New Generation Learning Conference, Dalarna University 2012

The NGL Conference came to an end on Thursday with some final presentations and a closing debate.

Rosamund Sutherland and Ton de Jon were the main presenters on the day. One subject that Rosamund Sutherland and many others took up was that of the digital tools that are used during instruction and the importance of using them in the correct way.

“Developing these in a professional manner is key… Many teachers don’t actually know how they should use the tools,” stated Rosamund Sutherland.

Lots to gain from using digital equipment

That there is a lot to gain from using digital equipment is clear to Rosamund. In her main subject area, mathematics, digital equipment is not used as much as it is in many other subjects.

“It has a great potential that is not being made best use of in England.”

Commercialisation

There were many positive thoughts about online learning at the NGL Conference. However, there was also an element of criticism. In the final discussion, the commercial aspect of digitalised learning was brought up and the risk of companies developing software that is not even necessary and that costs upon purchase and then as a result of future support services.

Andrew Casson, Director of Education and Research at Dalarna University, stated that staff must be educated so that they are able to identify what is required and consequently avoid making the mistake of purchasing unnecessary software.

Terry Andersson felt that the purchase of commercial products was a natural development.

“Previously, we have invested a great deal of money in, for example, libraries. This is a natural process. It’s business, and it will continue to be business,” he stated.

I was interviewed by Alastair Creeland on my paper on the use of learning platforms. You can hear it at http://audioboo.fm/boos/679211-ngl-2012-albin-wallace

Patterns of internet use by English students

Introduction

The children who participated in this research are ahead of the technology itself in some ways, demanding a higher level of performance and efficiency than it is often able to deliver. Issues such as speed, filtering (especially at school), viruses, spam, spy and other malware are seen as an irritation. Restrictions that are placed upon them at school, whether through web filtering, timetabling, access or other issues, are however tolerated and children are phlegmatic about their schools’ provision of internet services. By contrast they usually find their access at home more enjoyable, beneficial and helpful to their school-related, recreational, private and social lives.

 

According to their own report, it seems that children regard themselves as having a well-developed, sound and perceptive sense of the accuracy and veracity of the information that they commonly access from the internet. They are likely to use the design, web address and general ‘feel’ of a website to assess its potential and likely accuracy. They use their personal experiences when evaluating the accuracy of information obtained from a specific website, and will often self-filter websites that they have discovered in the past to be unreliable, inaccurate or misleading. This is especially true of wikis. Children often evaluate a website by quickly assessing the amount or type of advertising or pop-ups encountered. Websites that include excessive advertising or inappropriate (e.g. gambling) advertising are often avoided by children as they self-censor websites they encounter. This is true of both home and school usage, although the school will usually filter out inappropriate websites before they reach the students’ desktop. Children often indicated that they use effective methods of triangulation or verification when obtaining information of doubtful authenticity. Methods of verification include comparing data extracted from a number of websites, seeking information from an adult or peer or referring to books for confirmation of information.

 

Unsurprisingly, children used search engines more frequently at school than any other category of website. This was stated by them in their surveys and during interviews and was also validated by logs recording their usage. For recreation, in their out-of-school environments they liked playing games, browsing and downloading music and videos. For social communication, across both genders they preferred using instant messaging and social networks as their mode of social communication. Most children reported using the internet extensively for helping with homework and revision, with a preference for using the internet in private areas out-of-school such as bedrooms or other private living and recreation areas.

 

Both online and offline literacy practices were seen to be strongly related to internet use,  with children who reported spending significant amounts of time reading books and magazines also reporting moderately high internet use. The internet was certainly seen by children as forming an important part of their social and educational activities with words such as “accuracy” and ”learning” occurring frequently during the interview group discussions. The internet is clearly valued as a dependable source of information and as a means of social communication.

 

As has been noted in the presentation of findings, some gender differences in internet usage were observed in the survey. Girls generally indicated that they were more likely to use social software such as instant messaging or social networking sites than boys, whereas boys were more likely to use internet games for recreation than girls. Girls’ usage of social networking generally focused around keeping in touch with existing friends rather than making new ones. Children of both genders reported not only downloading music and videos as favoured activities but also the creation and publishing of music and videos as popular pastimes. They also described how they enjoyed constructing artefacts on the internet such as web pages, virtual postcards and other internet-hosted construction activities. Whilst acknowledging the possible gender stereotyping that these conclusions may imply, girls’ higher use of social networking and boys’ higher usage of games may be seen as being consistent with both genders’ offline interests. This is also supported by the apparent greater likelihood of boys undertaking more risky online behaviour than girls, such as visiting chatrooms.

 

Unsurprisingly, children generally perceived themselves as having a greater degree of freedom in internet usage out-of-school than in-school. Those children who felt they had the greatest amount of freedom also reported the highest levels of confidence in internet usage. Relatively moderate usage (up to two hours per day) of the internet seemed to be mostly appropriate, being focused on a range of recreational, social and educational activities. Relatively low levels (less than one half-hour per day)  of internet use were often associated with low levels of reading generally, whereas relatively high levels (more than two hours per day)  of internet use was often also associated with low levels of reading.  Usage at the high end was often also associated with unfocused, random use of the internet such as browsing. Those children who reported structured home supervision and the application of some usage rules also reported a balance of recreational, social and educational usage at both home and school.

 

Notwithstanding children’s observations as noted above on the accuracy of information obtained from the internet, there was also a fascination with its fallibility. Children were interested in encountering information that was apocryphal, misleading or just plain wrong and believed they were efficient and adept at uncovering such websites, although they were unlikely to revisit them for research purposes. Children also found the potential of the internet to distract interesting, depending on the context of what they found and were often intellectually engaged by stimulating diversions.

 

Many of the above observations are supported by postmodern theories. Butler (2002) and Sellinger (2004) have described the internet as being a postmodern phenomenon. Their separate pieces of research have picked out three key postmodern descriptors of the internet, namely its non- hierarchised nature, its virtuality and its mutability. These three descriptors can be related to much of the children’s use of the internet as described in this paper. Its non-hierarchised form relates to and appeals to children in the way in which they can create, share and seek information and communicate using internet-based technologies. The virtuality of the internet places sources of information, recreational spaces and their network of friends in an easily accessible and synchronous environment created by them wherever they have an internet-enabled device, but especially out-of-school.

 

These ideas are also consistent with theories expressed by other researchers. Hernwell has described the internet as being a function rather than an object and describes it in virtual terms (Hernwell, 2005). Gee (2004) expresses similar ideas, placing experience ahead of information and seeing the internet in terms of process rather than product. Again, children’s process-oriented usage of the internet is consistent with ideas such as these.  At an early stage in the  popular use of the internet, Nune was also writing in similar terms (Nune, 1995), realising quickly that the internet had no frontiers and as such was not bounded in the same way as other systems of communication or methods of storing and retrieving information. These descriptions closely match, in spirit anyway, the ways in which children spoke, sometimes naively but often perceptively about the internet.

 

The children’s use of and perspectives  on the internet are also supported by the ideas of Granic and Lamey (2000) who have spoken about postmodernism in terms of perspectivism, multiplicity and decentralisation and by relating  these three concepts to both the internet itself and to learning on the internet. Children’s discussion of the internet and the various viewpoints and relativism that pervades both the content and the spirit of the internet is consistent with Granic and Lamey’s, and although children did not exactly describe the internet in those precise terms, the perspectivism can be related to the points of view that children expressed and encountered on the internet,  the multiplicity related to the variety of people and information sources with which they interacted, and the decentralisation related to the hyperlinked, shared and democratic nature of their online communication and research. This is also coherent with Chapman’s description of the internet and postmodernism in terms of the multiplicity of competing and subjective narratives (Chapman, 2005). These competing narratives can also be seen in terms of how (in)formal  learning itself is seen.  Sefton-Green (2004) describes informal learning as being no longer seen in terms of being merely casual, disorganised and accidental but as being an integral part of the same learning process that occurs in more formal settings. This certainly appears to be validated by the comments by children on the way in which they used the internet informally for educational, social and recreational reasons.

 

Children discussed their use of the internet in very human and interactive terms, in turn revealing many of their values with respect to honesty, respect and other ethical issues. The revelation of these values and beliefs are consistent with the theories of Butler (2002) who has written about how technology reveals the outcome of our human values. However, and the children in the study have indicated this, the use of the internet is not a utopian state of being. There are challenges, idiosyncrasies, frustrations and blind alleys, all of which can on the one hand reduce the effectiveness of the internet for research and communication but on the other hand can help raise the social and intellectual capital gained through working through these issues. Zembylas and Vrasidas (2004) have spoken of the pedagogy of discomfort with respect to online learning and this can be translated to the postmodern context of children’s use of internet where there are unprecedented freedoms, but also challenges, new rules and new responsibilities for parents, teachers and those who care for children in both in-school and out-of-school contexts.

Patterns of Usage

There appears to be some common patterns between students’ responses to the online survey, their discussions during the interviews and the logs on internet usage. The logs show that search engines are by far the most common category of website accessed by students at school. This is supported by the results of the survey where 72% of children use the internet for obtaining information. It is worth noting that the logs indicate that there is often little use of the schools’ websites and the use that is recorded often relates to those schools that set their website as the default homepage upon logging in, with students quickly navigating away. The survey indicates that only 24% of students use the schools’ websites, which raises the issue of the purpose and role of the school website. Is it purely for marketing? Could it be used more effectively for children’s learning? Should it more effectively incorporate learning platforms, blogs, e-portfolios or other more interactive elements?  These are issues that schools may be prompted to consider.

 

The interviews yielded a large number of children’s comments on the accuracy of content on the internet, especially with respect to their learning. The interviews included much discussion about online games, and this is also supported by the survey which reported 81% of students using the internet for games. There appeared to be little variance between what children say they did and what the logs reported as actual usage.

 

I believe that the methodology chosen for obtaining and analysing the data in this paper has worked effectively. Both the survey and the interviews produced rich data that assisted my understanding of the area being researched. My positionality as a keen advocate of the internet and as a senior member of my organisation placed me in a privileged position to interpret the data made available through the methodology. At the top level of questioning, the main research question was: How do year children use the internet both in-school and out-of-school? This was broken down into four subsidiary questions.

 

In retrospect, the main question has been a little less about the children’s actual behaviour and more about their perceptions about how they use the internet, their beliefs and the way they report these perceptions and beliefs. . With respect to the question How is out-of-school internet behaviour of year 7 students similar to in-school internet behaviour? a number of conclusions can be drawn from the data and analysis in the preceding sections. Children were critical of the accuracy of information on the internet, especially with respect to their learning. This was drawn out of experiences with a number of websites that were cited as examples. They did, however, demonstrate good ways of checking and validating information, and felt the internet was a valuable resource. This was consistent with both in-school and out-of-school access.

 

Children complained about the things that got in the way of their internet use. This included their experiences with viruses, spyware and pop-ups at home, yet they also complained about the restrictions placed on them by firewalls and filtering at school. This shows their impatience with the technology and their need for immediacy and reliability of access. Children disliked things that got in the way of them using the internet when and where they liked. I believe this needs a curriculum response, educating children about skilful practices on the internet and explaining the reasons and the technologies involved for firewalls and filtering. However, generally children demonstrated a good awareness of internet safety issues. Schools could further encourage and nurture safe practices whilst providing adequate safeguards such as filtering and caching facilities. A good safety policy and code of practice is important.

 

With respect to the question  How does out-of-school internet behaviour of year 7 students differ from in-school behaviour? and its corollary If the behaviour of year 7 students differs, is this important?, there are a number of observations to be made and conclusions to be drawn. There often appears to be a different relationship between the children and their informal learning and that which occurs in a formal educational setting. Schools should look at ways of making the formal educational experience more related to and built upon that which the children bring from home. In order to do this a deeper understanding must be developed of what children do and how they interact with others online. Bringing the home and school practice together is important. This is more relevant than trying to emulate home practice at school. New kinds of learning are taking place involving, amongst other things, online exploration, collaboration and networking and this should be embraced and contextualised by schools to allow young people the opportunity to practice, enhance and apply their skills in a transferable way both in-school and out-of-school.

 

Children mainly used the internet at home in private or other designated areas, whereas at school, usage was more public and exposed. However, children believed that teachers were less likely to know what they were doing on the internet at school than parents were to know what they were doing on the internet at home. Videos and games were favourite activities for children at home, whereas search engines were favourites at school. Children unsurprisingly preferred using the internet at home, mainly due to the privacy and freedom afforded to them. Those who spent the most time on the internet at school also tended to spend the most time on the internet at home.

 

The use of the internet by young people differs in informal, formal and non-formal settings. However, there are perpetual and changing overlaps between these settings, and the contexts will be largely determined by the learners themselves. In this sense, although we might aspire to a framework for learning with the internet, it is a framework that itself is in perpetual beta form. Children develop self-organised learning practices (or contexts) using the tools which are sometimes taught in schools and sometimes learnt informally. It is apparent that children bring informal learning to school. Schools should use this, but not necessarily appropriate it. This has also been commented upon recently by other researchers (Green and Hannon, 2007).  Schools should also however, look at ways of developing context-based models for learning, and seek to understand ways in which informal and formal learning can be realigned. Children should also be encouraged in the school setting to be creators of content as well being articulate and discerning consumers. This is consistent with trends observed in the 2007 Ofcom report on the communications market where the most notable impact of the internet in recent years was seen to be the conversion of consumers into content producers (Ofcom, 2007, p. 97). It is also consistent with recent research into the CBBC online game ‘Adventure Rock’. In 2008, Gauntlett and Jackson conducted a case study on ‘Adventure Rock’, a virtual world for children aged 8-11 (Gauntlett and Jackson, 2008). This free, downloadable program from CBBC provides creative studios where children can draw pictures, animate cartoons, choreograph dance, compose music and construct machines. CBBC has taken up the challenge of providing safe and appropriate social networking and interactive games for children in this age group. At the time of writing, Adventure Rock is the latest in a series of virtual worlds, created specifically for children in the past two years. Others include Club Penguin, Nicktropolis, Moshi Monsters and My Tiny Planets.  Gauntlet and Jackson describe eight types of players in these virtual worlds: explore-investigator, self-stampers, social climbers, fighters, collector-consumers, power users, life-system builders and nurturers, all engaged in a series of online activities ranging from solitary to sociable. Gauntlett and Jackson found a number of benefits to be apparent in children’s usage of Adventure Rock including the creation of mental maps, rehearsal of responsibility and self-expression. Research such as this is important in informing the future appropriation of in-school and out-of-school online experiences for children.

 

Schools need to listen to children and their use of the internet, and develop strategies to bring together the richness that both informal and formal learning can provide. Schools also need to provide the opportunity for children to practice the skills that they bring from informal learning and enable them to use those skills in a range of contexts and settings. In doing this, schools should not attempt to mimic out-of-school use, but concentrate on enabling responsible and effective use of IP-based technologies by students. The development of a set of ethical, safe and critical approaches to the internet is crucial. However, it also apparent that children already have some good critical skills in finding and analysing information, and that they are good at verifying and validating information found on the internet. On the social aspect of the internet, there is a need to further develop safe practices with respect to social networking, blogging, e-portfolios and other online activities.

 

Given children’s frequent interest and participation in internet games, there is further scope to explore the educational possibilities available through these activities. The fun elements of the internet greatly appeal to children of this age, and the appropriation of creative and constructivist activities continue to be a desired outcome for children. Teaching children to be disciplined users is important too. My research showed that those who spent a lot of time just browsing were often those who had unrestricted use of the internet at home. The encouragement of supportive, responsible parental supervision is important and schools should have a role in promoting this. Where the response from home is apathetic or negative, schools should look towards the education of parents and the provision of the internet during out of hours time in the form of after school, or homework clubs where good out-of-school internet behaviours and habits can be demonstrated and developed.

 

Informal learning using the internet often appears as self-motivated with a strong sense of ownership both of content creation and social networking. It is often generated by a real purposeful need by the children themselves, often with the assistance of their peers.

 

Schools should be places where literacy in new media can be developed. The sample of schools in which children were consulted in the research represents a broad set of demographic profiles across England. As the sample was restricted to children at year seven, responses from other year levels would most probably have shown a different set of responses. This is especially likely with respect to the ownership of social networking sites. Older children may be more inclined to use the internet for communications, to explore and test boundaries and to behave in a more independent manner.

 

All the students included in the sample were from schools with good internet provision and it also appeared that children were also generally immersed in the internet in their out-of-school contexts. In this sense, perhaps the internet is a non-issue, being such a natural part of their lives that it holds no awe or surprise for them. This contrasts with my own response, where I am still easily impressed by new internet-based applications. The danger is that school and home practices will diverge to the point where school provision of the internet becomes increasingly irrelevant to children’s lives, especially if a significant gap between teacher and student competencies emerges and grows.

 

Perhaps a more longitudinal study is required, following the patterns of usage over a number of years and possibly examining other types of ICT usage such as mp3 players, mobile camera phones and emergent technologies.

 

Both internet use and reading are popular activities and seem to be related i.e. children who like using the internet also like reading. This clearly links internet use as being a literacy activity. Games, homework, browsing and instant messaging are favourite activities and the literacy activities associated with these are worthy of exploration. As internet use and reading are closely related, literacy is a key skill for internet use and also a key way of improving and practicing that skill. The motivational level for activities such as these is high, as children enjoy the levels of engagement that are afforded by use of the internet.

 

There appears to be a mixed set of rules for home usage, and education of parents is important, especially if their skills and understandings of children’s social practices on the internet are low. Because of children’s high levels of confidence with the internet (66% think they are good users), rules for both school and home usage should perhaps be constantly reviewed.

 

There is a bigger gap between those with access and those without access for boys and girls, and this inequity of access should be explored further. Certainly, the research shows that more emphasis is needed on reading for boys. Girls’ interest in social networking applications also demands a curriculum that teaches responsible use. My research shows that social networking owners are more independent, less likely to look at recommended websites and although children are quite aware of safety issues and can recognize dangers, we must continue to equip them with the necessary skills. The use of resources from Childnet International and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre is to be encouraged.  Resources outlined by the Cyberspace Research Unit’s 2004 report (O’Connell, Price and Barrow, 2004) into emerging trends amongst primary school children’s use of the internet has been taken up by many schools and local authorities. This trend is also to be encouraged and cascaded into the family homes of children. As noted previously, boys tend to use the internet more for chatrooms, games and music, possibly partially because they have less strict rules at home than girls but possibly just because this is what boys enjoy doing anyway. A curriculum response that teaches responsible use is also required here.

 

The role of the internet in schools certainly needs constant examination. Students generally don’t see its usage at school as being as relevant as might be hoped. Indeed, Lankshear and Knobel describe how “…much classroom appropriation of new technologies is ineffective, wasteful, and wrongheaded. For a start, they [educators] are likely to see that effective use of the internet calls for sustained continuous periods online with minimal constraints” (Lankshear and Knobel, 2006b, p. 258).

 

A response is required to address this relevance, possibly through further research into teachers’ perceptions and usage, and there is arguably a need to revisit professional development models for the use of internet applications in the classroom for learning and teaching. Much of what the young people appear to do on the internet is play, not just with respect to online games but playing with video, music and social networking. The institutional rationale for the expense of providing the internet in schools is primarily for the transmitting of information to learned. This is how the cost can be justified. The dichotomous nature of the internet for play/learning is managed by young people, although ‘play’ is still the key word. This is consistent with Sandvig’s view of the internet as a place for ritual and play as well as for information retrieval and work (Sandvig, 2006). Again, Lankshear and Knobel “…do not advocate turning schools into ‘playgrounds’ for new literacies at the level of popular cultural engagement, Educational practice is distinct from and different to popular culture. The day we give that distinction away is the day we give formal education away” (Lankshear and Knobel, 2006b, p. 259).

 

Some authors speak of the necessity of engaging children with the use of the internet (Pritchard and Cartwright, 2004). Most children who responded to my research were soundly engaged, with the engagement being a natural and embedded part of a child’s habitus. I believe that the issue here relates more to giving children the critical and ethical capabilities to use the internet more skilfully.

 

Lack of access to the internet at home by children can mean exclusion from a range of social, creative and constructivist skills. Children not using the internet for communicating with friends, music, games and homework are missing out on a great deal. Perhaps this is a future role of schools’ internet provision, not just as an enabler of access, but also a promoter of innovative practice. Teachers employing strategies such as personalised learning, formative assessment and other contemporary approaches to education may find in the usage of the internet mechanisms by which children can become more independent, directing their own curriculum and managing their assessment for learning. Internet tools such as learning platforms require teacher engagement at the same time as letting go of the locus of control. The negative side of increased online engagement is that excessively heavy use of the internet is often related to music downloading and chat room use and the dangers of internet addiction should be an area of future concern both for parents and schools. Children who use the internet for more than two hours per day could be prone to internet addiction, and excessive internet use should be monitored by parents and teachers, as has already been noted by researchers (Yoo et al, 2004). The issue of internet addiction is also explored by Cao and Su who found that, certainly in China, young people with internet addiction possess different, and often disturbing psychological features when compared with those who use the internet less frequently (Cao and Su, 2007). The reality at the time of writing of this paper (2006-2008) is that a significant proportion of children use the internet to watch videos and claim that they are more likely to use the internet than television to learn about things (Ofcom, 2007, pp 94-95). As they get older (and approach the age of my sample group) they are also more likely to use the internet to keep in touch with other people (Ofcom, 2007, p. 96).

