By Steve Ranger, 6 April 2006 12:15
NEWS
PCs and PDAs are becoming a common sight in the classroom as teachers switch on to the power of technology as a tool for education.
Only a quarter of schools now have a single dedicated IT suite, compared to three-quarters last year, which suggests that technology is increasingly integrated in the classroom, according to new research by Dell.
And nine out of 10 teachers said IT is very important to their school - compared to 68 per cent last year, reflecting an increased emphasis on IT as a learning tool.
Three quarters of schools interviewed said they have computers in every classroom and one in eight schools claims to use technology in every lesson. And nine out of 10 teachers said IT has changed the way they teach, according to the survey of 277 schools in the UK.
Schools are certainly far more switched on than a few years ago, according to figures from government school IT agency Becta. As of March last year the ratio of students to PCs was around five to one in secondary schools and 7.5 to one in primary schools, while over 95 per cent of secondary and nearly half of primary schools now have a broadband connection of 2Mbps or higher.
Notre Dame School in Glasgow is one school that has embraced the benefits of technology. Its deputy head and ICT coordinator, Isobel Taggart, explained: "The impact [of IT] difficult to describe. Sometimes it can be overwhelming because each teacher has access to resources from across the world."
And despite fears that computers in schools will simply breed a playstation generation, Taggart said computers are helping children interact better.
"The difference IT is making for us is that the kids are becoming much more independent and much more collaborative learners. We are finding that there is a team element to their work," she said.
The school of 800 girls has 200 networked PCs, a wireless network and 40 laptops.
"We are very well resourced in terms of IT," she said. And it has come a long way quickly - 10 years ago the school had one PC in its library and was trying to decide where to put the second.
Now it uses 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire'-style voting handsets when working on projects such as mock elections, and students' work is displayed on large plasma screens as well.
According to the Dell research a third of teachers found boys more receptive to being taught with technology than girls. But Taggart said this is not always the case.
"My view is that the gadget aspect of IT switches boys on. But I see 800 girls switched on to IT and using it on a daily basis. If you expose them to it on a daily basis it just becomes second nature for them."
Taggart said the key to getting the most out of IT is to find the time to let teachers mess around with it.
The issue is to give staff the time to play - formal training is good but you learn through wanting to do something and playing until you are comfortable.
And Dell's UK head of schools, David Todman, said that the key to successful use of technology is to expand its use beyond the usual suspects. He said: "It won't be just the ICT coordinator or the maths teachers that see the benefits of this. It will spread out and you will see it used in PE [for example].
"I'm hoping that as the teachers' confidence improves they can use IT effectively and embed it in the curriculum subjects because then we will see even greater attainments by the learners."
Comments
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1. anonymous
Most of the classrooms I have been in have one computer on the teacher's desk for him/her to check their email.
2. anonymous
I do supply teaching in different schools and see good and (very) bad practice. One problem yet to be addressed is the uncritical acceptance of something as 'good' simply because it was done on a computer.
Another is the habit of using a wordprocessor to 'type up' work already done on paper. I've even spoken to teachers that get kids to draw something on paper for homework, then scan it in school and try to pass it off as CAD.
3. Sorry on this one I'm Anonymous
Background - PCs are proliferating in Schools because of government interference in education. Key Stage 3 [KS3] mandates the use of ICT. More teachers are aware of PCs because they have to be to keep their jobs. This doesn't make the teachers better or the students more likely to learn. The amount of KS3 force feeding in schools means that if a student doesn't learn how to use the 'shift' key in the 20 seconds when it is mentioned during the single 'keyboard skills' period then they spend the rest of their time using the 'Caps Lock' to generate capital letters. This is not the fault of the teachers or the pupils it is the 'force feeding' of curriculum to students that has been mandated by the DfES. In the short time that I have been doing an ICT technician job we re-issued 1300 passwords containing numbers with both upper and lower case letters - when pupils have problems we often go to the PC with them and observe their actions. More than a few of under 15s don't know how to use the 'shift' key. This is only one example of the lunacy of KS3 ICT in schools. Will it change - unlikely - the DfES agenda over the next few years is going to put more pressure on student and teachers and further erode the possibilities of deviating from set lesson plan - even where such a deviation would make the subject more understandable. The budgets for schools continue to shrink and exams get easier to ensure that statistics look good. In our school PCs are used in all subject areas and can be useful for learning but so can traditional teaching methods. Forcing the use of PCs and ICT onto schools is a nonsense - its time for the DfES to stop deluding itself [I won't hold my breath]
4. anonymous
I don't teach anymore, but I found the most important thing was to insist on homework being handwritten.
When I used to accept word-processed essays I found a high percentage of 'cut & paste' from the internet being passed off as students' work.