vision and ICT strategic plan and provide a benchmark for teachers to set goals in mastering and using ICTs. If teachers are achieving the outcomes, then the evidence of ICT making a difference will be there. There is no limit to what can be achieved by a teacher who is a ‘pedagogical expert’ and is skilful in guiding students’ learning through ICT.
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April 6th, 2007 at 3:09 am
[...] ICT Assessment, good teaching and making a… [...]
April 6th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Our experience in Cape Town, South Africa is that educational software packages do indeed improve learner performance. I agree with your view that much depends on the ability of the educator to integrate the use of ICT into the curriculum.
Of course, we have the added challenge of a shortage of computing resources in our schools, which means that learners do not have, by far, enough opportunity to interact with the software. In spite of this, we are already seeing a marked improvement.
April 6th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
Thanks for your comments Kobus – it’s great to hear from someone in South Africa.