 

Both parents and teachers need to listen to and observe children’s online behaviour whilst at the same time respecting their privacy. Byron talks of how “in terms of adult input with the young person and technology, this is a time to move towards collaborative management” (Byron, 2008, p. 38). Zembylas and Vrasidas discuss the principles of Levinas’ view on ethics and how they relate to internet use. Internet use has an ethical significance which all parties must discover on a journey together. The ethics will evolve through a sensitive and sympathetic partnership (Zembylas and Vrasidas, 2005). With respect to the education of both parents and students, parental and child use of the internet together as a shared experience could improve the effectiveness of parental monitoring. This is supported by the findings of Wang et al (Wang, Bianchi and Raley, 2005). This also is supported by other writers who stress the importance of understanding parents’ and children’s interaction with the internet at home (Valentine and Holloway, 2001).

 

Looking back on my own research process in examining these areas, I can see issues relating to the time sensitivity of the data. The internet has changed significantly during the time of writing of this paper (2011) and in a short period of time the internet will further mutate and children may become engaged in a range of online activities that are yet to be invented. Activities described in this paper may be discarded by children in favour of new technologies affording fresh opportunities for leisure, for learning, communicating and collaborating. In this sense, this paper is an artefact representing a snapshot of the state of children’s internet usage during 2011.  

 

Further work will certainly need to be undertaken to ensure that we are constantly revising our own practices as educators, parents, builders of schools and collaborators with children’s online and offline worlds. New theories will in time emerge to support these and we must constantly reflect not just upon what is happening, but on what new ideas could emerge from future research.

References

BUTLER, C. (2002) Postmodernism: a very short introduction. Oxford, Oxford University Press.

BYRON, T. (2008) Byron Review: Children and New Technology. London, DCSF.

CAO, F. and Su, L. (2007) ‘Internet addiction among Chinese adolescents: prevalence and psychological features.’ In Child: Care, Health and Development, 33 (3) pp. 125-132.

GAUNTLETT, D. and JACKSON, L. (2008) Virtual Worlds: users and producers (Case Study: Adventure Rock). London, Communications and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster.

GEE, J. (2004) Game-like learning: an example of situated learning and implications for opportunity to learn. Madison, University of Wisconsin.

GRANIC, I. and LAMEY, A. (2000) ‘The self-organization of the internet and changing modes of thought.’ In New Ideas in Psychology, 18 (1) pp.93-107.

GREEN, H. and HANNON, C. (2007) Their Space: Education for a digital generation. London, Demos.

HERNWELL, P. (2005) ‘Children and 21st century challenges.’ In Childhoods 2005 Children and youth in emerging and transforming societies. Oslo pp. 47-53.

LANKSHEAR, C. and KNOBEL, M. (2006b) New literacies, Buckingham, Open University Press.

NUNE, M. (1995) ‘Baudrillard in cyberspace: internet, virtuality, and postmodernity.’ In Style, 29 (22) pp. 314-327.

O’CONNELL, R., PRICE, J. and BARROW, C. (2004) Emerging trends amongst primary school children’s use of the internet. University of Central Lancashire, Cyberspace Research Unit.

OFCOM (2007) The communications market 2007. London, Ofcom.

PRITCHARD, A. and CARTWRIGHT, V. (2004) ‘Transforming what they read: helping eleven-year-olds engage with internet information.’ In Literacy, 38 (1) pp. 26-31

SANDVIG, C. (2006) ‘The internet at play: child uses of public internet connections.’ In Journal of Computer-Mediated Communications, 11 (4) pp. 932-956.

SEFTON-GREEN, J. (2004) Report 7: literature review in informal learning with technology outside school. Futurelab series. Bristol, Futurelab.

VALENTINE, G. and HOLLOWAY, S. (2001) ‘On-line dangers?: geographies of parents’ fears for children’s safety in cyberspace.’ In Professional Geographer, 53 (1), pp. 71-83.

YOO, J. Y., CHO, S. C., HA, J., YUNE, K. Y., KIM, S. J., HWANG, J., CHUNG, A., SUNG, Y. H. and LYOO, A. I. K. (2004) ‘Attention deficit hyperactivity symptoms and internet addiction.’ In Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 58 (5), pp. 487-494.

ZEMBYLAS, M. and VRASIDAS, C. (2004) ‘Emotion, reason, and information and communications technologies in education: some issues in a post-emotional society.’ In E-Learning, 1 (1) pp. 105-127.

 

ICTEV 2012 State Conference: Creative Connections

2012 is proving a good year for conferences. Have had my paper on learning platforms accepted for the ICTEV 2012 State Conference: Creative Connections in Melbourne, Australia. Just need to find some sponsorship for the visit.

With over 70 presentations and workshops to choose from, this conference promises to deliver to principals, ICT leaders, primary, secondary, and tertiary educators, technicians and specialists, a range of hands-on and practical sessions that will allow conference delegates to explore and examine best practice examples across the entire curriculum. See first hand what is topical and exciting in the areas of ICT in education and new approaches to technology that can enhance learning, all in one day.

The theme of the conference is Creative Connections. Creativity is the driving force behind a significant amount of ICT use in schools. Creativity is achieved when teachers design authentic tasks for their students that are embedded in the real world, tasks with a real purpose and a real audience. Typically, creativity and ICT are connected when tasks cross disciplines and involve a diverse range of perspectives and approaches.

http://ictev.vic.edu.au/ictev2012-creative-connections

8th ICE CONFERENCE 2012

I have been fortunate to be invited to speak at the  8th International Conference on Eduction CONFERENCE 2012 on Samos Island Greece, July 05-07, 2012

The Conference will build on the success of the previous ICE 2010 and ICE 2011 Conferences, which were held in Samos.

8th ICE SAMOS 2012 aims to facilitate the discussion on the problems of education internationally providing a forum for scientific debate and constructive interaction in a multi cultural social environment. The conference provides a platform for scientists and teachers and researchers to present their work; to exchange knowledge, ideas and experience and to identify and discuss the challenges and solutions to existing problems worldwide known in education.

Ph.D candidates are explicitly invited to present and discuss their research ideas and work in progress.

A bridge between the East and the West for centuries, Samos is located in the heart of Aegean Sea, where you’ll find a harmonious blend of culture, cuisine, arts and architecture along with fascinating beaches and sea.

The 7th ICE Conference was a great success proving it is still the must attend Conference of the year in this field.

I am looking forward to meeting some of you in Samos in July at what promises to be a most stimulating and enjoyable event!

Cyberbullying

With increasing new communication technologies being made available to children and young people, there will always be a potential for them becoming a victim to online bullying. Online bullying, e-bullying or cyberbullying, is defined as follows: ‘the use of information and communication technologies such as email, [mobile] phone and text messages, instant messaging, defamatory personal websites and defamatory personal polling websites, to support deliberate, repeated, and hostile behaviour by an individual or a group, that is intended to harm others.’

Children and young people are keen adopters of new technologies, but this can also leave them open to the threat of online bullying. An awareness of the issues and knowledge of methods for dealing with online bullying can help reduce the risks. The issue of cyberbulling must be specifically addressed within a school/academy’s anti-bullying policy.

 Text Messaging

Bullying by text message has become an unfortunate and unpleasant by-product of the convenience that SMS (short message service) offers. Children should be advised to be careful about giving out their mobile phone number, and ask that those that have their number never pass it on. If only known and trusted friends know the number, it is less likely to be abused in this way. If being bullied by text message, children should immediately seek help from a teacher, parent or carer. They should not respond to the messages, but should keep a detailed diary recording information such as the content of the message, the date, the time, the caller ID or whether the number was withheld or not available. If space permits, the messages should also be stored on the phone in case they are needed later as evidence. Abuse in the form of bullying should be reported to the mobile phone company who can take certain steps to try to resolve the situation, and in some instances it may also be necessary to involve the police. In some cases it may be necessary, or easier, to change the mobile phone number or to purchase a new phone.

Like bullying by text message, email provides a reasonably ‘anonymous’ method of communication which bullies have seized upon to harass their victims. If being bullied by email, children should not respond to the messages, but should seek help from a teacher, parent or carer. Likewise if they receive an email message from an unknown sender, they should exercise caution over opening it, or ask an adult for assistance. Don’t delete the message but keep it as evidence of bullying. If the email is being sent from a personal email account, abuse should be reported to the sender’s email service provider. Many email programs also provide facilities to block email from certain senders. If the bullying emails continue, and the email address of the sender is not obvious, then it may be possible to track the address using special software. Email service providers may be able to offer assistance in doing this. In certain cases, it may be easier to change the email address, and exercise caution over who this new address is given to.

Instant Messaging and Chat Rooms

Aside from the general risks of using chat rooms and instant messaging (IM) services, these services are also used by bullies. Children should be encouraged to always use moderated chat rooms, and to never give out personal information while chatting. If bullying does occur, they should not respond to messages, but should leave the chat room, and seek advice from a teacher, parent or carer. If using a moderated chat room, the system moderators should also be informed, giving as much detail as possible, so that they can take appropriate action.

Instant Messaging (IM) is a form of online chat but is private between two, or more, people. If a child is bullied or harassed by IM, the service provider should be informed giving the nickname or ID, date, time and details of the problem. The service provider will then take appropriate action which could involve a warning or disconnection from the IM service. If a child has experienced bullying in this way, it might also be worth re-registering for instant messaging with a new user ID.

Websites

Although less common, bullying via websites is now becoming an issue. Such bullying generally takes the form of websites that mock, torment, harass or are otherwise offensive, often aimed at an individual or group of people. If a child discovers a bullying website referring to them, they should immediate seek help from a teacher, parent or carer. Pages should be copied and printed from the website concerned for evidence, and the internet service provider (ISP) responsible for hosting the site should be contacted immediately. The ISP can take steps to find out who posted the site, and request that it is removed. Many ISPs will outline their procedures for dealing with reported abuse in an acceptable use policy (AUP) which can be found on their website. Additionally, many websites and forum services now provide facilities for visitors to create online votes and polls, which have been used by bullies to humiliate and embarrass their fellow pupils. Again, any misuse of such services should be reported to a teacher, parent or carer who should then take steps to contact the hosting website and request the removal of the poll.

Specific issues regarding online bullying should be dealt with by the school or academy under its existing anti-bullying policies.

Social Networking

Social networking software such as Facebook and Twitter are providing opportunities for personal expression, the creation of communities, collaboration and sharing. Other examples include blogs (personal web-based journals), moblogs (blogs sent from a mobile phone), wikis (modifiable collaborative web pages), and podcasting (subscription-based broadcast over the web) supported by technologies such as RSS (really simple syndication – an XML format designed for sharing news across the web). They enhance or gain value from social interactions and behaviour. They can also provide opportunities for collective intelligence and thus add value to data. Digital video, photography and music technologies have democratised the process of content creation and distribution. Recent studies of children and young people’s online behavior indicate that there are a wide range of activities undertaken, from using the internet for homework and research to a wide range of entertainment and edutainment activities. The benefits for children are well documented, but so too are a number of risks of which young people must be made aware.

Risks

Initial concern for children was largely centred on their use of social networking sites and the possibility that young people could be ‘groomed’ by those with a malicious intent. This is made possible by the amount of personal information that children can disclose online allowing predators to manipulate children by becoming their online friend, often hiding their true age and identity and developing close friendships by pretending to share common interests in music, personalities, sport or other activities for which children have expressed a specific liking. The huge publicity surrounding chat rooms and the decision by some leading commercial companies to close their chat rooms to children led to the focus switching to social networking applications. In some respects these are more of a problem than chat rooms, as young people share ‘friend lists’ and pass on contacts one to another. As instant messaging programmes allow private one-to-one correspondence with or without the use of webcams, they also can give even greater privacy to predators developing relationships with children online. It is important to understand that social networking sites are public spaces where adults can also interact with children, which obviously has an implication on child safety. Whilst encouraging young people to be creative users of the internet who publish content rather than being passive consumers, there is a balance to be weighed in terms of the personal element of what is being published. The concerns are shifting from what children are ‘downloading’ in terms of content to what they are ‘uploading’ to the net. In some cases very detailed accounts of their personal lives, contact information, daily routines, photographs and videos are acting as an online shopping catalogue for those who would seek children to exploit, either sexually or for identity fraud purposes. These sites are very popular with young people as not only can they express themselves with an online personality, but they can use all the applications the site has to offer to chat and share multimedia content with others – music, photos and video clips. Unfortunately, these sites can also be the ideal platform for facilitating bullying, slander and humiliation of others. The better sites are now taking this issue seriously and ensuring that they have safety guidelines and codes of practice in place. In drafting an AUP, students, where appropriate additional consideration should be given to boarding pupils. For example, additional privileges may be given after school with access to allow less restrictive filtering but keeping in line with the overall ethos of providing a safe environment. The management of mobile devices and laptop dongles that allow unrestricted access in dormitories should also be carefully managed with a view that such usage should be viewed on its merits and with due consideration to the in loco parentis nature of boarding supervision.

Implementation

Clearly banning activity of any sort merely heightens the desire of young people to explore and push the boundaries. We have a responsibility to understand what children are doing by talking to them about their online activity and educating them to the possible downsides – encouraging safe use and enjoying the benefits whilst minimising the risks. It is recommended that schools and academies use CEOP materials to educate children about risks and benefits, look at recommending social networking sites that safely enhance education experiences. Schools and academies should also look to provide timely and accurate information for parents and teachers, provide safety tips and good advice and stay up to date on developments.

Ofsted Press Release on young people not being sufficiently challenged in ICT lessons

“A report published today by Ofsted has found that achievement in information, communication and technology (ICT) was inadequate in almost a fifth of the secondary schools visited. Inspectors found that how well pupils did in secondary schools was adversely affected by the lack of challenge for more able students and poor coverage of key aspects of the ICT curriculum.

The report, ICT in schools 2008-11, found that although ICT was good or outstanding in over two thirds of primary schools visited, the position was less positive for secondary schools with just over a third of the secondary schools in the survey judged good or outstanding.

The report draws on evidence from the inspection of ICT in 167 primary, secondary and special schools between 2008 and 2011. The ICT curriculum and qualification routes provided by nearly half of the secondary schools surveyed were not meeting the needs of all students, which reinforces concerns raised in Ofsted’s previous ICT report.

Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Miriam Rosen, said:

“In a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on technology, young people need to be given the opportunity to learn ICT skills in an interesting, challenging and relevant way.

“Schools should provide a range of ICT courses that are suitably matched to students’ needs, support them with their learning and prepare them for higher education and for skilled work in a technological age.”

In 30 of the 74 secondary schools visited, nearly half of students reached the age of 16 without adequate foundation for further study or training in ICT and related subjects.

The numbers studying GCSE ICT have dropped since 2007. This year 31,800 students attempted the examination compared with 81,100 in 2007 – a reduction of 64 per cent. There has also been a reduction in the number of entries at A level ICT.

In contrast, there has been a considerable increase in the number of student completing vocational awards in ICT – 212,900 students completed OCR Nationals, a popular suite of vocational qualifications, compared with 58,900 in 2008.

Despite the fact girls perform better than boys in ICT, fewer girls chose to study the subject in Key Stage 4 and beyond. The report recommends that schools encourage girls to continue studying ICT beyond the ages of 14 and 16 by engaging with local IT businesses to bring the subject alive and provide a fuller understanding of ICT-related career options.

The teaching of ICT was outstanding in three of the secondary schools visited and good in 32, but it was no better than satisfactory in just over half. Where teaching was no better than satisfactory, the use of assessment to track pupils’ progress was poor, which led to teachers and pupils lacking an understanding of current performance and what was needed to improve. It also meant that sometimes students repeated work from previous years.

In both primary and secondary schools there were weaknesses in teaching more demanding topics such as databases and programming, highlighting the need for schools to provide subject-specific support and professional development to improve teachers’ confidence and expertise.

When teaching was good or outstanding, lessons were well planned with a variety of activities that were differentiated to meet individual students’ needs, and students were clear about their own current level and what they needed to do to improve.”

Notes to editors

1. The report ICT in schools 2008-11 can be found on the Ofsted website at www.ofsted.gov.uk. 
2. The previous ICT report ‘The importance of ICT: information and communication technology in primary and secondary schools, 2005/2008, can be found at the following link: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/importance-of-ict-information-and-communication-technology-primary-and-secondary-schools-20052008. 
3. The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) regulates and inspects to achieve excellence in the care of children and young people, and in education and skills for learners of all ages. It regulates and inspects childcare and children’s social care, and inspects the Children and Family Court Advisory Support Service (Cafcass), schools, colleges, initial teacher training, work-based learning and skills training, adult and community learning, and education and training in prisons and other secure establishments. It assesses council children’s services, and inspects services for looked after children, safeguarding and child protection. 

 

Itslearning Webinar: Research into Student Use

I recently conducted a webinar for itslearning entitled “How to succeed with learning  platforms – new research into the student’s perspective”. The webinar raised some questions including:

What do students really think of learning platforms? And how can they be used  most effectively to improve the performance of teachers and students?

You can listen to and watch a recording of the webinar at http://info.itslearning.net/Wallacerecorded.html?mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRokvaXLZKXonjHpfsX%2F7ugkXrHr08Yy0EZ5VunJEUWy24ICSNQhcOuuEwcWGog8yRhLFuWUbo5J9PI%3D

Next Generation Learning Conference 2012

I was pleased to be invited to speak at the “Next Generation Learning Conference ” in Falun, Sweden in 2012.

The conference is being hosted by Dalarna University in collaboration with KTH Royal Institute of Technology, and is a Nordic conference on the implications for learning and education of the digital revolution. The conference is aimed at development and research projects on NGL in both educational and professional settings.

Next Generation Learning Conference include, but is not limited to, the following topics:

• Mobility and learning
• Self-paced learning and open educational resources
• Information-tools and knowledge processes
• New knowledge processes within the working life
• Web-based higher education
• Collaborative learning
• Learning environments and the modern school

You can read more detailed descriptions of each topic on their respective page at http://www.du.se/en/NGL/Next-Generation-Learning-Conference-2012/

Sexting, Griefing, Piracy, Privacy and Massively Multiplayer Thumbwrestling

Last week I was fortunate to be at the First International Symposium on Digital Ethics hosted by The Center for Digital Ethics and Policy at Loyola University, Chicago. The first keynote speaker, Jan McGonigal (author of “Reality is Broken”) had us playing Massively Multiplayer Thumbwrestling, a good way to boost oxytocin levels and a metaphor for online gaming. All the presentations were excellent indeed but for me there were several highlights: Jo-Ann Oravec talked about the ethics of sexting and
issues involving consent and the production of intimate content. Richard Wojak examined griefing through the virtual world and the moral status of griefing. Brian Carey took a controversial look at piracy and the times when it may be ethically permissible. Alex Gekker offered some fascinating insights into ‘Anonymous’ and the governmental oversight of the internet. A lunchtime treat
was Julian Dibbell reprising his seminal 1990s piece originally published in the Village Voice entitled “A Rape in Cyberspace“. Charles Ess provided an insightful view into privacy, the self and new media.

There is much to be learnt in this provocative and emergent area, and I look forward to hearing and sharing some further thoughts
on digital ethics.

Steampunk and the Art of Gonzo Programming

Slowly, quietly but surely and with subversion in its heart, programming is returning to  classroom. The currently dysfunctional ICT curriculum, the Royal Society Review and the gathering forces of spontaneous groups such as Computing At School are  taking us to a brighter ICT future. No longer satisfied with the dreary gym workouts of Microsoft Office and the slick, surface sheen of the Web, children and teachers are taking a peek underneath the hood of the machine. How does this thing work?
What can we make it do? Constructivism by a new, postmodern name.
Building apps, writing Scratch programmes, building Arduino inventions, even in the dusty apocalyptic corridors of the mathematics department, Logo is iterating itself back to life.

In a new world of educational conservatism, perhaps ICT will reinvent itself as a steampunk phenomena, education as knowledge manifesting itself in Victorian values brought to life by a new age of steampunk electronics. The delight of teaching a computing device to perform elegantly simple tasks. Drawing a hexagon, turning a light on and off, making simple electronic sounds. Instead of creating vast,
shiny, modernist artefacts in the classroom at the gesture of a finger, maybe we should  be returning to the how and the why instead of the what, when and who of computing.

Children have a gonzo approach to computers. Hacking is no longer a dirty word and writing Apps can be delicious and nutritious. It is time we stopped being so pathetically impressed by the technology and started questioning, deconstructing the robot and seeking out the ghost in the machine.

ELSE Conference in Bucharest, Romania

I have had my paper on an analysis of national patterns of learning platform use by students in schools and academies accepted for the  8th International Scientific Conference eLearning and Software for Education, Bucharest Romania,  April, 26th – 27th, 2012. Conference details are at http://elseconference.eu/. I hope to see some of you there.

Tweetcloud for @albinwallace Twitter feed for past 3 years

Tweetcloud for @albinwallace Twitter feed

Bubbles, white noise and why it all seems so familiar

As the postmodern storm clouds gather on the social media
horizon, partially fuelled by research by such eminents as Turkle and Pariser,
I am inclined in my middle years to reflect on my own social media bubble and to
nostalgically reminisce on my interactions with technology and how it was in
some ways ever thus; up close and personal with the technology.

