ICT & Learning Outcomes
The Government has invested a whopping £5 billion in ICT in schools since 1997 and, as a result, the UK now has the highest levels of embedded technology in classrooms in the EU, with one computer for every three pupils. But how has this spend affected educational outcomes both in schools and in higher education?
The Interactive Whiteboard
Mention technology in schools and the first gadget that springs to mind for both teachers and students will probably be the Interactive Whiteboard (IWB). Becta, the government agency leading the drive to use technology throughout learning, states that IWBs are "key to the spread of technology uptake across a school."
IWBs allow teachers to use digital content and multimedia in their lessons. Let's face it, blackboards and chalk just don't cut the mustard in an era when students are bombarded by consumer technology 24/7 in the shape of mobile phones, MP3 players and games consoles.
The IWB provides a display surface big enough for everyone in the classroom to see. The technology allows students to interact with multimedia resources and gives teachers the chance to concentrate on student responses.
Thanks to the brighter and clearer presentation of material, IWBs contribute to increased retention and recall of learning. Research has also shown that IWBs are increasing student engagement in classrooms, ensuring they stay task-focused throughout the lesson.
The facts speak for themselves, according to the ICT Impact Report from European Schoolnet: "IWBs result in pupils' performance in national tests in English, maths and science improving much more than that of pupils in schools without IWBs."
Becta agrees, its findings show that schools that use technology across the curriculum and wider school life achieve a higher percentage of A* - C grades at GCSE. Pupils studying KS2 maths, science and English in schools that make the best use of ICT also improve at twice the rate of the national average.
Learning Platforms
The other technology area where we've seen a lot of investment and push from government has been the introduction of learning environments/platforms into schools. In contrast to IWBs, learning platforms are seen as more problematic. They are potentially complex pieces of software that pull together a range of resources that allow learners, staff and parents to interact online. These tools might include email, chat rooms, tools to create online content, online assessment and marking and curriculum resources.
However, Becta has found that where these learning platforms have become embedded in the school they have provided efficiency gains and stimulated new ways of working. For example, a technology college of 1600 pupils in Kent saw substantial improvement after introducing a new learning platform.
Students stated that they found their work 'easier and quicker to do' despite it being exactly the same work that they had been doing with pen and paper. Pupils even appreciated the fact that they couldn't forget their homework because all their work was stored on the learning platform. Absent or excluded students were also able to continue their work from home.
Certainly a well implemented learning platform can bring many benefits to learning outcomes. Top of the list is the promotion of independent learning - using a learning platform pupils can work with their own learning styles, at their own pace. Students assume greater responsibility for their own learning.
Web 2.0 technology
Social networking tools such as Facebook, Flickr, GoogleDocs, wikis and blogs are increasingly becoming more widely adopted in teaching and learning.
Pupils can behave very differently online than they do in class as Carol Wheale, an English teacher at Dane Court Grammar School in Kent, found when she started to use wiki pages and discussion threads to help year 11 GCSE students study a poetry anthology. Given the freedom to express themselves outside the classroom, Carol found students threw themselves into online discussions about the poems in a way they never had before.
The use of the Internet also gives pupils the opportunity to connect to real people and to participate in real world events. The technology promotes collaborative learning by encouraging interaction and cooperation among students, teachers and experts regardless of where they are in the world.
For language teaching the benefits can be huge. Norbert Pachler reader in education at the Institute of Education told the Times Educational Supplement "Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) is certainly one of the subjects where new technologies are being used more extensively." He cites Webquests, blogging, online partnerships and projects, digital storytelling as examples of Web 2.0 technologies currently being adopted by MFL teachers.
Although the use of Web 2.0 in schools is in its infancy, Becta has carried out research on its impact on learning (The research found that Web 2.0 and the social web was effective in stimulating new modes of enquiry and encouraging pupils to engage in collaborative learning activities.
ICT and higher education
While the use of ICT in schools undoubtedly has a knock on effect on higher education, ICT plays a vital role in our universities too; technology has already transformed the research process in HE.
The use of collaborative tools and the internet in higher education has meant that research teams can now be spread across the world rather than concentrated in a single institution. What's more digital libraries are giving all students access to academic resources and greatly enriching research possibilities for smaller institutions and for students who live outside big cities.
Higher education has also been quick to grasp the data processing benefits. Researchers are now able to carry out complex calculations on huge data sets. For example the analysis and projections of climate change using vast amounts of weather data which would have been impossible five years ago are now performed routinely.
Technology is set to transform higher education yet further. At this year's Jisc conference William Dutton, director of the Oxford Internet Institute said that "universities should not be doing anything in the classroom that could be done online." While Martin Bean, vice chancellor at the Open University went on to say that "face-to-face contact in universities has to be about more than simply passing on information that could be obtained digitally". Bean is convinced that universities that embrace informal learning across a range of digital platforms are the ones that will survive in the long term.