As a child in working class London we had a valve radio,
a thing of great beauty and resonance and I used to sit with my ear pressed up
against the musty cloth of the speaker listening to the Clitheroe Kid,
oblivious to the domestic hum around me. Whatever happened to that valve-driven
beauty, resplendent in its walnut cabinet? Its sound was warm and inviting, the
glow behind the dial alluring as my eyes gazed upon the exotic places listed on
its circular face; Paris, Luxembourg, Munich.

Then television hit. And it hit hard. Sharp edges, tinny
sound, primal, violent Warner Bros cartoons. Always going out of tune, replaced
with visual and aural static that also captivated me. Alone in the lounge room,
Bugs Bunny and the white noise alternating as the station went in and out of
tune in time with the London buses that passed our basement flat. The static
fascinated me and in time I suspect I became the only person who actually
bought Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and listened to it late at night whilst
studying. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The first record player I got was a portable, blue
machine best suited to playing 45s. I saved up and bought Sergeant Pepper and
as a 10 year old I was terrified, fascinated and thrilled by what seemed like
music from the abyss, albeit played on a machine ill-suited to the purpose.

Then I got my first stereo and things became even
weirder. A cheap, plastic artefact with a cool, smoked lid I put on the White
Album and was transfixed by the sinister voice of Revolution 9 passing between
the speakers. For my birthday I received a pair of cosy, padded headphones and
for the first time was able to recapture the in utero warmth of the valve
radio, albeit with the “Number 9” loop passing from one ear to the other via my
brain. This was my first truly immersive technological experience.

Cassette players became part of the scene and along with
them the commodification of music as we swapped albums, copied them onto
cassette, made mix tapes and innocently engaged in music piracy. All those
years ago.

The CD revolutionised everything. All of sudden, gone was
the crackly, hissy warmth of co-constructed worlds of popular music. Replaced
with precision, minimalism, exactness without authenticity. We listened to each
and every instrument without hearing the whole piece. We painted by numbers and
bought CDs which demonstrated the clinical excellence of digital recording,
mixing and delivery.

My first computer was a VIC-20. I wrote programmes in the
middle of the night. I was thrilled by the control the new technology offered
me. When, in the mid-80s, I used an acoustic coupler to hook up to my first
bulletin board I was amazed at the seeming possibilities. “Hello”, I wrote and
then could not think of anything else to say.

My first laptop gave me portability which was in fact no
portability at all, and my first skirmish with the internet made me realise that
the world was about to irrevocably change.

In rapid succession came the WAP phone, broadband, the
Smart phone, the iPod, the iPhone and now the iPad and I eagerly consumed each
one until before I knew it I was hooked, linked into a world of tweets,
messages and emails that were starting to resemble the static and the white
noise of early television. Lou Reed would be proud.

Last night I was trawling iTunes on my iPad looking for
episodes of the Clitheroe Kid. The bubbles change but the song remains the
same.

Digital Ethics Symposium

I will be fortunate to be attending the International Symposium on Digital Ethics, October 28th, at Loyola University Chicago.
This day-long symposium will feature Jane McGonigal, author of the NY Times bestseller Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. 

Featured presenters will include:
Charles Ess, Aarhus University
Miguel Sicart, IT University Copenhagen
Sally Wyatt, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences
Michael Zimmer, Univesity of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Luciano Floridi, University of Hertfordshire
Erin B. Reilly, Annenberg Innovation Lab
As well as a group of papers accepted through a juried competion.
The conference will be exploring ethics in regard to privacy, gaming, research, green computing, identity, citizenship and more.
Follow me on Twitter @albinwallace for regular updates during the symposium

An analysis of national patterns of learning platform use in schools

The United Church Schools Trust and the United Learning Trust comprise a national group of 12 independent schools and 17 academies across a wide range of geographic and demographic areas of England. In 2008, the decision to implement a learning platform (also known as a Virtual Learning Environment or VLE) across the group was made. Although a fully supported technical solution was provided along with a sustained programme of continuous professional development, the decision as to how the learning platform was to be used was owned by each individual school and academy according to its own priorities.

The learning platform chosen was itslearning©, developed in Bergen University College in Norway and now adopted across a wide range of educational establishments. As a cloud-based product, itslearning offered a number of attractive potential benefits
including:

1. Ease of use

2. Speed of implementation

3. Enhanced collaboration

4. Continuity of curriculum anywhere and anytime

5. Minimal initial investment

6. Scalability

7. Reduction of operating costs

8. Reduction of hosting costs

Now that the learning platform is embedded in many of the schools and academies with consistent, sustained usage in areas of excellence, it was decided to undertake research into how the learning platform was being used and what strategic and implementation lessons could be learned so far. A survey was consequently undertaken of 1000 students into how they used the
learning platform and what their perceptions were about it as a vehicle for teaching and learning. The survey was based on the most commonly used features of the learning platform and was conducted online using the built-in survey
tools of itslearning.

The following descriptor preceded the survey:

To help us improve itslearning in UCST schools and ULT academies, we are asking you to fill in a survey.

We are looking at ways in which itslearning can help with students’ education and to see if there is anything we can learn from the way that you use it.

We would like you to do a short survey which will not take up too much of your time. You will not need to give your
name and no-one will be able to identify you from your answers.

We would like you to do this survey so we can look at what students themselves think and do. You do not have to do it, but we hope that you will help us in this way. However, we understand if you would prefer not to take part. It is totally your choice.

The following is a list of questions that were
asked using the survey:

1.         Which school or academy do you attend?

2.         Are you a boy or a girl?

3.         Which year are you in?

4.         How often do you use itslearning?

5.         Where do you use itslearning?

6.         When do you prefer to use itslearning?

7.         Which subjects do you use it in?

8.         What do you use itslearning for?

9.         What do your teachers use itslearning for?

10.       Have you ever used itslearning on your phone?

11.       Would you like to be able to change the colour and design of itslearning?

12.       How much does itslearning help with your learning?

13.       How much do you enjoy using itslearning?

14.       How easy is itslearning to use?

15.       Do the people who look after you at home have access to itslearning?

16.       What do you like best about itslearning?

17.       For which subjects do you find itslearning most useful?

18        What things in itslearning could be made better?

Tha data analysis will take place over the summer of 2011-2012 and will be available to inform our future direction at that time. A copy of the report will also be posted here.

Digital Psychopomp: The Online Personification of Death

Death as a character in art and literature has always fascinated me. Like many people, my first encounter with Death as a character was in Bergman’s 1957 film, ‘The Seventh Seal’ and its many parodies, culminating in the hysterical  visitation of Death in Monty Python’s ‘Meaning of Life’. Since before medieval times, Death has appeared in Western art work as the Grim Reaper, and of course possibly the earliest description of Death appears in the Revelations of St John, “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”

There are too many instances to cite them all, although the character of Death is usually portrayed as a skeleton, sometimes in hooded robes and carrying a scythe. The enigmatic face of Death is one which is often expressionless, sometimes with a fixed grin, usually hard, cold and austere. His role is variable, sometimes portrayed as architect, instrument,  judge, mediator or ferryman.

The portrayal of Death through medieval, renaissance, 18-19 century and modern culture may be seen in literature, visual arts and music. More recently Death has also been portrayed in online media through websites including Facebook, Twitter, Gaming and Blogs, most notably as an assumed identity. It is interesting to note the ways that Death is portrayed and also the reasons why. Death is used as a vehicle for humour, artistic expression, religious or philosophical expression, identity, threat, a call for help, understanding death. Death is sometimes portrayed as a sentient being and sometimes as a psychopomp.  So, what is online identity about?  How useful is the online personification of death in understanding the process of dying or the state of death? How different are the online personifications of Death to other artistic expressions or are they the same? Are there common themes, taxonomy, means of expression?

The Angel of Death or the Grim Reaper, appears in various depictions of Death as a sentient being. Most recently Death appears as a fictional character in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Death is also a character in Konami’s Castlevania video game series. The DC Comic Book Series, The Sandman features Death as a character, as do Marvel Comics. In online gaming Death appears as a character in both Malice and Final Fantasy V. In other literature and the visual media Death appears in Fullmetal Alchemist, South Park, Family Guy. Death also appears in an eponymous play by Woody Allen.

If there is anyone out there willing to share their experiences in the manipulation of Death as an online persona, I would be pleased to hear from you. I have some simple questions to put to you by e-mail. No data will be used in a disparaging way and your response will remain anonymous. If you would be willing to answer some questions by e-mail (taking up no more than 15 minutes of your time, please drop me a line at albinwallace@gmail.com.

Action research for teachers measuring the impact of ICT

This paper is based on the guidelines available from the Becta site (www.becta.org.uk). It provides an extremely useful tool for people about to undertake Action Research. The purpose of these guidelines is to provide a basic framework for reflection on classroom practice, most especially to enable study of the impact of ICT on teaching and learning. The guidelines are intended to support teachers at the planning stages of action research in the classroom. Using a structured format can enable research outcomes and findings to be shared, and can provide a research basis for subsequent planned change.

What do I need to consider to undertake action research?
Action research follows a cyclical process, and only the first cycle can be planned in advance. Thereafter, the next action research cycles depend on the evaluation phase at the end of previous cycles. Action research is often collaborative, involving planning with a colleague or colleagues. Action researchers may have a `critical friend’ or research facilitator working with them. Below is a suggested structure to help you plan and organise your research.
Keep a research journal
It is a good idea to keep a research journal, in which you can accumulate information about the progress of your work. Your journal should contain contextual information, field notes, ideas, dates, and any seemingly minor details which you feel are best recorded. They may well turn out to be important, and it is often hard to recall these things after time has elapsed.
Plan your research
Before you undertake your research, consider the following structure for planning the various stages of your research.
Title
Title of the research project.
Outline
Outline of the study in 100 words.
Timeline
Clarify the start and completion dates for the study and specify milestones in the research. Meeting times and dates can also be recorded. The timeline may well be altered as the research progresses, with the archived timelines acting as part
of your research journal data.
Contacts list
Ensure that contact details of everyone involved in the study are accessible to all. Each person on the contact list, including administrators, should have a paper copy of this document, and one person should have responsibility for updating it regularly. A `Who has Responsibility’ section can help to ensure that everyone is aware of their own role and those of other colleagues.

Research and learning
Specify how the research links into the curriculum and record some of the pre- conditions of the study. This stage of the planning records information about the `value added’ expected of the ICT employed in the research. Include a brief
description of the nature of the activity to be undertaken by teachers and learners, its intended outcomes and any anticipated difficulties.

Field notes record sheet
Standardise the recording of contextual events as the study progresses. Completed sheets can become part of the research journal and provide a basis for discussion at meetings.
Establish the purpose of the research
Key questions to ask are:
1. What is the principal aim of the research?
2. What do you envisage as the potential benefits of the research? – for teaching and learning, – for individual pupils, –
3. for your own professional development, – for the school?
4. How might the research contribute to our general understanding about the process of teaching and learning?
Formulate questions for your proposed research
It is a good idea to summarise your proposed research as a question or a short set of questions. Your research question or questions should be well focused, for example to reflect a particular issue which has arisen as part of teaching and
learning in your classroom. You might wish to research the effects of change using new hardware, software, or classroom management. Whatever the topic, formulate it as one or more questions requiring answers.
Specify the background to the project
Provide an understanding of the cultural context of the study school(s) and partner organisations. Include any conditions which you consider may affect the outcomes of change. Background information can cover:
1. the whole-school context – type of school – number of pupils on roll – number of staff – ICT provision – other relevant information.
2. the classroom context – physical characteristics of the classroom (including ICT provision) – class profile, including:
– age range – number – strengths – pupils on SEN register – other relevant information – classroom support.
3. the personal context – How did you become involved in the research project? – Why is this research important to you at this point in your career?
4. other factors.
Ethics
Have you obtained consent to undertake research? Record the response of your discussion of the research with the headteacher, senior management, governors, other colleagues and pupils.
Can you ensure that confidentiality is protected, if required? How?
Some ethical rules for school-based research:
1. Ensure that the research you propose is viable, that adequate research design has been established, and that appropriate data-collection techniques are chosen.
2. Explain as clearly as possible the aims, objectives, and methods of the research to everyone involved.
3. If using confidential documents, ensure that anonymity is maintained by eliminating any kind of material or information that could lead others to identify the subject or subjects. Pupils’ identities should not be revealed in web material published as a result of the research.
4. Ensure that you have permission from all involved before publication of any or part of the research.
5. You should be aware of the possible uses of the research findings.
6. Research should not ultimately disadvantage any group of pupils.
7. Data should be stored securely and destroyed within 18 months of the end of the study.
8. If there is joint or collaborative research, all researchers must adhere to the same set of ethical principles.
(Adapted from Hitchcock, G and Hughes, D 1989. Research and the Teacher . London: Routledge. p 201)

Setting up the research: some decisions
Before undertaking research, decide on the method of data collection, and why.
1. What data will you collect?
2. Who will you collect data from?
3. In what form will data be collected?
4. How will recording of data take place? Consider the suitability (or otherwise) of a range of research methods.
For example:
• qualitative data – case study – interview – questionnaire – documentary evidence – observation journal
• quantitative data – What will be measured? – How will data be collected? * analysis – How will data be analysed? –
At what points will analysis be undertaken?

Running the study
This checklist can help to ensure that the study is well organised before you pilot or run the research. Have you:
• obtained consent for the study?
• booked computers / ICT / computer suite?
• checked that electrical / ICT equipment is in working order?
• obtained supplies of consumables (for example, tapes)?
• checked that you are familiar with any software or hardware?
• checked that you can obtain technical support if necessary?
• produced and tested your data-collection instruments?
• kept a record of the contextual conditions existing before the study?
• checked that your study is integrated into the school’s planning?
• checked that your pupils understand your aims for the research?
• checked your own and your pupils’ aims for their learning?
• organised classroom support if necessary?
• checked that everyone involved has a timetable for the study?
• checked that everyone involved has contact details for one another?
• ensured that there is a clear storage and retrieval system for data collected?
• built time for analysis, reflection and discussion into the research timetable?
• organised a definite start and end point for data collection?
• decided who will write up the study?
• decided who will read and comment on drafts of findings?
• found a way to disseminate your findings?
• started a research journal which must be continually updated?
• set up a way to record questions which arise during the study?

Reporting your findings
The structure, content, word length and style of presentation of your findings will depend on your intended audience. For example, papers for journals or articles for magazines will be presented in a different format from book chapters or a research report. It is important to look carefully at existing publications of the kind you are trying to write, to gauge such features as the style, length, and format for your writing. The following structure outlines the presentation of a research study and its findings. The abstract may well be the last section to be written. Material for sections 2 to 6 and 10 to 12 can be collected throughout the study. For information on good practice in educational research writing see:
http://www.bera.ac.uk/writing.html

General

structure for a research report
1. Abstract
2. Background / introduction / context for the research
3. Review of relevant literature
4. Research methods
5. Findings
6. Analysis
7. Discussion
8. Conclusions
9. Summary and new directions
10. References
11. Glossary
12. Appendix

Finding the relevant literature
What existing work, including articles on research methods, relates to, or informs your study?
Compile an annotated biography of books, book chapters, articles and papers, with quotations, including page numbers.
Compile an annotated list of relevant web addresses with dates. Links provided here can help you to find relevant work:
• BUBL http://bubl.ac.uk/link/ contains a thorough list of links to journals and research for specific subjects.
• Educati on-line http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ has a directory of papers and research.
• Educational Action Research http://www.triangle.co.uk/ a publication on action research.
• PINAKES http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/pinakes/pinakes.html a portal to subject-specific academic research directories.
• Social Sciences Information Gateway http://www.sosig.ac.uk/education/ .
• Teachernet http://www.teachernet.gov.uk – the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) portal for teacher information.
• T for T: Action Research by Teachers for Teachers http://194.83.41.143/TforT/ .
• TTA: Teacher Training Agency Research pages http://www.canteach.gov.uk/research/ .
• UK Higher Education & Research Libraries http://www.ex.ac.uk/library/uklibs.html .

Other sources of information
• Becta Becta Research Area http://www.becta.org.uk/research contains information on Becta’s research activities,
• Teacher Resource Exchange http://contribute.bit10.net/ teachers can submit their ideas for ICT use, and develop ideas to become full resources for use in classrooms.
• Teachers Online Project http://top.ngfl.gov.uk/ a discussion forum, where teachers can exchange views and join in collaborative projects. There is a monthly newsletter on ICT in education.
• Virtual Teacher Centre (VTC) http://vtc.ngfl.gov.uk/ links to ICT in practice across the curriculum, as well as news and updates for teachers.

ICT Visions

The use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT)  schools and academies is about learning, especially e-learning. It is about improving children’s life chances in education through the use of established and emergent technology to enhance learning outcomes. It is about academic results, certainly, and the tangible results that show improved breadth as well as depth of achievement. But it is also about those activities and experiences that enhance leadership and teamwork. In this sense, the Communications element of ICT sometimes takes precedence over the Information element. The use of interactive communications technology can enhance those attributes that are valued by further and higher education as well as by employers and parents. However, the use of ICT brings with it new concerns about attitudes and values. It is our task to ensure that these attitudes and values evolve to maximise students’ opportunities to evolve into responsible citizens.

Adherence to a common mission  is one of the tests that must be applied to the use of ICT in schools and academies. Clear goals should be spelt out in each school and academy, a vision must be articulated for the way forward and leadership needs to be shown in the implementation of ICT at all levels. Underpinning all of these is an ethos in which shared values and beliefs are reflected.

For ICT to be used successfully in a school or academy there must also be a climate conducive to success. This is predicated on the involvement and responsibility of all those who contribute to the use of ICT across the institution, from those with strategic responsibility, teaching and learning support, network planning and technical support.  The physical environment and resources to support this must also be in place. Systematic network migrations and upgrades must help improve ICT infrastructure, and schools and academies must continually work together to ensure that the resources are in place for curriculum and administration delivery. It is important that policies are in place to guide and support those who utilise ICT.

Positive outlook and behaviour should be promoted through a number of policies, including sections on responsible ICT usage and Internet safety. Technological safeguards go hand-in hand with promotion of best practice, responsible and appropriate usage.

In the implementation of ICT to support e-learning, there should be a commitment to raising standards. Although there is a great deal of technical infrastructure to maintain it must never be forgotten that ICT in education is about learning and teaching. Schools must put in place educational and technical policies that will make ICT live up to its promises.

Each school and academy should have a curriculum that is designed to specifically reflect national and local aspirations, career and Higher Education opportunities and the skills and talents required in the community. ICT installed in institutions should reflect this curriculum, as well as providing technological tools to enhance high-quality teaching and learning.

Both students and teachers should have access to computer resources, e-learning material and a learning platform. The ICT should be driven by sophisticated Local Area Networks (LAN) that ensure safe, secure and timely access to e-mail, e-learning resources, printing, the Internet and educational software.

Other facilities within schools and academies should include computerised administration systems as well as specialised equipment used for specific subject areas. The curriculum should be supported by the learning and teaching resources provided, which must include up-to-date ICT facilities. High quality professional development will help ensure that teachers are amongst the best trained ICT practitioners in the country.  This training, along with ICT resourcing combines with exciting and innovative teaching practices to help ensure that students enjoy the best learning experience possible, giving them the skills and the knowledge necessary for success in the 21^st century.

The responsibility for the development of the detail of the specific educational ICT vision policy lies with the individual school and academy. It is the Head’s or Principal’s responsibility to satisfy themselves that policies are in place that  adequately reflect the ethos and curriculum of the school as well as informing practice. It is the responsibility of every staff member, both teaching and non-teaching, to ensure that the spirit of the policies is implemented across all relevant areas of learning, teaching, administration and support.

The use of ICT within the school or academy to support learning, teaching and administration is not an optional extra to be avoided. Neither is it to be used indiscriminately. ICT should be used where appropriate to enhance the learning experience of students and to facilitate best teaching practice by teachers. Administrative systems must be used to improve effectiveness, achieve efficiencies and promote best practice.

 

Digital Indigestion

About 12 years ago, an event occurred in my personal life that changed everything dramatically. The details are not important but the net result was that I lost nearly all my stuff. Except for my clothes, some CDs, a lot of books and various bits of ephemera. The event was traumatic and changed my life considerably. On the bright side, it resulted in a new, streamlined me. A thinner, more economical, sleeker and low-maintenance version of myself that revelled in a new asceticism. Never, I swore would I accumulate stuff again. Unnecessary baggage.

Ha. Fat chance. 12 years on and I have more stuff than ever. Too much stuff. I put it down partially to my slightly obsessive personality. Music for example. My iPod, which started off with a modest collection of some 500 tunes now has over 20,000 pieces of music on it. I mean, what’s the point? I might as well listen to the radio as use the shuttle function. And when you get a collection that large it becomes impossible to choose. It’s like a wine list that’s too long. In the end, you throw your arms in the air, shut your eyes and point at random. My Kindle is the same. Swollen with hundreds of free ‘classics’. It has become increasingly hard to choose what to read. My television has over 1000 channels. I cannot choose what to watch. My listening, reading and watching habits have been sabotaged by too much choice which is really no choice at all. In desperation I turn to the Internet and type ‘cats’ into Google. I receive 100 million pages to choose from.

There is no alternative. I put the iPod on shuffle, read two pages from each of the squillion books on the Kindle, whilst simultaneously surfing the web, browsing the television and for good measure checking Facebook and Twitter. Oh, and a quick burst of COD. But something is missing. Oh, yes. I need to do my homework too. Just as well I can multitask. Or not.

The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

So, if the ICT world is being turned upside down with the demise of Becta and mass local authority redundancies in the area of ICT support, then where does this leave us? Stephen Heppell has spoken of a new, bottom-up world where innovation and change will increase at a local level. This may be just an evolutionary reflection of the digital technological world itself. We are seeing the demise of over-inflated, top-down, bloated operating systems and applications and instead an increasing appetite for connectivity, bandwidth, browser-based applications, mobility, personalisation and multimedia. So, if we are moving towards a more democratised, chaotic, imperfect, connected and edgy world of ICT in education, then who will be the gatekeepers? The local authorities? Teachers? Heads? The ICT industry? The children?

The genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back. The gatekeepers have gone. It is now all down to educating the children, the teachers and the parents. But isn’t that what schools are all about? And this time, we are all going to have to learn together. It could be the worst of times and the best of times.

 

The Horizon Report: 2011 Edition

“On the near-term horizon — that is, within the next12 months — are electronic books and mobiles. Electronic books are moving closer to mainstream adoption for educational institutions, having appeared on the mid-term horizon last year. Mobilesreappear as well, remaining on the near-term horizonas they become increasingly popular throughout the world as a primary means of accessing Interne tresources. Resistance to the use of mobiles in the classroom continues to impede their adoption in many schools, but a growing number of institutions are finding ways to take advantage of a technologythat nearly all students, faculty, and staff carry. Electronic books continue to generate stronginterest in the consumer sector and areincreasingly available on campuses as well. Modern electronic readers support note-takingand research activities, and are beginning to augment these basic functions with new capabilities — from immersive experiences to support for social interaction — that are changing our perception of what it means to read. Mobiles enable ubiquitous access to information, social networks, tools for learning and productivity, and much more. Mobile devices continue to evolve, but it is the increased access to affordable and reliable networks that is driving this technology now. Mobiles are capable computing devices in their own right — and theyare increasingly a user’s first choice for Internet access.

The second adoption horizon considers technologies expected to gain widespread usage within two to three years, and this year’s candidates are augmented reality and game-based learning. Both intersect with practices in mainstream popular culture, both have been considered significant tools for education for many years, and both have made appearances on a number of campuses already. Advances in hardware and software, as well as in a broader acceptance of new methods in teaching,secured the place of these innovations as the top technologies for the mid-term horizon. Augmented reality refers to the layering of information over a view or representation of the normal world, offering users the ability to access place-based information in ways that are compellingly intuitive.  Augmented reality brings a significant potential to supplement information delivered via computers, mobile devices, video,and even the printed book. Much simpler to create and use now than in the past, augmented reality feels at once fresh and new, yet an easy extension of existing expectations and practices. Game-based learning has grown in recentyears as research continues to demonstrateits effectiveness for learning for students of allages. Games for education span the range from single-player or small-group card and boardgames all the way to massively multiplayer onlinegames and alternate reality games. Those at the first end of the spectrum are easy to integrate with coursework, and in many institutions they are already an option; but the greatest potentialof games for learning lies in their ability to foster collaboration, problem-solving, and procedural thinking. For a variety of reasons, the realization of this potential is still two to three years away.

Looking to the far-term horizon, four to five years from now for widespread adoption, are gesturebasedcomputing and learning analytics. Bothremain largely speculative and not yet in widespread usage on campuses, but both are also garnering significant interest and increasing exposure. Gesture-based computing moves the control of computers from a mouse and keyboard to themotions of the body via new input devices. Depictedin science fiction movies for years, gesture-based computing is now more grounded inreality thanks to the recent arrival of interface technologies such as Kinect, SixthSense, andTamper, which make interactions with computational devices far more intuitive and embodied. Learning analytics loosely joins a variety of data-gathering tools and analytic techniques to study student engagement, performance,and progress in practice, with the goal of using what is learned to revise curricula, teaching, and assessment in real time. Building on the kinds of information generated by Google Analytics and other similar tools, learning analytics aimsto mobilize the power of data-mining toolsin the service of learning, and embracingthe complexity, diversity, and abundance of information that dynamic learning environments can generate.”

Download the full report from: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/HR2011.pdf

Johnson, L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., and Haywood, K., (2011). The 2011 Horizon Report.Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium.

YouTube and the Death of Nostalgia

Given my chrono/geodislocation I am particularly drawn to a time and geography that I am mythologising in the context of my current identity. Let me explain. I am an expatriate Australian who has lived in England for the past 11 years. I am also a child of the 1970s. As I reach the transient point of no-return I am drawn to the Kodachrome memory of Australia at that time with its colonial naivety and modernist sensibility embodied by the era of the triple-fronted-brick-veneer-nuclear-(free)-family.

I think with remembered adolescent affection about that Pre-Dismissal era of Nation Review, Gough Whitlam, Barry McKenzie, Auntie Jack, Pre-outed Patrick White, Moomba and the sample bags of the Royal (?) Melbourne Agricultural Show. How to revisit those times?

Ebay, YouTube, Flickr and Wikipedia let me revisit/reinvent these shabby romanticised times which of course is covered by the eternally ironic cloak of Edna Everage. I can even virtually and literally buy back the rusty toys of my childhood.
In the future, the past and present will be perpetually connected by the umbilical cord of social media, removing the spatial and temporal dislocation which nostalgia feeds on. Perhaps the only nostalgia we will have will be for nostalgia itself. Future generations may live as T.S. Eliot describes in Four Quartets.

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.”

Who would’ve thought that a modernist poet could be so postmodern. I relish the fact that social media happened during my middle age. I relish the gap between “What might have been and what has been”. It gives me a nice warm feeling. And listening to the theme song of ‘The Adventures of Barry McKenzie’ still makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. I look fondly back to an imagined time of Carl Ditterich, Sunny Boys, Happy Hammond, Zoot and Polly Waffles. Australia grew up and I never even noticed. But I can relive my past through YouTube on an endless loop. Social media in an intravenous feed. A place where I am doomed and blessed to recapture the mythologized past. Future generations don’t know what they are missing. For them, nostalgia may already be dead.

Googling through the Research

I had the privilege for the past two days of running a seminar on educational research for our Master’s level teacher leader programme at Sheffield Hallam University. During the seminar we talked about the eclectic methodologies one can use when evaluating data. The discussion inevitably turned towards the tension that sometimes exists between qualitative and quantitative methodologies and the unhelpful binary that this sometimes creates. We also examined some of the free tools that are available to both the professional and the occasional researcher, and between us we uncovered a rich mine of easily accessible tools. Without meaning to sound like a Google zealot, the Google suite offers a range of helpful applications in this field. Google Scholar is a great alternative to the sometimes unwieldy online university library resources, offering access to many online journal articles. Narrow you search by include the metatag ‘pdf’ in the search criteria. Google Docs has a powerful spreadsheet that offers the facility to create simple aggregated statistics. For the analysis of qualitative data, free applications such as Weft QDA (Qualitative Data Analysis) can help with thematic analysis of text based data and the mighty and majestic Wordle.net creates word clouds based on text files that not only analyse but present data in an attractive and readable form. For online surveys and questionnaires, both zoomerang and survey monkey are good applications that allow data to be collected quickly and efficiently online. I wish I was doing my Master’s now. Back in 1984 I used a manual typewriter and spent an eye-watering amount of money on a scientific calculator that proved to be totally counter-intuitive and ill-suited to the purpose for which I bought it. The tools available now offer huge affordances to the teacher researcher. I can hardly wait to read the research reports from the people doing our teacher leader programme.

Salmon, Napoleon and online safety

In 2002, The Salmon of Doubt, the sixth volume of Douglas Adams’ trilogy the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was published posthumously. In it Adams says;

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

Ask yourself these three questions about primary school-age children you work with.

1. Do the children have mobile phones?
2. Do they engage in online gaming?
3. Are they members of an online social network?

If the answer to any of these is ‘no’, revisit the questions in three years’ time. I’ll bet the answer will be ‘yes’.

100 years before Adams’ book, G.K. Chesterton wrote a novel entitled The Napoleon of Notting Hill. In it he describes a game where;

The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun.

Part of the problem is that the ICT curriculum for primary schools is largely becoming irrelevant (as is the secondary one). Children are turning away from it in droves. There is an apparent deepening divergence between what children do with digital technologies and what we teach them.

But does this mean that children know everything and we know nothing?

No. The biggest single issue related to online technologies in education over the next few years will be e-safety in all its incarnations. It will be the softer, human, ethical skills that we will need to focus on.

This relates to issues relating to:

• Online grooming by sexual predators
• Exposure to potentially harmful material
• Identity protection
• Online addiction
• Cyberbullying

Independent schools are not immune to these issues and they relate to out-of-school use as much as in-school use.

Some statistics

• Young gamers spend on average 8 hours weekly playing online.
• Young people sleep 2 to 3 hours less per night than 10 years ago.
• In January 2010, 18 million accounts were registered on Second Life.
• Facebook reports more than 500 million active users (3rd largest country)
• Users spend 700 billion minutes on Facebook each month.
• 20% of children who regularly log on to the Internet say they have received an unwanted sexual solicitation via the Web. Solicitations were defined as requests to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk, or to give personal sexual information.
• 25% of children have been exposed to unwanted pornographic material online.
• Only 30% of households with Internet access are actively protecting their children with filtering or blocking software.
• 75% of children are willing to share personal information online about themselves and their family in exchange for goods and services.
• Only approximately 25% of children who encountered a sexual approach or solicitation told a parent or adult.
  • 22% of the targets for sexual predators were users under 13.

What do we do?

1. In accordance with last year’s Ofsted guidelines we need to move away from a reliance on locked down systems to monitored systems with good educational provision for children, parents and teachers.
2. We need to work closely with form tutors, PSHE teachers and pastoral staff
3. We need to educate children about locking down privacy settings
4. We need to take control. Zip it. Block it.

Other issues

• Cyberbullying
• Online, social gaming by girls
• Increasing usage of mobile/gaming devices

Is it all doom and gloom?

No. There are massive opportunities for both information and communications technologies, but with this comes new forms of literacy. Our challenge is to bring children’s personal, social and ethical skills in line with their technical skills.

As Diana Laurillard says “This is not rocket science. It is far more complicated than that.”

There are many programmes to support this work.

• DigitalMe- SAFE (social networking for primary school children)
• CEOP
• Childnet
• Safer Internet day on February 8^th.

We must educate children to behave ethically, skilfully, intelligently and creatively.

Douglas Adams says “Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet.” Education on the other hand is something that does work. In the case of e-safety, our challenge is to align it to the technology in a meaningful and effective way.

Badlapur and the Bombay Teen Challenge

Mr Devaraj is a man with a vision and a mission. Mumbai has a red light district that is like something from a horror movie. Except worse. Girls as young as 10 and 11 are kidnapped from villages in northern India or Nepal and brought to Mumbai as sex slaves. They are kept in cages for 3 years where they are systematically and repeatedly tortured and raped. At the end of this time they are conditioned into sex slavery and have nowhere else to go. Many of these girls have HIV/Aids and children of their own who often contract the disease from their mothers.

For many years Mr Devaraj has been rescuing children and women from their slavery and taken them to the communities that he has built in Badlapur where they are cared for, nursed back to health and educated and trained to live normal lives. Today, I had the privilege of visiting these communities.

Mr Devaraj graciously picked me up from hotel and we drove the 2 hours through the picturesque mountains to the east of Mumbai to the first of these communities. I was greeted with many smiles and hugs and presented with a bunch of flowers after which the children sang to me whilst I drank delicious Indian tea spiced with ginger. I spent several hours with the children answering questions, looking at their art work and talking with them. The light and the happiness in their eyes are extraordinary. Just being with them is inspirational. They like jokes, and we spent time telling each other riddles. Their houses are simple but beautiful communities, spotlessly clean and maintained by the children themselves. Children as young as 3 years of age have responsibility for helping with the cleaning, the cooking and looking after one another. The highlight of the children’s week is when they can go on the computer for one hour and the older girls maintain friendships through Facebook. Do you know what Indian and Facebook have in common? Along with China, they make up the three largest communities in the world. It really struck home how ubiquitous social networking is around the world. There is a great educational programme for the young people, with individualised instruction for each child which guarantees that each child will be at an age-appropriate educational level within a year. It is truly not just an educational triumph but a triumph of humanity.

I also visited the orphanages. Often, when a sex slave dies of HIV/Aids, her children are dumped on the street. Two such children were Rhaji and Shaneer. Shaneer was three years old when her mother died and she and her one year old brother were left in the gutter. Shaneer used to make up songs for Rhaji. “Little brother, don’t cry. I will beg for food for you and I will look after you that you grow up to be a strong man”. This is how Mr Devaraj found them on the streets. A dying one-year old child with his three- year old big sister looking after him. The photographs Mr Deveraj showed me pictured two children on the brink of death. That picture was taken nine years ago. Today I met them. Shaneer is a charming and graceful girl of 12 and Rhaji is an energetic young 10 year old. They are still inseparable and happy beyond belief. The joy and the energy of all the children in the orphanage is contagious and through a mist of tears I could not help smiling. Joy like that is very infectious. I have also never been hugged by so many children in my whole life.

After eating a delicious lunch with them (Indians really know about good food, even the little ones), I reluctantly left the orphanage. Our next stop was the community for the women themselves, those who had been rescued from sex slavery. Many had HIV/Aids and today was a sad day as after a long battle, Nimi succumbed to her illness and died peacefully of pneumonia, a common complication with HIV/Aids. Although I was an outsider I was not treated as such and shared in their grief as Mr.Devaraj told them the news. They sang prayers softly amidst the silent weeping and the harsh reality of the environment from which these women were rescued really came home in a forceful way. I also visited the vocational workshop where a top Mumbai fashion designer had left her prestigious job in the city and come to Badlapur to teach the women how to make beautiful clothes and jewellery. I was presented with lovely silk trousers, handbags and earrings for my wife.

Mr Devaraj also runs a community for men who are recovered drug addicts and the educational, health and social programme that is run out of this remote, rural town community would match any major city drug rehabilitation programme for excellence of outcomes. The programme has a 98% success rate and I spent time talking with Bhandri, himself a recovered drug addict who was brought into the community 16 years as a rescued child and now heads up the programme.

It is hard to do justice to the impact and importance of this wonderful and effective humanitarian project and I do not have the skill with words or pictures to do it justice. I urge anyone who is reading this to go to www.bombayteenchallenge.com to read the real story for yourself and please make a donation. This programme saves lives and is making a real difference to Mumbai sex slaves, their children and their orphans. I am pleased to wholeheartedly commend this project to everyone. Oh, and watch Slumdog Millionaire again. An insightful and beautiful film.

Digital Dharma

View from hotel

Mumbai Calling

I certainly was not expecting to see a satellite dish poking out of a Mumbai slum dwelling, but that probably tells you a bit about my bourgeois preconceptions. Why not, indeed? The view from the hotel terrace is amazing. Mumbai is big. Really big. Not Hitchhiker’s Guide big,  but big nonetheless. From one side I can see the Arabian Sea and on the other side, butting snuggling up against the hotel wall is a…..what? A shanty town? A slum? A community, certainly.

A colourful cartload of fruit is pushed through a group of teenagers playing cricket. A man builds an annex to his house with a sheet of corrugated iron. Children dressed like English public school girls walk through the dust. An elderly lady relieves herself under a tree. I look away quickly, realising that seeing these scenes through Western lenses is voyeuristic.

There is enough that is familiar here to unsettle an Australian/British middle-class sensibility. I found quickly that a temporary suspension of my preconceptions of order and logic is necessary. Yet I am drawn towards the use of ICT in this world that appears so strange to me. In the slums, everyone appears to possess a mobile phone. Denial of European concepts of housing, sanitation and clothing do not appear to preclude access to voice and data.

In his 1993 collaboration with Bob Neuwirth, John Cale referred to “Mozambique Electronique” as a forward glance to the way in which telecommunications would connect Third World (?) countries. The dynamics of the mobile phone in Mumbai are fascinating. Although one could describe the city as being languidly chaotic, the appropriation of contemporary telecommunications seems superficially at odds with the pulse of the place. Certainly it is modern, rational, capitalist, enlightened on the one hand, but also a sense of decay and growth not just at the edges but from the centre. Yet it represents one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

And through all of this, the unmistakable heartbeat of data and voice pump through all levels of this stratified society, connecting, reconnecting and helping define the rhythm of this ambiguous and contradictory city.

To Dadar and Back

It caused me to pause for thought when I realised that the hotel has 5 armed guards at all times. Getting a cab was problematic. It is not safe to flag one down as you risk getting run down in the process. One of the nice guards goes outside the hotel precinct and commandeers one for you. Then the fun starts. As with many things Mumbai, health and safety is an inconvenience that does not trouble this city. Traffic lights exist merely for decoration and the car horn is the major tactical instrument at the driver’s disposal. Several times I wondered if either the Australian or the British embassies would be obliging enough to repatriate the tangled mess of my body in the inevitability of my bloody demise in a Mumbai cab. Miraculously, I survived the ride, and after the cab getting lost several times (yeah, right) I was deposited marginally closer to the conference venue than from where I started out.

I was greeted by the charming conference organisers at the Navinchandra Mehta Institute of Technology and Development and I went through the bureaucratic business of conference registration filling in innumerable forms in triplicate one of which, touchingly inquired about my hobbies. I obliged by sharing my somewhat dull interests in excessive detail. Having received my conference pack and noting with a warm fuzzy feeling that my paper was published in the proceedings, I decided to take a walk in the surrounding area.

The Institute is in the university precinct and I enjoyed strolling around the campus dodging the motor scooters and lethal rickshaws. I suddenly found myself in a  market and every cliché came screeching into my head. Four sensory experiences occurred simultaneously.

Firstly, the noise. The rapid-fire chatter of bartering and street-talk provide a soundtrack like no other. Take a listen to the third part of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music if you want an approximation.

Secondly, the smells hit the inside of your nose and the back of your throat as if you had shoved your head into a spice rack and inhaled the entire contents. Coriander is the most prevalent. Chillies, onions and cardamom were also recognisable, but the air was infused with so many strange fragrances it made me lightheaded.

Thirdly, the colours are so bright and iridescent that they make your eyes water. Are tomatoes really supposed to be that red? The chillies that green, and the oranges that…..orange? Fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices piled high on trestle tables or on the crumbling pavement along with ubiquitous chrysanthemums in garlands and wreaths or stored as petals in large earthenware pots. Less visually appealing were the large portions of dead animals that punctuated the otherwise colourful vista. A fly-ridden goat’s head with a slightly annoyed expression on its face sat at a jaunty angle on the ground, its tongue turning slightly green and lolling gargoylishly from its mouth. I tried not to think too hard about what I had for dinner last night.

The fourth sensory assault was kinaesthetic, as street urchins tried to pick my pockets. Luckily, being reasonably tall I had cunningly placed my cash and phone in a top pocket which was out of reach. I half-heartedly waved them away and they gave up with remarkable good humour and went looking for other tourists, which I noticed, for the first time and with alarm, were absent. I must have stuck out like a sore thumb.

I moved on swiftly, choosing a road at random and walked towards what I guessed was the north. Five minutes into this walk I encountered a group of about 20 men walking towards me, a handcart at their centre. The man leading this procession was swinging what I assumed with my amazing powers of perception was a censer as it emitted a fragrant smoke. I stepped to one side and stopped as I realised this was a funeral procession. The deceased lay on the handcart, wrapped in white linen and with a garland of chrysanthemums around his neck. He had been an elderly gentleman with a white beard and hair and an avuncular expression on his face. He jiggled gently on the cart and seemed to be enjoying his last ride. I silently wished him good karma in his next life and waited for the procession to pass.

Further up the road I came across the Bengal Cricket Ground and stopped to watch the match for a while. A vendor was selling coconuts as refreshment nearby along with various brightly coloured and sweet-smelling snacks which I passed on, the image of the goat’s head still fresh in my mind. A small Hindu temple stood on the boundary of the ground where prayers were being offered, presumably to influence the outcome of the match. A couple of those might’ve been handy during the recent Ashes tour I thought with a sudden surge of bitterness.

Walking on, I entered what seemed to be a Muslim neighbourhood, the dead giveaway being the huge mosque towing over the neighbourhood with a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer from a precarious looking minaret. It had been several hours since I had left the conference registration and I was flagging slightly in the heat. A roving taxi driver noticed me and touted for a fare. As I had been in Mumbai for 24 hours, I considered myself streetwise and haggled the cost. We agreed 50 rupees (about 70 pence). After getting in the cab he immediately upped the fare to 100 rupees and a good-natured argument began. By the time we had reached the hotel, we had settled on 80 rupees. However, as I had enjoyed the interchange I gave over the full 100 rupees and shook his hand. The last time I saw him, he was on his mobile phone, no doubt telling his mates what a twonk Westerners are. This one, anyway.

Fuzzy Logic

And so to work. Having been had by the naughty rogue cab driver yesterday I was not be caught again and sharing a cab to the conference with a professor from Korea (hi,  Byoung) I paid the metered fare and not a rupee more. At the conference we were greeted with cardamom flavoured coffee so sweet you could feel your fillings melt. Prayers for a successful conference were offered up to the Hindu god, Ganeesh accompanied by some chanting and incense burning. Ganeesh is the elephant god of plenty and a jolly chap he looked indeed, beaming across the proceedings and waving his trunk in a benedictory way.

The keynote speeches were somewhat mixed in quality and I was initially disappointed until one of the speakers said something that I violently disagreed with. That cheered me up no end. There was an interesting discussion around the four I-s of social media (involvement, interaction, intimacy and influence) and some interesting linking of web 2.0 with multiple intelligences. After some workshops on neural networks, fuzzy logic and mobile technologies sounded good but frankly went way over my head we paused for lunch. I was delighted to see some rather literal translations of English dishes which although sounding alarming were delicious as they were flavoured with spices I had never encountered before. My favourite was the mushroom omelette which was translated (rather poetically I thought) as “fried smashed eggs with inimitable fungus” and which in Bill Bryson style I took pleasure in ordering verbatim.

After some lively discussions on social networking as a disruptive innovation, it was suddenly my turn to present a paper on the effect of learner response systems on mathematics achievement in years 7 and 8. Despite the rather dull title it seemed to go down a treat complete with smiling faces and polite applause. I even had some questions that I was able to answer nearly coherently. It was a long day and I took a stroll by sea before dinner looking out over the Worli Bridge. The beach is filthy but people didn’t seem to mind, playing ball, strolling and sitting watching the spectacular red sunset. There were three distinct things that reminded me that I was not walking along an Australian or English beach (as if these were sandy extremities that could be classified within the same genus). The first was the herd of cows (presumably sacred) that wandered nonchalantly along the shoreline look for all the world as if at many minute they would grab a boogie board and engage in some bovine surfing. This was however, extremely unlikely as the sea was the colour, texture, shape and smell of a cow pat.

The second thing that drew my attention was a man wearing a loin cloth, a garland of flowers and with long plaited red hair. I assumed he was some kind of religious figure as he walked briskly along the sea wall accosting the canoodling couples and extorting rupees from them in exchange for a blessing after which he theatrically flagellated himself with a large bullwhip which I suspected was more for aural effect than self-mortification. Anyway, he seemed to be doing pretty well out of this scheme with a 100% success rate from the couples he approached. Good luck to him and them.

The third thing was very curious indeed to a Western eye. A large concrete platform bore the body of a dead person which was being eaten by a flock of crows and what looked like kites and possibly a vulture. I did not spend too much time on ornithological analysis. It later transpired that this was probably a Zoroastrian funeral. Given the level of pollution in the city, this was probably a greener means of disposing of human remains than cremation, although there was an “electrical crematorium” just around the corner as well. So much for a stroll along the beach.

The conference organisers had organised a delightful “evening of culture” for us. Traditional and modern Indian dance performed by students of the university was charming, entertaining and genuinely moving. A particularly dramatic dance about Shiva was even slightly alarming in its dramatic execution and the story of Krishna was executed in a devotional and touching way. It was a lovely performance.

The dinner which followed was unlike any conference I have ever attended. For a start, it was in a tent which was a nice touch. The food was far more delicious than any conference I have ever had. Curries, soups, salads and sauces that almost vibrated with colour and flavour. It. Was. Fantastic. The fact that they were served on plastic plates with plastic cutlery and there were insufficient (plastic) chairs and (plastic) tables did not detract in any way from the meal. It was a happy event indeed.

On return to the hotel, I ordered an Indian (Black Dog) whiskey  which was delicious but tasted more like rum. A very good day indeed.

About 20 metres down the road from the hotels another world. Noise and pollution from scooters, motorbikes, ancient taxis, trucks, motorised rickshaws again assault the ears. Children play in the dirt, women weave baskets, men stir large woks of curry. Teenagers stand around languidly using expensive mobile phones. There is a simultaneous sense of chaos and lethargy. Everyone seems exhausted and people are asleep everywhere. On the pavement, in the gutter, in trees, in the road, standing up and sitting down. It is very, very difficult to make sense of the apparent  poverty and indolence without bring a neo-colonial bias to the scene. Can one ever step outside one’s own cultural values and beliefs and fairly and sympathetically understand cultures that differ so greatly from one’s own.

I have learned a great deal from this conference. There were some wonderful presentations. I was introduced to a conceptual framework to support self-directed learning in distance education. I heard about e-learning on the semantic web and intellectual property rights in podcasting. I heard for the first time about e-learning and synthetic learning outcomes and online teaching using metaphors. I was intrigued by the concept of e-trust (“an attitude of confident expectation in an online situation or risk that one’s vulnerabilities will not be exploited”, Corritore).

I fear that I took more away from this visit than I brought to it.

January 2011

“Daddy, what’s a laptop?”

By accidental stealth, our house has become infiltrated by technology produced by that vegetative symbol for original sin.  Almost without us realising it, the i-listen, i-natter, i-browse and i-fiddle have grafted themselves onto our lives. This is not to imply that we owe an allgegiance to the fruity purveyors  of these devices. We do not walk around wearing wholesome black and white t-shirts tucked into Harry Highpants faux casual designer jeans and sporting goofy, white, Stepford smiles. We do also possess the more suburban, double-glazed metaphors of everyday computing.

Like most of you, I have possessed an i-listen for years. Ubiquitously, I am plugged in to avoid bordeom/thinking/talking/socialising/working. I am a bit like that. The i-natter I “need” for my employment (as if no other, cheaper device would suffice). The i-fiddle was a present for my wife so that she could more conveniently feed her addiction to FarmTown, and the i-browse was a freebie for a conference I have no intention of attending. Auntie also has an i-fiddle to replace  her recently deceased PDA that has given her faithful service since 1853.

On Boxing Day, our 4-year old twins discovered FaceWasteoftime and spent some hilarious moments using the devices as walkie talkies until they were standing so close, the bouncing echoes made them sound like early Radiohead. Something interesting happens when a little person picks up an i-thing. The kinaesthetic connection of the child to the device is arguably the most natural interface I have ever seen between a human and ICT.

Double-glazed technology is only tolerated by them because of the Cbabies website’s reliance on Phlash. Both Thing 1 and Thing 2 infinitely prefer the liquid elegance of the handheld devices lending themselves far more to independent and collaborative learning. It is the grown-ups and their modernist institutions who see the technology as being rooted in the architecture and fabric of buildings rather than being connected to the inquisitiveness and creativity of individuals.

I’m afraid that our educational ICT taxonomies need a radical makeover. Thing 1 and Thing 2 see the digital world through different lenses.

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas, bloggers.  In January 2011 I am speaking at the IC4E conference in Mumbai, the BETT show in London and  the IAPS conference in Surbiton as well as helping deliver the ICT module of the MA in Educational Leadership and Innovation at Warwick University and the Teacher Leader programme at Sheffield Hallam University. If the snow doesn’t slow us down I might catch some of you around the traps.

All the best for 2011.

Is ICT a myth?

Whilst watching  a TED broadcast by Ken Robinson the other day, I noticed his remark that 15 year olds do not wear wristwatches because they do not see the point in using single-function technology. Several years ago, I asked a group of year 9 students if they used e-mail to which one replied, “no but my granny does”. To a large extent, ICT is a mythical construct perpetuated by people from my own demographic (middle-aged, male, overweight and geeky). This of course is to grossly over-generalise and I am being deliberately mischevious in doing so although some of the more interesting observations in recent years have come from a less stereotypical position. Turkle, Byron, Livingstone, Marsh, Davies, boyd et al have focussed more on the social, cognitive and constructivist aspects of the digital landscape and seem less obsessed with the artifacts of digital culture. Read Turkle’s “Evocative Objects” for a particularly beautiful depiction.

In a time when we are still obsessing over large, meta-technical “solutions” (heaven help us), young people are doing interesting things with that which is personal, portable, wireless, networked and social. Yesterday I talked with someone whose developmentally delayed son was doing astonishing things using adaptive communication apps on an i-thing. Talk to any child about ICT and they may look at you blankly. The modernistic labels of information, communications and technology suit the language of education systems very well (and remember, school itself has been described as a technology) but really. Do we honestly think that these structures truly reflect what (we may kid ourselves) is educationally and technologically cutting-edge. Becta has gone. Children are deserting ICT as a subject in droves. Despite the third paranthetical attribute with which I described myself in the first paragraph, I am reminded of Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man”; something is happening but you don’t know what it is…...

ICT Directions

Myself and some colleagues (who know far more than I do about ICT) have spent the past two days talking with contractors about ICT and the Classroom of 2012. Several interesting themes have emerged from these discussions. Whilst I am always mindful about Nick Gibb’s comments about education being the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next, I am still struck by the continuing emphasis on independent and personalised learning. No doubt that infrastructure issues, virtualisation, management of increasing volumes of data, security and The Cloud will continue to be big themes for all of us. We will also need to become intelligent with how we tackle the personalisation agenda with respect to personal devices. Given that there will be a need for us to work smarter and more efficiently, how do we deal with the personal phone, i-* technologies, PSPs and other devices that students will be bringing into the school?  Should we be trying to converge personal and school technologies or does the current divergence indicate that schools are unique spaces with  different technological ecologies

We will need to continue thinking carefully about these and other agendas. What a wonderful technological time this is. Or was it ever thus?

Six Impossible Things

“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Alice Through the Looking Glass

“… the grand narrative has lost its credibility, regardless of what mode of unification it uses, regardless of whether it is a speculative narrative or a narrative of emancipation.”

Jean-François Lyotard

After 14 years of service to education, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) is being retired.  Becta was the government agency leading the national drive to ensure the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning. According to their website, Becta’s remit included:

• raising educational achievement
• narrowing the gap between rich and poor
• improving the health and wellbeing of children and young people
• increasing the number of young people on the path to success
• improving the skills of the whole population throughout their working lives
• building social and community cohesion
• strengthening the Further and Higher education systems.

Many thousands of educationalists across UK, and indeed the world, have valued the support and advice that Becta provided over the years, and the decision to close it down means that educational institutions and communities will need to find new and creative ways to embed deep thinking into their decisions about learning technologies, ICT and e-learning. These decisions about the use of new technologies in education will inevitably focus on the raising of educational standards, whether through improving attainment, progression, engagement, enjoyment or by making educational institutions more efficient. But something else will also emerge.

I will always be grateful for the resources and support that Becta provided and for their contributions to the educational discourse that now allows so many individuals and organisations to embrace current and emergent technologies with confidence and ambition. But we must now pick up new challenges, one being to question the way in which the models of ICT support have been traditionally presented. We have the opportunity to challenge the old, modernisitic models of large, centralised support. As Stephen Heppell has said

…we need to see the opportunity presented: we are in a world where, as I have often said before, instead of the old 20th century model of “building big things that did things for people” we now have a world of “helping people to help each other…we’ve said all along that ICT empowers autonomous and collaborative learners. Now is the time to prove that these learners include ourselves too.

Now is an excellent time to encourage and work with the many online collaborators who provide inspiration and support for others. Many communities of practice exist that are well placed to take this debate forward. The online community will ensure that Becta publications and services will survive if there is a demand for them but we may also be entering an era of new opportunities. This has been signalled for some time by writers such as Clay Shirky and Charles Leadbeater. Some of the clubby, old, paternalism that has guided our thinking about ICT for so many years may be swept aside as impatient, younger influences become more dominant in education.

Many writers have opposed universal solutions, meta-narratives, and generalisations. More so than ever, some ‘universalist’ claims have been challenged in areas relating to knowledge and technology. Lyotard in his 1979 report on knowledge argues that our postmodern era is characterised by an ‘incredulity towards meta-narratives’. These meta-narratives are grand theories and philosophies such as those that characterise the inevitable progress of history and the infallibility of science. Lyotard argues that the world has changed and that these sorts of narratives may no longer stand up to scrutiny. We have to embrace individuality, diversity, conflict, local knowledge and context, and encourage smaller strategies that have meaning and relevance to those who own them. Lyotard signposts the diversity of smaller communities and the multiple collaborative and conflicting systems which create their own meanings and their own rules.

Becta served and helped shape our views of ICT and e-Learning admirably and was instrumental in moving both technological and pedagogical discourses away from the technocrats and into spaces inhabited by teachers, parents, pupils and the wider community. The challenge for us all now is how to create new discourses about ICT, not just through membership organisations and formal bodies but through informal spaces which are increasingly attracting collaborators, inventors and innovators. The technologies are there to support these spaces and the old argument that puts pedagogy ahead of the technology is sounding tired. The boundaries between the two are blurring and young people know this. We need to do six impossible things before breakfast.

Becta had a Business Plan which set out its work for 2010-2011 which identified six priorities:

Priority 1: e-enabling institutions

“Increasing the numbers of schools, colleges and other providers using technology to improve outcomes for learners and deliver value for money.”  Building on the work that Becta undertakes in the next twelve months, we need to take Stephen Heppell’s vision forward and each in our own way make a point of connecting up with each other through informal and formal networks to encourage, collaborate, celebrate and help each other to raise and meet expectations on the use of ICT in education.

Priority 2: Delivering Home Access and improving services for learners and families

“Increasing the numbers of learners able to access learning materials, the school and wider services through technology” Many schools are already technological hubs of their communities. By opening physical and virtual doors to their ICT resources, schools are well placed to take this forward. By opening up provision of cloud-based resources through learning platforms, e-learning and other resources schools are increasingly positioning themselves to lead in supporting their communities through the use of ICT.

Priority 3:Supporting the frontline to achieve savings through technology

“Achieving savings through better procurement, management and interoperability of ICT and improved operational efficiency”. This is possibly the hardest of the “impossible six” to achieve. Again, the key is collaboration. Procurement frameworks and the creation of ICT contracts that meet local needs will need to be well coordinated. Where the motivation is financial, there is greater motivation to collaborate. We can look forward to commercial strategic partnerships, regional procurement frameworks and other entrepreneurial and innovative methods of procuring and achieving interoperability. If the foreseeable future is to be based on personal, portable, wireless, networked, interactive devices then we can expect interesting times indeed.

Priority 4: Propositions to achieve future productivity through new operating models

“Developing propositions to policy makers, local authorities and system leaders on new models” Whether schools become academies, free schools or remain within Local Authorities, new models of operating will emerge. There is much to be excited about, as both educational structures and technologies will change rapidly over the next year. The challenge will be whether or not leadership models respond strongly enough in both reactive and proactive ways.

Priority 5: Supporting leaders and developing system leadership

“Ensuring commitment by education leaders to a strategic vision for technology and its implementation” This priority is inextricably linked to the previous one. To refer back to Stephen Heppell, we need to revisit our grand, strategic visions and focus on autonomy and collaboration.

Priority 6: Organisational delivery and reducing administration costs

“Managing the organisation efficiently, effectively and reducing administrative costs.” The coalition government has stated that it is committed to giving schools more freedom from unnecessary prescription and bureaucracy. ICT will continue to play an important role in the management and administration of schools in increasingly efficient ways.

Becta had established each priority with both one and three year targets. It will be the challenge of schools and other educational providers to take these priorities and reinterpret them after March 2011. By collaborating and contributing to the national and international discourses on ICT in education we can embark on a new era of creativity and innovation in education.

Following the Alice in the Looking Glass quotation on Six Impossible Things, we would do well to remember what the Sheep said later in the same chapter: “I never put things into people’s hands — that would never do — you must get it for yourself.” Now is the time to start getting things for ourselves. How many impossible things can we dream before breakfast and then make real?

ICT Project Management

ICT Projects

The United Church Schools Trust and the United Learning Trust have many years’ experience with major ICT projects in schools and academies, having managed the design of ICT for 17 academies since 2003, each project involving the installation of at least £1.1m worth of ICT resources.  ULT has highly experienced ICT projects executives based in the north, midlands and the south of England, all with  both educational and computing qualifications and holding Certified IT Professional status with the British Computer Society.

Their experience includes consultation with stakeholders, specification, design, procurement and project management of ICT which also covers procurement under European Law as ULT has its own OJEU framework. Our range of experience includes liaison with architects, quantity surveyors, builders, M&E and FF&E contractors as well as close liaison and consultation with staff in schools and academies to develop and implement an educational ICT vision and strategy.

We are experienced in enabling the provision of both dedicated and cross-curricular ICT facilities including suites, wireless provision and individual classroom facilities. We have considerable expertise in the use of interactive whiteboard technology and user response systems and employ experts on the provision of Local and Wide Area Network services to support both administration and teaching and learning.

Strategic direction can be provided for the provision of educational software and a full range of expertise is available to address the implementation of ICT in all curriculum areas.

Systems

As well as managing the Wide Area Network and its associated data centre, we provide technical support to its schools and academies before, during and after commissioning, ensuring both continuity and robustness of systems. Induction and technical accreditation of local technical ICT staff is also provided along with project management of the major ICT contractors.

E-Learning

A critical element of the design of new-build schools and academies is ensuring that the teaching and learning places are fit for purpose and this is achieved through a thorough involvement of the e-learning team during all stages of design and construction. A detailed audit of teachers’ needs is undertaken and a complete, ongoing professional plan is developed and implemented providing every teacher with a bespoke professional development programme that extends beyond basic technical specification into detailed pedagogical practice specific to each teacher area.

Lesson observations are undertaken in all new buildings to ensure that teachers are able to manage the ICT resources and to fine-tune the individual support for every teacher to ensure that they are best placed to exploit the resources to maximum educational effect.

The United Church Schools Trust and the United Learning Trust have formal accreditation in several areas and were the first national providers to receive accreditation through the NaaceMark Quality Assurance for Service Providers in e-learning. We are a British Computer Society Qualifications Approved Centre, accredited providers for the Framework for IT Technical Support (FITS) and employ ICTMark accredited assessors as well as accredited trainers for CEOP.

If you are planning to set up your own academies or free schools and would like to engage our services in ICT and e-Learning or indeed join us as partners then please visit www.ucst.org.uk for further details.

Closure of Becta

After 12 years of service to education, the  British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) is going to be retired.  Becta is the government agency leading the national drive to ensure the effective and innovative use of technology throughout learning. According to their (presumably soon to be dismantled) website,  Becta’s remit includes:

• raising educational achievement
• narrowing the gap between rich and poor
• improving the health and wellbeing of children and young people
• increasing the number of young people on the path to success
• improving the skills of the whole population throughout their working lives
• building social and community cohesion
• strengthening the Further and Higher education systems.

I have always valued the support and advice that Becta provided, and the decision to close them down means that schools, academies, local authorities and educational charities will need to find new and creative ways to embed deep thinking into their decisions about learning technologies, ICT and e-learning. The use of new technologies in education is only justified when it can make a demonstrable contribution to the raising of educational standards, whether that be through improving attainment, progression, engagement, enjoyment or by making educational institutions more efficient.

I will always be grateful for the resources and support that Becta provided and for their contribution to the educational discourse that now allows so many to face current and future technologies with confidence and ambition.

FITS2 – Professionalising ICT Technical Support

 FITS2 is the Framework for ICT Technical Support – version 2. It is a formal NVQ Level 4 qualification, certificated through the Scottish Qualification Authority. Training takes two days with a 1.5 hour online exam in the afternoon of the second day. FITS2 is designed to provide ICT technical support in schools/academies with the training, guidance, processes and templates in order to deliver efficient and effective technical support in order to improve educational outcomes. FITS2 is based on BECTA’s national experience of ICT support in schools and borrows heavily on long term studies to identify and quantify best practice in technical support. FITS (first generation) has been deployed in over 1,000 schools nationally. FITS2 has been re-written to encompass the experience of FITS and the developments of ICT since its initial inception.

FITS2 will be the ULT/UCST quality standard for the delivery of ICT Support Services. Its value to our technical staff is through the professionalisation of ICT support services and for the individuals trained, a valued CPD outcome. To each school/academy FITS2 provides value through its contribution to the BECTA ICT Framework, its provision of evidence towards achieving the ICTMark and last but not least in its recognition by OFSTED as a quality standard in ICT management – hence a need to reference FITS within your SEF once staff have attained the qualification and started implementing FITS2 practices. It will also have an impact on improving ICT reliability through moving ICT support from reactive to proactive processes. FITS2 is a baseline qualification we expect all UCST and ULT ICT Technical Staff to attain (for new joiners this would take place within probation).

As an approved training provider of FITS2, we are deploying FITS2 in 3 phases over three academic years:

Phase 1: Central Office staff, Champions Programme & Intervention Programme – all by invitation only.

Phase 2: Development Programme –All schools/acad emies are eligible to apply for this phase. Running from September 2010-August 2011. Please see your regional ICT Project Executive and express your interest for engagement within this phase.

Phase 3: Development Programme – All remaining schools/academies will be engaged within this phase. Running from September 2011- August 2012.

 FITS2 Level 4 Certificate in ICT Support in Education: Practitioner Unit code: F81L 34 Audience: ICT Technical Staff in schools Duration: Two day course. This comprises one and a half days of teaching followed by the Level 4 certificate in ICT Support in Education: Practitioner examination.

Effects of Electronic Formative Assessments on Achievement in Years 7-8 Mathematics

 

Abstract 

The Mathematics performance of students in the UK is neither stellar nor disastrous. On the 2004 TIMSS, students in England scored significantly lower than those in such countries as Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Belgium, and the Netherlands, but ahead of pupils in countries such as the US, Australia, and New Zealand. These results do not justify complacency. Success in Mathematics is believed to be a key factor in countries’ long-term economic success, and there is no reason that students in the UK could not achieve as well in this subject as those in such similar countries as the Netherlands and Belgium. However, in order to improve standards of performance in this subject throughout the UK, the quality of teaching and learning will have to improve on a broad scale. In the US, a recent distinguished panel of educators carried out a detailed review, and concluded that real improvement in Mathematics will require changes in daily teaching practices, not just improved curriculum or standards (National Mathematics Panel, 2008). The same is true in the UK, or in any other country committed to improving Mathematics outcomes A recent technological development in the UK may offer a means of making meaningful replicable improvements in pupils’ Mathematics performance. This is the appearance and widespread adoption in the educational charity, the United Learning Trust of Electronic Response Devices (ERDs) typically used in conjunction with interactive whiteboards, which are also used extensively across the group. This study examines the effectiveness of these devices in raising attainment in Mathematics. 

Introduction 

The Mathematics performance of students in the UK is neither stellar nor disastrous. On the 2004 TIMSS, students in England scored significantly lower than those in such countries as Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Belgium, and the Netherlands, but ahead of pupils in countries such as the US, Australia, and New Zealand. These results do not justify complacency. Success in Mathematics is believed to be a key factor in countries’ long-term economic success, and there is no reason that students in the UK could not achieve as well in this subject as those in such similar countries as the Netherlands and Belgium. However, in order to improve standards of performance in this subject throughout the UK, the quality of teaching and learning will have to improve on a broad scale. In the US, a recent distinguished panel of educators carried out a detailed review, and concluded that real improvement in Mathematics will require changes in daily teaching practices, not just improved curriculum or standards (National Mathematics Panel, 2008). The same is true in the UK, or in any other country committed to improving Mathematics outcomes (see Askew, Brown, Rhodes, Johnson, & Wiliam, 1997; Ma, 1997).

A recent technological development in the UK may offer a means of making meaningful replicable improvements in pupils’ Mathematics performance. This is the appearance and widespread adoption in the United Church Schools Trust of Electronic Response Devices (ERDs) typically used in conjunction with interactive whiteboards, which are also used extensively across the group. An interactive whiteboard is a large screen that makes it possible for teachers to manipulate and present to entire classroom groups anything that can be shown on a laptop or desktop or designed using the software accompanying the whiteboard. An electronic response device (ERD) is a small handheld unit that enables all students to indicate a given answer in response to any question posed by the teacher or written on the whiteboard. ERDs allow students to key in their own answers using a  keypad similar to those on cell phones, freeing the devices from the limitations of multiple choice assessments. Teachers can display students’ responses immediately on a whiteboard in a variety of formats, from summary graphs to displays of individual students’ responses. In theory, ERDs provide teachers with a powerful tool to accelerate student achievement. A great deal of research has established that providing frequent formative feedback, to give both the teacher and the students themselves immediate indicators of students’ current levels of understanding and that of the class as a whole, can have a substantial impact on student learning. Studies in the UK (e.g., Black & Wiliam, 1998) and the US (e.g., Natriello, 1987; Crooks, 1988; McMillan, 2004) have shown that frequent formative assessments in daily classroom instruction can accelerate students’ learning by several processes: 

• Giving teachers immediate information on students’ learning, so that they can regulate the pace and content of lessons according to current levels of mastery and identify students in need of additional help; 
• Giving students feedback on their own learning, enabling them to regulate and evaluate their own learning efforts; 
• Giving students routine opportunities to participate actively in lessons, a key precursor to achievement success (e.g.; Good, Grouws, & Ebmeier, 1983); 
• Giving students routine opportunities to see how their peers are solving problems and incorporating effective learning approaches used by peers (Slavin, 1995); 
• Motivating students to learn academic content and skills by giving them a stake in the outcomes of instruction, as students are more interested in academic content when they have had to take a public position or give a public answer. 

The widespread adoption of electronic response devices creates new opportunities to help teachers incorporate various formative assessment strategies into their daily lessons. However, the use of ERDs has never been evaluated in a rigorous experiment. We therefore carried out a randomised experiment to evaluate the use of ERDs in Key Stage 3 (years 7-10) Mathematics. This was conducted as a joint research project between the United Learning Research Institute (the research arm of the United Church Schools Trust) and the Institute for Educational Effectiveness (University of York). 

Detailed Research Questions 

1. What is the effect of the use of Electronic Response Devices on the Mathematics achievement of students in Years 7-8, in comparison to students taught without the use of ERDs? 

2. What is the effect on student learning of the extent of use of ERDs within experimental groups using these devices? 

Research Methods: Subjects and Design 

The subjects were approximately 60 Year 7-8 classes in ten two-form secondary schools and academies in England. Schools already had in place interactive whiteboards and were willing to give optional SATs (standardised national Mathematics tests). Teachers were asked to volunteer to participate. At each year level, classes were paired based on achievement levels. One paired class  was randomly assigned to use electronic response devices for 12 weeks starting in the spring term 2009, while the second class served as a control. In autumn term 2009, the control teachers received the ERDs and training, making this a delayed treatment control group design. 

Treatments 

1. Electronic Response Devices.

Experimental teachers were given ERDs to use with all of their students. They were given a half-day specific training in the effective use of the devices in Mathematics, as well as monthly follow-up visits to assess implementation and give advice. 

1. Control.

Control teachers were asked to continue using their usual teaching methods during the experiment. After the experiment was over, these teachers received ERDs and training in how to use them. 

Measures and Analyses 

The measure of Mathematics learning was the optional SATs given routinely to most students in England. These were was transformed within grades into z-scores to facilitate pooling across year levels. Data was analysed using Hierarchical Linear Modelling (HLM; Raudenbush & Bryk, 1998). Students were nested within classes, and degrees of freedom were based on the number of classrooms. Using Optimal Design with an average of 20 pupils per class and intraclass correlation of 0.10 and a pre-post correlation of +0.70, an effect size of 0.25 was detected with 87% certainty. 

Observations 

Each experimental and control class was observed by trained observers four times over the course of the study to learn how they differed in terms of teacher and student behaviours. An observation protocol adapted from that developed by Pianta (Pianta, 2009) was used. 

Partnerships 

ERD devices and software were sourced on loan at no cost to the project from Promethean to enable all participating students to have one. 

Expected Outputs 

The proposed research produced important outcomes in two major arenas. First, it carried out a rigorous randomised evaluation of a theoretically interesting intervention, the use of Electronic Response Devices to provide ongoing formative assessment to students. Second, as the treatments were successful, it provided practical educators, head teachers, and policymakers with information on a readily replicable treatment. The design enabled us to find out who benefits from the use of ERDs under what implementation conditions, and on which subskills.

Patterns of Implementation

Drawing on the evidence from support visits, evaluation visits and teacher interviews, reviews of implementation were conducted regularly by the research team over the duration of the study.  Implementation was found to be variable within and across schools.

While the implementation period was to start immediately after the administration of the pre-tests in early January 2009, implementation was significantly delayed in several cases, was inconsistent in some cases, and did not meet the requirement of the study in others.  Reasons for variability in implementation included the following:

• Teachers re-assigned to teaching groups not in Year 7 or Year 8
• Insufficient training in the use of ActivExpression
• Limited access to the ActivExpression devices
• Teacher lack of confidence in introducing co-operative learning
• Perceived incompatibility with curriculum content
• Other curriculum development priorities

 

The research project required that the ERDs would be used in most if not all Mathematics lessons during the implementation period in the intervention classes.  In some cases, ERDs featured in less than half the Mathematics lessons taught to classes assigned to the intervention.

The research study required a high level of implementation fidelity; there was an expectation that the combined use of ActivExpression and the co-operative learning strategies introduced in the training would feature in the Mathematics lessons of classes assigned to the intervention. In some cases co-operative learning strategies featured insufficiently in lessons. Similarly, in some cases ActivExpression was under-used or not used at all.

Review of patterns of implementation was conducted prior to administration of the post-test measures. Levels of implementation were evaluated separately for the use of ActivExpression, the use of co-operative learning strategies, and for teaching of Mathematics in which the two components were combined as required by the study and exemplified in the training, support visits and resources. The review suggested that actual implementation was limited to a subset of 6 classes of the 12 classes assigned to the intervention. In the remaining 6 classes, implementation was considered to be developmental but insufficient to contribute to a valid and reliable evaluation of the intervention.

The composition of the intervention and control subsets was as follows:

	Activexpression use		Control		Total
	Subset	Students	Subset	Students	Classes	Students
Independent Schools	6	77	6	88	12	165

 

The exclusion of classes in which implementation of ERDs was not adequate made the random assignment design difficult. Instead, remaining classes were matched with control classes at the same level and with similar scores, as shown above. Intervention and control classes were matched within the school subsamples.

Results

Outcomes on Optional Tests of Mathematics (in z-scores)

Independent Schools	N  (classes)	Pre	Post	Adjusted Post	Effect Size
Use of ERDs                 (SD)	77 (6)	+0.14 (0.94)	+0.22 (0.93)	+0.11	+0.20*
Control (SD)	88 (6)	-0.12 (1.04)	-0.19 (1.02)	-0.10
Control (SD)	121 (7)	+0.10 (0.97)	+0.09 (1.01)	0.00

*p<.05

Discussion

The findings of the evaluation of the use of ERDs were mixed, but a great deal was learned about the programme and how it can be improved in the future.

Among the Independent Schools, the implementation of Activexpression was generally very good. Most teachers were sophisticated with technology, used interactive whiteboards well, and in some cases were familiar with co-operative learning.

Implementation ratings were made on a 5 point scale from 0 to 4. Four of the Independent School teachers had implementations rated as “3” and two recorded ratings of “4”.

Some School teachers reported that team work and co-operative learning strategies made a positive difference in the engagement and learning of weaker students. They also reported that students were able to work better with harder conceptual material

Conclusions and Recommendations

The results suggest that in the Independent Schools in the present study, the use of ActivExpression response devices combined with co-operative learning strategies impacted significantly on the Mathematics achievement of students in comparison to students taught without ActivExpression.

In order to secure future improvement of the programme, the following recommendations are made:

• The programme should start at the beginning of the school year, to give teachers and students more time to learn the procedures.
• More prepared flip charts should be provided.
• Support high levels of implementation with increased coaching and leadership support.
• Develop a culture of team work and students’ working together to help each other to succeed in learning.
• Provide additional training and practice for teachers in the use the learner response devices and co-operative learning strategies prior to implementation in lessons.
• Provide more time for teachers to establish an appropriate level of implementation, and for teaching and learning strategies to become embedded prior to any future evaluation.
• Support implementation by integrating the programme into teachers’ existing schemes of work and lesson plans, and taking account of opportunities for assessing pupil progress (APP).

Activexpression continues to be evaluated in UCST schools, and although future implementation problems may arise, the classes are off to a good start. Instead of comparing classes within schools, schools are now implementing the programme with all their Year 7 and Year 8 students, so teachers can help and support one another. Training placed more emphasis on co-operative learning, and most classes are doing a good job with this element. Problems with registering and using ERDs are being solved. A broader array of flip charts has been provided, and teachers are finding them useful. The 2009-2010 evaluation results will be available in autumn, 2010, but based on our observations we expect that schools using the programme will obtain even better outcomes than those found in the  2008-2009 evaluation.

References 

Askew, M, Brown, M, Rhodes, V and Johnson D (1997). Effective Teachers of Numeracy in Primary Schools: Teachers’ Beliefs, Practices and Pupils’ Learning. British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, York. Black, P. & Wiliam, D (1998a) Assessment and Classroom Learning. Assessment in Education, 5(1), pp 7-71. Crooks, TJ (1988) The Impact of Classroom Evaluation Practices on Students, Review of Educational Research Winter, 58 (4), pp. 438-481. Good TL, Grouws, DA and Ebmeier H (1983) Active Mathematics Teaching, Longman, New York. Effects of Electronic Formative Assessments on Achievement in Years 7-8 Mathematics . ACEC2010: DIGITAL DIVERSITY CONFERENCE 6-9 APRIL 2010, MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA Ma, X (1997). Assessing the Relationship between Attitude toward Mathematics and Achievement in Mathematics: A Meta-Analysis. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 28 (1), pp. 26-47 McMillan, JH (2004). Understanding and Improving Teachers’ Classroom Assessment Decision Making: Implications for Theory and Practice, Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 22(4) pp 34 – 43 Natriello, G (1987). The Impact of Evaluation Processes on Students. Educational Psychologist, London. Pianta, RC (2009). Conceptualization, Measurement, and Improvement of Classroom Processes: Standardized Observation Can Leverage Capacity, Educational Researcher, 38, (2), 109-119 Raudenbusch, R and Bush, SW (1998). Hierarchical Linear Modelling, Congdon, Chicago. Slaven, R (1995) Learning to Cooperate, Cooperating to learn, International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education, New York.

FMS Logo: Retro programming from the Good Ol’ Days

There were some good old days with learning technologies. I remember reading Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms (see video on right) and the thrill and joy of using Logo for the first time on an Apple IIe. Relive those heady days with FMSLogo. 

FMSLogo is a free implementation of a computing environment called Logo, which is an interactive programming language that is simple, powerful, and best of all fun. You can download FMSLogo from the project portal on SourceForge.

There are many Logo environments to choose from, so why do I like FMSLogo?

• FMSLogo has a simple GUI that encourages learning.
• FMSLogo provides support for exploring diverse disciplines, including mathematics, engineering, art, music, and robotics.
• FMSLogo is smaller than most other Logo environments — it still fits on a floppy disk (if there still was such a thing).
• FMSLogo runs fine on computers that are 10 years old.
• FMSLogo has a strong, international user community with over a decade of classroom experience.

“Amazing Web 2.0 Projects” edited by Terry Freedman

Download Terry Freedman’s new Web 2.0 book.

What happens when you wordle your doctoral thesis?

My World as a Wordle.

Vision Magazine

Checkout the latest free issue of Futurelab’s VISION magazine includes articles on assistive technologies, curriculum innovation, 3D printers, eco-friendly schools and digital media in the classroom. Subscribe now or download the magazine as a pdf. Find it at http://www.futurelab.org.uk/

What Professor Stephen Heppell said at BETT 2010

“Education hasn’t had a very good track record with innovative technologies. Mostly we ban things, then, if they don’t appear to have gone away, we appropriate them. “Education asks, when faced with most emerging technologies, a traditionally simple productivity question: “How can this new thing usefully improve what we are already doing?” Rather than asking, “What new things might we now do?”. The learners’ question of course has always been that latter one, hence the dissonance that technology often produces. “The obvious and early excitement of games became tamed to “spelling space invaders”; the art, installation and exhibition and celebration potential of a computer plus projector was reeled back into the “stand and deliver” of an interactive white-board; the personal computer could have unleashed suites of learning tools that mirrored the creativity of a primary classroom, but instead it was reeled back with a suite of dull software that bizarrely mirrored an office. ICT capability became dull conformity, rather than startling creativity. But you know all this already. “But this time it really is different – this Christmas and New Year break saw hosts of families gathered around their Wiis and other gadgets, playing together and enjoying themselves hugely. The phones dreaded by so many schools for so long have opened up hosts of new play opportunities – for adults as well as children (HOW many games on the iPhone already, HOW much fun?!) and we are very obviously at the beginning of an era of post-appropriation in our schools relationship with technology. “And that changes everything as we struggle to keep education up with the progress of post-appropriation technology, rather than to drag technology back to where education is. Gaps will widen, schools that realise where we are will, and in many, many cases already are, listening to children who have suddenly moved from being “the learners’ voice” to being reconnaissance scouts spying out possible new futures. Smart schools will send their scouts ahead, with wise teachers, to spy out future possibilities. “Much of this is, of course, in the mind. We might see leaners doing creative and playful things, but too often our minds see a misfit with the structures and strictures of an orderly education life, and then we demonise what we saw. Top Gear ‘adventure’: picture BBC “A simple example: BBC’s Top Gear regularly features the little “adventures” of its three presenters. In truth we know that as the car edged around the crumbling roadside there was a full BBC production team watching. We know this “three men alone with a challenge” is a bit of playful fiction, albeit with real characters, and people seem to find it entertaining stuff. Indeed, even when the presenters go into bully mode, as for example when they have yet another pop at green politics, many viewers still seem to laugh. “The presenters are apparently lauded for this – but when instead the story is concocted by school children, filmed by their mates’ phones rather than a camera crew, and when the results are circulated among peers to laughter and delight, we call it Happy Slapping and see the perpetrators as the devil incarnate. I’m only signalling that children being playful with technology, with games, with video, with tools like Google Earth and consoles like the Nintendo Wii, with phones and social networking and more, will not this time be dragged back and appropriated into the old factory model of learning. “These post-appropriation technologies won’t be tamed. There won’t be an “educational version”, or a government scheme, so we’d better start some serious conversations about what 21st century learning might look like if we embrace, rather than deny them. “I can’t think of a better place to start than chatting to learners as they play. “So, send out your reconnaissance scouts. Having a bunch of articulate, normal, tech-savvy, diverse London kids playfully learning on the stand, is looking like a pretty important “don’t miss” opportunity for BETT visitors. And we have a scheduled series of inputs too, if you want to sit a while and ponder…”

Free articles on ICT and Education

You can freely download pdf versions of my articles on ICT in education by using the box.net applet in the right hand column of my homepage. To date articles include:

• Dwellers Within the Threshold: How has the Internet shaped our sense of identity and place in society?
• The Coherence of the Inchoate: a comparison of children’s in-school and out-of-school use of the internet
• Open and Transparent Consensus: a snapshot of teachers’ use of Wikipedia
• Children, the Internet and Inequality: what are the causes and consequences of digital exclusion?
• Digital Literacy: are the new technologies changing the way we read and write?
• Spectres in a Virtual World: postmodernism, poststructuralism and ICT in education

Also download conference slides for Web As Culture and Open and Transparent Consensus

Viral Education 2.0

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Viral Education 2.0“, posted with vodpod

 

E-safety review 2009

On 9 June, on behalf of Naace I attended the E-Safety Review 2009 sponsored by Forensic Software. The first session was devoted to the topic of Cyber Mentors featuring the “Beat Bullying” charity. A number of students spoke eloquently about their experiences with the programme and made some important observations to the educationalists attending. They spoke about the power of the internet for communication and research and highlighted the need for children to be trusted and to be allowed privacy. They acknowledged the need for some internet filtering but stressed the need for freedom. They also recognised the prevalence of cyberbullying and identity theft.

Niel McLean, Executive Director for Institutional Development at Becta, spoke on current government guidance and the importance of safeguarding next generation learners. He made the point that schools should protect children whilst they are in their care and educate them for when they are not. He stressed the need for schools to have an Acceptable Use Policy rather than relying on locking down systems. Niel noted that the new Ofsted Framework for September 2009 will have a stronger focus on safeguarding. He concluded by making the point that engagement and interactivity that support effective learning and that safeguard children are fundamentally the same.

John Parmiter from Warwickshire Local Authority spoke about local strategies that are used to reach both the school and home, whilst David Roberts from sponsoring partners, Forensic Software Ltd outlined new technology that supports successful e-safety strategies. Journalist and TV presenter Anna Richardson spoke about the making of The Sex Education Show vs Pornography and revealed how during the making of the show it was discovered that ease of access to pornography influences the views of young people towards sex and relationships.

The highlight of the seminar, however was Professor Tanya Byron who spoke candidly about her commissioning by the Government to investigate issues relating to online safety of children. Professor Byron described how she found “protection” to be an uncomfortable term to use to describe online safety except in the case of vulnerable children. She spoke of how we are in danger of reducing childhood experience with “zero risk taking”. She suggested that we should not take a top-down approach to managing online safety and described how the system is dominated by Luddites who don’t understand the issues. This has led to society becoming riddled with risk aversion. She described how we should look at what children are doing and embrace it to help them become more resilient. We should use technology, standards and education to help children become cyber-literate and safe. Schools should involve children in the development of Acceptable Usage Policies and all parties should work together on to develop a social marketing campaign, professional development for schools and expert panels to advise policy makers, schools, parents, teachers and children.

This was a very entertaining, profound and thought-provoking session.

Evocative Objects by Sherry Turkle

Sherry Turkle’s latest book, Evocative Objects takes the concept of “things we think with” both as its theme and its subtitle. Building upon ideas explored in both her previous landmark books “The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit,”published in 1984, and “Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet,” from 1995, and also developing the ideas underpinning Seymour Papert’s Mindstorms, Turkle curates a serious of essays that explore how everyday and  extraordinary objects can act both as intellectual and emotional catalysts. The essays are provided by talented and creative thinkers, many of whom are associated with MIT where Turkle is Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. The essays are linked with sometimes ironic and sometimes profound quotations from other authors, amongst whom the French postmodernists are prominent.

Reading the essays is a privileging and moving experience as the authors reveal the nakedness of their evocative objects, exposing the inner thoughts and feelings to these touchstones of material objects including ballet slippers, a vacuum cleaner, a Melbourne tram, a rolling pin and slime mould. Turkle acts as curator to these essays brilliantly, allowing brutal honesty and exposure to the pieces, which often read like private journals. Reading the essays brings both the subject matter and the authors’ thoughts to life, evoking the smell, the mustiness of time, nostalgia, joy, regret, guilt and inspiration.

The essays exude invention and creativity often tinged with sadness or emptiness but always effervescing with the humanity of the writers. These talented people become very ordinary through their evocative objects and this ordinariness becomes extraordinary as layers of meaning are unpeeled to expose the exceptionality and the singularity of the simple, the loved and the mundane. The objects are also often ordinary but become precious and sacred as they expose the intelligence, soul and vocation of their stewards.

In her book, Turkle describes and illustrates the way in which technologies are more than just tools, often manifesting themselves as evocative objects: things we think with. She invites the essayist to discuss personal objects that often come to exist with lives of their own. Turkle poignantly illustrates how the aesthetics, design and technology behind evocative objects is directly related to understanding human emotions, thoughts and experiences and the manner in which we reflect upon them.  Through this, objects themselves often take upon a fetishistic or totemic quality.  

The humanity of the essayists’ interaction with their objects also reveals the ghost in the machine, the spirit that moves us to see objects as more than just the sum total of the parts of which they are comprised, although there are glimpses of a generational difference as we see younger figures moving in the background and interacting with technology in a far more self-assured, fluid and natural way than the often older essayist. does

Turkle has had a long-lasting fascination with objects and relics and the way in which we interact with them. She has a background in technology stretching back over 30 years, and spent some time in Paris studying French philosophy and psychoanalytic thought. By bringing together these two contrasting areas, Turkle views technology in a uniquely philosophical way.

That most quintessential piece of technology, the computer, she sees as being an evocative object and a “companion to emotion, and a provocation to thought.” She not only perceptively analyses the computer as a tool for the advancement of society and individual growth, she also sees it as a object which profoundly affects us, and changes not just what we do and how we feel, but more essentially who we are.  With previous publications that cover a wide range of themes including sociology and technology, she has also investigated the way in which the computer can be a means of creating and expressing identity, a way of creating new virtual worlds and a way of learning, creating and communicating.  “Evocative Objects” is a natural extension of this thinking, taking a similar approach to shed light on more mundane things. Everyday, simple objects take on a new meaning when they are seen through the eyes of anthropologists, sociologists and pyschologists.

All these dusty, nostalgic and magical objects together bring to life the philosophical passages that preface each of the essays and provide another lens through which the ordinary, simple and seemingly uninteresting emerge in new and vibrant colours.

Turkle’s daughter brings her own evocative object into the book: a patchwork quilt made by her recently deceased paternal grandmother. We learn through Turkle’s narrative a lot more about the quilt and the people who have touched (and been touched by) it. Turkle’s evocative object is pregnant with meaning for all concerned. It conveys many thoughts and feelings and is a relic of a very personal life history. As an historic and representational item, it is (more than) a reminder of the life and the passing of the grandmother as well as being an object of grieving and remembrance. Most importantly to us, it is an artefact, a gift from and for loved ones.

Gifts and relics are important to givers, recipients, investigators, archaeologists and theorists alike. The essays demonstrate how these objects come to life, imbued with meaning from the past, the present and future and how they can tell a story, not just a shared story within a family or between friends, but a story for wider sharing, one that can be passed down through the ages until it turns into tradition, folklore, myth or legend. The stories that are shared through Turkle’s magnificent anthology have already been committed to history through their publication in “Evocative Objects”. It is a comfortable setting for the many characters, events and objects that populate the collection and brings to life the personal stories that have been so generously shared in the public domain.

Although the stories are told through words and pictures, you can almost see, hear, feel and smell the precious things as they are so beautifully animated as objects to think with. Turkle has compiled and edited a truly remarkable collection of writings.

Open and transparent consensus

Open and Transparent Consensus: a snapshot of teachers’ use of Wikipedia  

 Dr Albin Wallace   

 Introduction  The title of this paper (Open and Transparent Consensus) is derived from Wikipedia’s own description of itself, and reflects its philosophy and approach to collaborative knowledge production and use. Wikipedia is a popular, multi-lingual, web-based, free-content encyclopaedia and is the most well-known of wikis, collaborative websites that can be directly edited by anyone with access to them. Many teachers and students have experience with Wikipedia, and in this survey teachers were asked how Wiki-based practices might contribute to teaching and learning. This survey was conducted in England with 133 teachers from a wide range of schools, who have used Wikipedia in some way. The survey was anonymous to protect individuals’ and schools’ privacy; there was no way of identifying individual responses. The survey was conducted online and respondents were encouraged to be as open and honest as possible. Participation in this survey was entirely voluntary. Many of the questions are based upon descriptions by Wikipedia about itself and these are intended to elicit responses from teachers that reflect how closely their usage relates to the original intention and philosophy of the encyclopaedia. Other questions are intended to probe different ways in which teachers use the website.  

 Presentation and analysis of data  

 What gender are you? Female 77 58% Male 56 42% Total 133 100% Although there were an equal number of male and female teachers invited to participate in the survey (100 of each), the actual percentage of female respondents was 58%. 2 2. What subjects do you teach (please tick all that apply)? Art and design 8 6% Citizenship 6 5% Design and technology 13 10% English 31 23% Geography 14 11% History 9 7% Information and communication technology 16 12% Mathematics 16 12% Modern foreign languages 14 11% Music 5 4% Physical education 11 8% Personal, social, health and economic education 15 11% Religious education 12 9% Science 33 25% Other 28 21% A fairly broad range of subjects were represented in the sample with the highest number of respondents coming from English and Science faculties. This does not necessarily indicate a greater percentage response rate from those faculties as the numbers of invited respondents were not evenly distributed across all the subject areas. It was therefore expected that there would be a sample bias towards subjects such as English, Science, Mathematics and ICT. 3. What Key Stages do you teach (please tick all that apply)? Key Stage 1 10 8% Key Stage 2 27 21% Key Stage 3 104 79% Key Stage 4 107 82% Key Stage 5 83 63% Although there was some representation from primary school teachers (Key Stage 1 and 2), the greater number of respondents came from Key Stage 3-5. This clearly biases the sample towards secondary school teachers. 3 4. Have you ever written a Wikipedia article? Yes 7 5% No 125 95% Total 132 100% Only a very small proportion of teachers surveyed had written a Wikipedia article, indicating that they tended to be consumers rather than producers of information for the website. Of the few that wrote articles, most tended to be Science teachers. 5. Have you ever edited a Wikipedia article? Yes 15 11% No 116 89% Total 131 100% Twice as many teachers had edited rather than produced an article for Wikipedia indicating a higher critical engagement with the content on the website. From all the teachers surveyed, Science, ICT, History and Geography teachers were most likely to edit articles. 6. When using Wikipedia, do you tend to: Always Often Sometimes Rarely Never View random articles? 2 7 29 52 31 2% 6% 24% 43% 26% View featured articles? 2 19 32 32 37 2% 16% 26% 26% 30% View topic areas? 15 39 37 19 16 12% 31% 29% 15% 13% Use the search box? 55 42 22 6 4 43% 33% 17% 5% 3% Teachers tended to view random articles rarely, preferring to use the search box to find specific information. Featured articles were quite popular as was the use of topic areas. Those who tended to view random articles most frequently were Modern 4 Foreign Language teachers. Geography teachers were the most frequent viewers of featured articles with Music and Geography teachers most frequently viewing topic areas. 7. Do you use Wikipedia in languages other than English? Yes 18 14% No 114 86% Total 132 100% Although, unsurprisingly most teachers used Wikipedia in English some did use the website in other languages. Modern Foreign Languages, Science and Art teachers made most use of Wikipedia in languages other than English. 8. When using Wikipedia, how often would you agree with the following words as descriptors for information found? Always Often Sometim es Rarely Never Balanced 7 79 47 0 0 5% 59% 35% 0% 0% Neutral 7 72 48 3 0 5% 55% 37% 2% 0% Encyclopaedic 18 72 33 6 1 14% 55% 25% 5% 1% Comprehensive 18 58 47 7 1 14% 44% 36% 5% 1% Notable 9 40 61 14 1 7% 32% 49% 11% 1% Verifiable 8 52 50 17 3 6% 40% 38% 13% 2% Accurate 8 78 38 6 0 6% 60% 29% 5% 0% Reliable 6 76 39 8 1 5% 58% 30% 6% 1% Respondents found the articles in Wikipedia to be generally balanced, neutral, encyclopaedic, comprehensive, reliable and accurate. They were slightly less inclined to view the articles as being notable or verifiable with less than half of respondents agreeing that articles were always or often either notable or verifiable. 5 Those teachers who reported Wikipedia as being less balanced were teachers of Art, Citizenship, Design and Technology, Geography, ICT and Mathematics. 10. How important are the following factors in using information found on Wikipedia? Very important Somewhat important Neither important nor unimportant Unimportant Irrelevant Neutrality of point of view 42 63 22 0 1 33% 49% 17% 0% 1% Originality of research 17 45 49 10 7 13% 35% 38% 8% 5% Verification of content against external sources 65 46 14 2 2 50% 36% 11% 2% 2% Reliability of sources 86 36 7 0 1 66% 28% 5% 0% 1% Citation of sources 50 57 18 3 0 39% 45% 14% 2% 0% Most respondents rating neutrality of point of view as being an important factor in using information found on Wikipedia. Likewise, verification of content against external sources, reliability and citation of resources were usually seen as being somewhat or very important. Originality was seen as being a less important factor. Those who greatest concern about the neutrality of articles were teachers of Art, Citizenship, Design and Technology, Geography, Mathematics, Modern Foreign Languages and Science 11. Have you ever posted feedback on Wikipedia? Yes 6 5% No 125 95% Total 131 100% Very few respondents ever posted feedback on Wikipedia. 6 12. Do you believe that student access to Wikipedia at school should be blocked? Yes 10 8% No 121 92% Total 131 100% Most respondents believed that access to Wikipedia should not be blocked within school. 13. Do you believe that Wikipedia should be censored for student use? Yes 48 37% No 82 63% Total 130 100% Despite most respondents believing that Wikipedia should not be blocked at school, a significantly higher number believed that it should be censored through the schools’ filtering software. However, a clear majority favoured uncensored access. Those respondents who most favoured censorship were teachers of Citizenship, Design and Technology and Music. 14. On Wikipedia, have you ever encountered any of the following? Always Often Sometimes Rarely Never Censorship 0 2 28 28 72 0% 2% 22% 22% 55% Bias 0 12 59 42 17 0% 9% 45% 32% 13% Blatant vandalism 0 3 21 35 71 0% 2% 16% 27% 55% Subtle viewpoint presentation 1 13 48 37 28 1% 10% 38% 29% 22% With respect to censorship on the site itself, most respondents had never encountered censorship of Wikipedia articles. Bias was sometimes or rarely encountered and vandalism was not highlighted as a problem. Respondents did not generally report the encountering of subtle viewpoints on the site. 7 15. On Wikipedia have you ever encountered information that is: Always Often Sometimes Rarely Never Outdated? 0 13 62 41 13 0% 10% 48% 32% 10% Factually incorrect? 0 12 45 56 18 0% 9% 34% 43% 14% Respondents usually found that information encountered was not outdated and was usually factually correct. 16. Have you ever used the Wikipedia tutorial? Yes 2 2% No 130 98% Total 132 100% Only a couple of the respondents had ever used the Wikipedia tutorial. 17. Do you encourage your students to use Wikipedia for research? Yes 11 8% Yes (depending upon subject areas) 16 12% Yes (depending upon year level) 14 11% Yes (under supervision) 11 8% Yes (depending upon a number of factors) 18 14% No (I leave it to their discretion) 44 34% No (I actively discourage it) 10 8% Other, please specify 7 5% Total 131 100% 8 With respect to student research on Wikipedia, the picture was quite complex. Most teachers did not actively encourage use of Wikipedia by students, although some encouraged usage depending upon either the year level or the subject being taught. Very few teachers unconditionally encouraged its use with students. 18. How important an issue is student plagiarism of Wikipedia? Very important 68 52% Somewhat important 43 33% Neither important nor unimportant 14 11% Unimportant 3 2% Irrelevant 2 2% Total 130 100% Most respondents rated student plagiarism of Wikipedia as being either somewhat or very important. 19. Have you ever encountered student plagiarism of Wikipedia? Constantly 4 3% Often 22 17% Sometimes 49 38% Rarely 19 15% Never 36 28% Total 130 100% Although some respondents often encountered student plagiarism of Wikipedia, most only sometimes or rarely encountered it with over a quarter of respondents never encountering it. Teachers employed a variety of techniques in the classroom to combat plagiarism, including education of students about plagiarism, checking for stylistic anomalies and employment of robust consequences for students who persistently plagiarised. The techniques were not limited to Wikipedia itself, but were applied to a variety of digital and non-digital resources. Some teachers used a plagiarism module built into their school’s learning platform 9 21. Have you ever encouraged use of the “Schools’ Wikipedia”? Yes 7 5% No 125 95% Total 132 100% Very few respondents encouraged use of the “Schools’ Wikipedia”. 22. Do you usually use Wikipedia as: A starting place 75 63% An ending place 5 4% Both 39 33% Total 119 100% Although most respondents used Wikipedia as a starting place for research with very few using it as an ending place, a third of teachers reported using it both as starting and ending points. 23. Do you use any of the following Wikipedia features? External links 63 82% History tabs 20 26% Discussion 14 18% Community portal 4 5% Current events 12 16% A very high proportion of respondents used external links from Wikipedia articles. Some used the history tabs, but fewer reported using the discussion, community or current events facilities. 10 24. Are you confident that your students know about internet safety practices? Yes 74 56% No 57 44% Total 131 100% Internet safety practice represents one of the most significant concerns of teachers. Despite respondents generally believing that Wikipedia access should be neither blocked nor filtered, nearly half of the teachers were not confident that students knew about internet safety practices. Although this purely the teachers’ perceptions, it does highlight internet safety as being a (real or perceived) issue within schools and one that needs to be addressed When asked to describe the ways in which they used Wikipedia as a tool for teaching and learning, teachers almost unanimously described how they used it for their own research, to provide resources for teaching and to seek clarification of facts related to their subject areas. There was not a significant difference in the way in which male and female teachers responded to the questions with the exception that male teachers were more inclined to contribute and edit articles and also expressed fewer concerns about plagiarism than female teachers. There was also no significant difference in which primary and secondary teachers responded, with the exception that at Key Stages 1 and 2 greater concerns were expressed about internet safety issues, with a slightly higher proportion of teachers advocating either the blocking or filtering of access to Wikipedia.   

 

Conclusions 

 

Teachers used Wikipedia across a wide range of subjects, mainly focussed in the secondary school phase. Although few teachers had written articles for Wikipedia, a larger number had edited existing articles. Several had also posted feedback. Most teachers tended to use the Wikipedia search box for locating information, although use of topic areas was also popular. Teachers were less inclined to view either featured or random articles. Teachers had high levels of confidence in the balance, neutrality, scope, accuracy and reliability of Wikipedia although this varied according to subject areas. Teachers were less confident about the notability and verifiability of Wikipedia articles. 11 A small minority of teachers wanted student access to Wikipedia blocked at school, although a larger minority advocated censorship, with a clean majority advocating no censorship. Very few teachers had consistently encountered articles showing bias, subtle viewpoint presentation or blatant vandalism although all of these were reported to have occurred on occasions. There were also high reported levels of articles found being factually correct and current. Teachers took a variety of viewpoints with respect to the encouragement of students using Wikipedia for research. It was often left to students’ discretion, with teachers neither encouraging nor discouraging its usage. Plagiarism was seen as an important issue with respect to Wikipedia with many teachers sometimes encountering student plagiarism. The approach to dealing with plagiarism varied to a great extent. Teachers were divided in their confidence of students’ knowledge of internet safety practices, with the balance tipped towards those who were confident. This left nearly half, however, who were not confident that students knew about internet safety.   

 Recommendations 

 As the survey was restricted to a small group of teachers, recommendations drawn from this study are restricted to teachers rather than students at this stage. The use of websites such as Wikipedia appears widespread and popular with teachers. Teacher training organisations and those responsible for the continuous professional development of teachers could incorporate the exploration of the use of wikis into their development programmes, especially issues relating to collaborative knowledge production through writing and editing. Teachers could be encouraged to contribute to the development of ways in which wikis can be a valuable part of teaching and learning, through the development of new approaches to research and publication. Teachers awareness of internet safety issues and the role of all staff in promoting responsible internet usage by students should be a priority with schools striving to achieve a balance between internet filtering and educating children to use the internet in a safe and reasonable way. All teachers could be involved in internet safety training. Issues relating to website vandalism should be addressed too, with consideration being given to the risk of vandalism if editing and writing on wikis were actively encouraged. Plagiarism also needs to be considered with teachers being given the tools to educate against and combat the occurrence of plagiarism of wikis by children. As well as the employment of online plagiarism filters, teachers could employ a range of strategies to ensure that children’s production of work is their own, 12 with material obtained from wikis by children being interpreted, triangulated with other sources and produced in forms that adds intellectual value to the source material. Teachers gave some interesting responses to the open-ended question Beyond finding information from the encyclopaedia what, if anything, can students learn from Wikipedia? and many of these responses may be useful in formulating innovative ways in which wikis can be used to enhance teaching and learning. New concepts of information neutrality and reliability emerges, with teachers recognising that information is sometimes unreliable and that knowledge is often subjective. They often highlighted the need for teaching of research skills and the important of crossreferencing and triangulating information. Associated with this is the need for teachers to be able to help students to discern bias and prejudice in information and the different ways in which misinformation may be presented. Teachers balanced out these concerns by discussing the ways in which Wikipedia lends itself to collaborative criticism and self-review. Teachers often saw the power of internet sites such as Wikipedia as being examples of democratic tools, representing a thirst for information and desire to contribute for free to the collective wisdom of society. Teachers discussed Wikipedia as being an outstanding example of the way in which knowledge may be openly maintained, created and shared. It is a challenge to schools to respond in ways that promote the learning opportunities of wikis whilst educating about the responsibilities involved in the use such open and transparent systems . Albin Wallace March 2009

Children, the internet and inequality

Children, the internet and inequality: what are the causes and consequences of exclusion? 

Dr. Albin Wallace 

Abstract 

My positionality in this paper is largely determined by my role as the Group Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Director of the United Learning Trust (ULT), a not-for-profit charity established in 2002 to build and manage academies in areas of high social deprivation. The British government conceived the academies programme as a strategy to redevelop schools in socially and educationally disadvantaged areas in England in order to provide improved educational standards and life opportunities for children and young people. Presently, ULT has academies in Manchester, Lambeth, Northampton and Salford, with plans to open further sites in Paddington, Walthamstow, Sheffield, Stockport, Barnsley, Banbury and Swindon over the next three years. Part of the educational provision of these academies is the design, commissioning and implementation of ICT facilities to improve teaching and learning. Inevitably, these facilities focus largely on Internet Protocol (IP) based provisions including access to the World Wide Web, email, interactive software and hardware tools. I am committed to the use of ICT to improve learning and teaching as well as to issues relating to the Internet and educational disadvantage, especially with respect to access and exclusion concerns. In this paper I will examine some recent research into the issue of inequality and use of the Internet during which I will discuss the causes and consequences of exclusion in the context of social inequality, digital literacy and digital inequality, also touching on issues of global inequality. 

INTRODUCTION 

At a superficial level, the Internet can be seen as a global, ubiquitous phenomenon that potentially cuts across traditional socio-economic barriers. But there are philosophical, sociological and practical concerns that complicate this, especially in the context of education. The Internet is certainly an important element of education and has been embraced by English education authorities, schools and educationalists as a tool for learning. Part of the attraction of the Internet stems from its apparent ease of access to information. It is also a reflection and potential enabler of life-long learning, which can be seen as a feature of contemporary life. Usher and Edwards see that “The key to the pursuit of the new, middle-class and their post-modern sensibilities is the adoption of a learning mode towards life” (Usher and Edwards, 1994, p. 190). However, this statement contains some interesting provisos, not the least of which is the assumption that being middle-class is a precondition (or indeed a consequence) of learning. I will argue later how this is of particular relevance to Internet use in education. The fact that education is increasingly seen as a life-long process not restricted by the temporal or spatial constraints of the classroom is partially due to the online educational opportunities that are apparently offered by the Internet and the World Wide Web in particular. Certainly it should not be disputed that the Internet potentially provides access to unprecedented amounts of information. But information is not the same as learning. In fact, some writers have sounded notes of caution about the proliferation of information. 25 years ago Baudrillard warned that “We live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning” (Baudrillard, 1981, p. 79). Since the popular advent of the Internet this is even more apparent. The increasing ability to access information raises several issues, not least the need to synthesize, analyse and critically evaluate content even before putting it to practical use. This means potentially increased power to the Internet user who possesses these skills. Lyotard can be seen as having predicted this in 1979 when he wrote that “The computerization of the most highly developed Page 3 of 14 Albin Wallace societies allows us to spotlight certain aspects of the transformation of knowledge and its effects on public power and civil institutions” (Lyotard, 1979, p. 7). Certainly, knowledge is increasingly seen as residing more in the public domain. But on the Internet it is less organised and more chaotic. To further illustrate its role in a post-modern society Butler describes how “The internet is at present a typically postmodernist phenomenon- it is (currently) a non-hierachized, indeed disorganised collage” (Butler, 2002, p. 117). Sellinger also sees that “The internet is a postmodern phenomenon…Unlike school, it has no history” (Sellinger, 2004, p. 149). Information itself is insufficient to create knowledge. This may be why educated use of the Internet through critical, analytical and creative skills assist to access, synthesize and effectively use much of the content of the Internet. To be included as an effective, learning user requires certain skills that are necessary to avoid exclusion in the world of the Internet and research. However, before discussing what exclusion is, it is worthwhile looking at what inclusion implies with respect to the Internet. Carver et al helpfully state that “a key criterion of inclusion is the ability to store information, experience and resources with key groups” (Carver et al, 1999, p. 2). The purpose for which this information, experience and resources can be used can also be put in a sociological context. Some writers see the Internet as presenting a challenge to values, in a similar way as television and other mass communications media may have been perceived previously. As Horrocks says, “The post-modern crisis is occurring not because technology threatens the values of humanism, but rather because technology has revealed the outcome to which these values must inevitably lead” (Horrocks, 1999, p. 30). There are also those who valorise the Internet as a tool of emancipation, sometimes too uncritically. “Technology reveals more specifically its strategic function in the context of educational practices ostensibly geared towards freedom, emancipation, liberation, as places where human beings can exercise freedom or, also, where they can develop into free and responsible adults and individuals” (Masschelein and Quaghebeur, 2005, p. 52). Somewhat utopian visions such as this run the risk of overlooking issues of ICT and inclusion, where I see it having potentially a darker side when viewed in the context of social inequality and exclusion. 

SOCIAL INEQUALITY AND EXCLUSION 

Having looked at Carver’s key criterion of inclusion, I will now turn to how exclusion can be defined and viewed. Oppenheim describes social exclusion in terms of isolation and alienation from economic, social, political and cultural life including increasing isolation from even informal networks of supports (Oppenheim, 1998). In terms of the Internet, there is a resonance especially with respect to online support networks. Walker and Park describe social exclusion in terms of the length of time that individuals and groups spend in poverty (Walker and Parks, 1998). The problem, however, with the phrase “social exclusion” is that it can applied to any situation if the word ‘social’ is omitted. My use of the term with respect to the use of the Internet is mindful of the multi-dimensional nature of deprivation (both physical and other, as discussed later). Hann also believes that there should be a close examination of the excluded groups themselves and their rights (Haan, 2001). At a fundamental level we can define exclusion as referring to a number of things: basic physical needs, employment, social contact, information, ability for selfimprovement, education and recreation. The latter of these can certainly be seen as being related to exclusion issues the Internet. However, to view the issue in perspective, exclusion in terms of the Internet is not as potentially disastrous in terms of social and economic impact as exclusion from other technological tools. Compaigne commented that “Having access to an automobile and to have a license to operate one was certainly more critical to one’s livelihood in the second half of the Page 4 of 14 Albin Wallace twentieth century as having access to email may be today” (Compaigne, 2001, p. 23). We need to contextualise the importance of the Internet and access to it whilst at the same time recognising that in the longer term there may be damaging effects as a result of exclusion from the forms of intellectual and social capital that access to the Internet facilitates, and the demands that education and the workplace place on individuals’ ability to access resources. Zetterman and Lindblad warn that “unemployment, immigration and the risk of social exclusion in a more marketoriented society may produce a new, educational underclass” (Zetterman and Lindblad, 2001, p. 3). Social alienation too can be seen as a possible social consequence of digital exclusion. Disability is also a potential source of inequality in this area. The social and personalised elements of Internet use are relevant here especially when “Current understanding of disability and special needs are constructed on the basis of a dualism between individual and social factors” (Terzi, 2005, p. 457). There has been some significant attempt by government to address issues of disadvantage in Internet use. There are website standards, and the English 1995 Disability Discrimination Act and Special Educational Needs Discrimination Act are laws that can influence web design. The Web Accessibility Initiative Standard (WAIS) and the accessibility function of Microsoft Windows © also can assist in reducing exclusion due to disability. The concerns here are not only the technical issues to be overcome but implied values in the provision of adaptive technology. Some authors use “normality” as the benchmark when discussing disability. MacKay, especially says that “Disability can disappear positively only when it is accepted completely as part of normality” (MacKay, 2002, p.162). It is implied, however, that “normality” is axiomatic. This could disempower those who are placed, or who place themselves outside the parameters of normality. It has been recently argued that “The contribution of [England’s] New Labour’s inclusive educational policy has been to forward a process of assimilation based upon an uncritical view of ‘normality’, itself structured by the values of performativity that legitimate state regulations and control” (Armstrong, 2005, p. 149). Especially with respect to Internet use in education there is a bias towards the middle-class as the embodiment of normality. As in the earlier discussion of lifelong learning and the Internet, education is placed in a middle-class context where there is a strengthening of traditional social power bases. In this way, use of the Internet in an educational context can be seen as not just middle-class but also subject to quite marked cultural bias, especially when one considers the global perspective. 

GLOBAL INEQUALITY 

There is still evidence of digital exclusion in the USA, despite the dominating influence of American culture and language evident in the Internet. As well as this American bias, it can be seen that technologically developed countries such as the USA have a technological advantage. The language of the Internet is largely English-based and the USA has the highest absolute number and percentage of people online (Booz-Allen and Hamilton, 2000, p. 8).Yet digital exclusion exists here, too. “Internet non-users were more likely to be female, older, have lower income, have less education, be slightly disproportionately African-American, have no children, work full-time, send no emails and belong to fewer community organisations” (Rice and Katz, 2003, p. 607). Non-English speakers miss out on much of the information that is available on the Internet (Runnel and Vengerfeldt, 2002). Where there has been a localisation of the Internet, this has not always been in a free and liberalised way, for example in the recent launch of the Chinese version of the search engine Google © in a heavily Page 5 of 14 Albin Wallace censored form reflecting political and ethical power structures of China that could be seen as contrary to Western liberalism. Steyaert compares the tension between access to ICT and development support of the third world. He believes “[the] tension between policy on physical access or information literacy can be compared to development support for the third world” (Steyaert, 2002, p. 211). Dasgupta et al see no global inequality in terms of provision but make no comments on skills. They state that “we have investigated the determinants of the ‘digital divide’ between high and low-income countries. Surprisingly, we find there is no gap in Internet intensity” (Dasgupta, S. et al, 2000). Both these statements are so broad and value-laden that I am cautious about reading too much into either one. On a pragmatic level, Tyler argues that “the Internet potentially gives people in remote areas access to otherwise unobtainable resources and to easier communication with others in their community, thus reducing inequality” (Tyler, 2002, p.201). This may be so, but the existences of infrastructure and skill development are not prerequisites that can be so easily assumed. Some authors have, in my opinion quite rightly, made much of the westernised bias of the Internet, not just in terms of content, but in terms of language and ideas. In a somewhat idealised way, certain authors have made claims such as “the discourse of liberation theology aims to replace Eurocentric conceptions of both modernity and postmodernism with an indigenous, historical and cultural consciousness” (Appignanesi and Garnett, 1999, p. 163). But with the Internet, there is a sense, as discussed above, of the inevitability of its continued Americanisation. In this way the Internet culturally may not superficially differ from television, although the regionalisation of television stations is in contrast with the numinous, global presence of the Internet whose websites simultaneously exist everywhere and nowhere. Blake and Standish disagree with Dasgupta et al and argue in the context of the Internet that “in Africa and the rest of the developing world, patterns of inclusion and exclusion, empowerment and disempowerment have differed from those of Europe and North America” (Blake and Standish, 2000, p. 47). The arguments from both sides seem to be largely conjectural. With respect to the Internet on the global stage, there is also conflicting opinion as to racial inequality within countries. Early American research indicated racial inequalities in Internet use (Hoffman and Novak, 1998). They said that income explains computer ownership, education does not explain racial differences and income does not explain race differences. “White students are significantly more likely than African-American students to have used the web at home. Students with no home computer, regardless of race, have never used the web at home” (Hoffmann and Novak, 1998, p. 6). More recent British research shows this is not currently the case in Britain (Livingstone and Bober, 2005b). 

DIGITAL LITERACY 

The ability to use digital technologies as well as conventional literacies is of increasing importance and relevance with respect to educational and social issues. “An argument could be made that the national curriculum holds little relevance for the complexities of life in the twenty-first century regardless of which class you belong to” (Reay, 2001, p. 343). Increasingly digital literacy is becoming more important as are the attendant innovations in terms of content and the mode of delivery as well as the accompanying skill development. Just as with other skill areas such as conventional literacy and numeracy there are different levels of use Page 6 of 14 Albin Wallace by different individuals and groups based partially on their skill and capability. Steyaert notes that “not everybody has the same efficiency and effectiveness in operating technology” (Steyaert, 2002, p. 208). In the use of the Internet there is not just the technical or operational skill to be considered but critical analysis and problem-solving skills necessary to make sense out of the content of the Internet and the search engines that are the primary tools for interrogation. Steyaert also notes that “not all citizens have the same level of information literacy: the ability and attitude to search for relevant information, translate that to one’s own situation and implement the necessary actions” (Steyaert, 2002, p. 208). Those with greater levels of skill in problem solving and metacognition will be further advantaged in terms of information retrieval. However, the Internet is also about communication as well as information. Literacy has a role here too “Websites create social networks that are related to and quite different from those produced through the circulation of bodies and texts in schools” (Leander and McKim, 2003, p.237) and this is increasingly evident in the “Web 2” which is largely characterised by weblogs, personalised web pages and other mechanisms for collaboration and sharing. With respect to the Internet and education, those who achieve may be enabled to achieve higher. The disaffected and disenfranchised are at risk of achieving less. As Weiner says, “web-based technologies and the pressure to engage with them, can be seen as part of a wider set of social and cultural practices, goals and power relations” (Weiner, 2004, p. 11). This raises the issue of further potential digital literacies that I have proposed later in this essay. The pressures that are brought about in the way Weiner describes come from a view of the Internet as being an enricher not just of education but of social power. Engagement can certainly be seen at different levels. Livingstone and Bober in their recent far-reaching Britishbased research conclude that “for some the Internet is an increasingly rich, diverse, engaging and stimulating resource of growing importance in their lives; for others it remains at present a narrow, unengaging if occasionally useful resource of rather less significance” (Livingstone and Bober, 2004a, p.414.) The role of the school is seen as crucial in addressing issues of equality or equity of access raised in this way. This of course is true in other areas. The same point could be made (and probably has been) about the use of television in the latter half of the twentieth century. The issue as to where the Internet is accessed is also important. Livingstone and Bober go on to make the point that “while access at home and elsewhere is rapidly increasing, there remains one quarter of the youth population that has access at school but not at home. This figure has not reduced significantly in recent years, making provision through school an important opportunity for redressing inequalities” (Livingstone and Bober, 2004b, p. 9). I will return to this point later. Concepts of digital literacy always relate back to educational issues. To assist in addressing access issues in ULT academies I have presumptuously extended my definition of literacy to include a number of concepts. With respect to the Internet this could include the following: • Basic operating literacy at the hardware level (how to connect to broadband and log in) and the operating systems level (how to use Windows © or Mac OS ©) • Communications literacy (ability to read and write for both synchronous and asynchronous communication) • Cultural literacy (understanding that there is a different cultural context for America, British, Australian etc. websites). • Critical literacy (ability to evaluate information, challenge opinion, treat appropriately websites where information is apocryphal, spurious or just plain wrong). Page 7 of 14 Albin Wallace • Analytical and synthetic literacy (ability to take ideas and extrapolate or incorporate into one’s own thinking). • Research literacy (understand search engines, key words, metadata, complex search strings, narrowing of search criteria). • Moral or ethical literacy (make value judgements on websites; deal with accidentally accessed inappropriate material). The above takes for granted certain characteristics of Internet users that include the social and educational factors that may facilitate the above (Foley, 2000). 

DIGITAL INEQUALITY 

To return to the nature of inequality it is worth noting that which is helpful and that which is less helpful. The commonly used phrase “digital divide” is misleading. When speaking of digital inequality I would argue that it does not exist in this form. Rather than there being a digital divide, there is more accurately a continuum of equality of access (in all senses). The ‘digital divide’ is an artificial binary, implying there are two groups. The assumption is that having access is better than not, and that the internet is such an essential part of life that no-one should be excluded. This could also imply that everyone has a right to access. Ironically, it has been suggested that “This can lead to a situation where, for example, the state of homelessness remains unquestioned as long as the individual has guaranteed access to public Internet stations” (Langer, 2004, p. 4). In an extreme form this can lead to the assumption that the right to information gets higher priority than the right not to starve. Although, as discussed earlier, the long-term ramification of lack of access could be serious, it can clearly be seen that access to the Internet is not of the same immediate importance as access to food and shelter. The term ‘digital divide’ implies an obvious poverty that is misleading. Access is not just about provision of tangible equipment; it is about access to intellectual as well as technical skills and capabilities. As Hargittai says, “there is great discrepancy between what is physically available on the Web and what information is realistically accessible to others” (Hargittai, 2003, p. 17). This discrepancy is influenced by cultural, social and educational as well as economic factors. Helpfully, Hargittai says that the conversation should continue, as “a more comprehensive understanding of digital inequality is necessary if we are to avoid increasing inequalities among different segments of the population due to disparities in effective access to all that the Internet has to offer” (Hargittai, 2003, p. 20). I agree and believe that digital equality is about more than just providing equipment. It is also about the development of autonomy, skills, support and scope of use amongst people already online as well as those currently excluded from physical access. Use of the Internet does not automatically imply powerful educational use. Hargittai wryly observes that “The Internet prophets who foresaw that the web would empower citizens, increase social capital and enhance equality of opportunity probably did not have gambling or pornography sites in mind when they made these predictions” (Dimaggio and Hargittai, 2001, p. 11). Ironically, in this way increased Internet usage can financially and morally disadvantage as well as facilitate. Also, far from levelling the playing field, the Internet can create hierarchies where “electronic systems simultaneously reflect and transform existing topographies of class, gender and ethnicity, creating and recreating hierarchies of places mirrored in the partial architecture of computer networks” (Warf, 2001, p.16). The flow of power may also be differently enabled by the Internet where new power structures emerge. Heng argues that “while the Internet serves as an interesting example of unintended consequences of social action, it also supports the postmodernist position that Page 8 of 14 Albin Wallace power does not flow from a single power centre to all peripheral points; rather it flows from the peripheries in capillary forms” (Heng, 1998, p. 6). This may not necessarily be a democratising force. There are also factors outside the Internet that may affect exclusion. As with other forms of exclusion, exclusion from the Internet can be the result of financial impoverishment. Livingstone and Bober see that “the clear association between socio-economic status and indication of access and use suggests that the social and economic sources of exclusion require concerted attention if the benefits of the Internet are to be fairly spread” (Livingstone and Bober, 2005, p. 13). 

CAUSES OF EXCLUSION 

I will now turn to discussions on the causes of exclusion. Jahnukainen has seen that “living in a world of computers and Internet, one might be accused of being socially excluded for not having an email address.” (Jahnukainen, p.1) The symbolic nature of this observation is important, when an email address is considered as a status symbol, or emblem of belonging. From being the earlier exclusive domain of the professional, email is now an embedded part of many people’s social identity and the email address itself sends signals about who one is. Livingstone and Bober (2005b) have many interesting things to say about exclusion. Their recent research shows that in the UK most children and young people have access to the Internet but the oldest and the youngest have lowest levels of access. They show that non-daily users take up fewer online opportunities and that there are few gender differences but given access, boys are more likely to use Internet and to use it for longer. Boys also take more online risks. Daily users of the Internet use it more for social networking and middle-class children are more likely to use the Internet due to greater skill levels and more self-efficacy. Although access and use is different in different geographical areas there is no noticeable difference in ethnic use. Disability is associated with lower levels of access, but not use where ICT is available. Certain groups in the UK, who although once were users are now excluded from the Internet, are voluntary middle-class drop-outs (self-exclusion) and involuntary dropouts who are excluded due to lack of access. Livingstone and Bober see that age, gender and socio-economic status all influence quality of access and use. They also agree that the “digital divide” label is an unhelpful binary as there is a continuum from narrow, unskilled use to diverse, skilled use. Specifically with respect to children, parents with high Internet self-efficacy are more likely to have children who are good users. This is not to imply that the digitally excluded are a static group. There are changing conditions of digital exclusion although inequalities are likely to grow along with a variation in quality of use. Access issues are complex and it is worthy noting that the Internet is easier for the middle-class to use as there is more choice for location with greater incentive to use it confidentially and in a private rather than public place. Again Livingstone and Bober see that technical and intellectual skills and subtle complexities sit at the heart of the matter many of which lie outside of the control of the user. An example of this is where “a significant minority of young people lack access to the Internet altogether because their families are unable or unwilling to provide it “ (Livingstone, 2003, p. 155). But it is not simply a case of addressing this by the provision of public funds. Livingstone elsewhere argues that “providing domestic access to ICT may actually increase rather than decrease inequalities in class, gender and ethnicity precisely because of inequalities in the nature of ICT Page 9 of 14 Albin Wallace use” (Livingstone, 2003, p. 154). Those already empowered may be even further empowered by increased domestic access and the continuum of inequality of use could be further stretched. The previously discussed potential enslavement by online gambling, pornography etc. must also be borne in mind. This is not to denigrate the different motivations for using the Internet, although “some of the digital divide (sic) may be due to differences in interests and priorities among individuals in the same ethnic and socioeconomic group” (Rice and Katz, 2003, p. 600). Education and the pursuit of knowledge and competencies may be only of interest to those already motivated and for whom education is a high priority. Internet use may reflect existing practices and interests rather than automatically becoming a tool for transforming practice. 

CONSEQUENCES OF DIGITAL EXCLUSION 

Experience with the Internet, if negative can lead to a choice to effectively selfexclude from digital use. In this way, Internet use can be seen as being related to social inclusion. Dutton argues that the social implications are to reconfigure access by providing diversified models in public and private spaces (Dutton, 2004). There are certain suggested strategies for minimising exclusion that include the creation of conditions that improve equipment, education and resources, skills and support as well as changing the ‘not for me’ attitude (Doherty et al, 2003). “The provision of physical access by itself, however cheap it may be, is only the first step in overcoming digital exclusion. To take part in the Information Society it is necessary to have the skills and the confidence to go online and a reason and motivation to make the effort” (Ferlander and Timms, 2004, p.9). This reemphasises the important role that education plays in refining Internet use amongst children and at face value would seem to imply that the provision of Internet access in school is important. Although it is highly desirable to provide access from school, some authors argue that for real inclusion “access means access from home” (Tambini, 2000, p. 21). Of course, financial differences limit the quality of internet access for children, but inequality in cultural capital (i.e. internet literacy, or the ability to use Internet constructively) may also be an inhibiting factor. Inequality in social capital (social support in using the Internet) can be a factor too although this could be more subtle than is first apparent. For instance, in ULT academies there is often a high desire of ethnic minorities and some single-parent families to provide access to the Internet as part of an ambition to succeed and busy middle-class children often use the Internet at a superficial level (i.e. for entertainment). However it is widely agreed that amongst the inhibiting factors are finances, education, parental ICT skills, community support, parents’ attitudes and the nature of the informal learning environment at home. On the issue of physical access, Livingstone and Bovill see that “the more Internet access at home comes to be taken for granted by society, the more inadequate levels of access will serve to exclude some children and their families (Livingstone and Bovill, 2001, p. 22). As well as social and cultural capital, financial capital still is a major factor. As Tyler bluntly puts it, “if people must buy computers and pay for Internet access, then those who are initially advantaged are able to gain further advantage” (Tyler, 2002, p. 201). This is consistent with Livingstone and Bober’s view that “providing domestic access to ICT may increase rather than decrease inequalities” (Livingstone and Bober, 2003, p. 28) although it appears at odds with Page 10 of 14 Albin Wallace Tambini’s view. There is apparently still considerable scope for research in this matter. 

CONCLUSION AND REFLECTIONS 

Access to the Internet can be seen as a way of transferring power to the learner but it can also be used as means of achieving apparent productivity gains in education. Young sees further warning signals when he states that “the software and the communications companies behind the Internet…see the access model as generating a lucrative, new market for their products, and governments, for whom the access model appears as a way of cutting the costs of public education and of weakening what some see as the sectional power of professional or personal interests” (Young, 1998, p. 148). In terms of access and exclusion, some writer’s have seen the power lying firmly with the developers. Sassower states that “with the stroke of a pen someone like Microsoft’s Gates can turn a thriving technological component of a research programme into obsolescence” (Sassower, 1995, p. 120). To extend this argument it can be seen that in order to access the richness of the Internet, the user needs the software; multi-media enabled with sound, video and graphics. The software drives the content that is delivered on the Internet to a certain extent and many websites assume an increasing level of sophistication in the client system (browser, operating system and hardware specification). This is a practical consideration where the user must constantly ensure they have the appropriate systems to access the online material. This comes at a considerable recurrent financial cost. But it is not enough to provide the ICT and even just the technical skills. It is also important to consider how it is introduced in the educational context, including how to promote the use of technology that relates to a social context and peer group culture, including email and other collaborative online activities. Valentine says that “the fact that technologies, identities and peer-group relations transform and are transformed by each other might be regarded by children as offering a range of positive possibilities, rather than presenting a threat to their identities” (Valantine, 2002, p. 312). The issues discussed and illustrated in this paper have profound implications for the United Learning Trust academies programme. We must address the issue of physical access, perhaps looking at extended school hours, whilst acknowledging that patterns of usage may be different in public (school) and private (home) spaces. Our curriculum must include the tools for accessing information, including skills for identifying problems, finding resources, critically examining and analysing, synthesising ideas and making sound value judgements. There needs to be further development of the discussed literacies including metacognitive skills, technical skills and the evaluation of ideas and opinions. Again, on a practical level, advantage must be taken of converging technologies including television, telephony, cable and satellite communications and entertainment, the Internet. This may mean that physical access becomes less important than intellectual, social and academic skills and access. Many of the issues regarding children, the Internet and exclusion are centred on economic, educational, cultural and social factors. As well as providing physical access and tools as well as technical skills, we must be increasingly focussed on the higher level skills and literacies that will allow the children in our academies to use the Internet as a rich media resource, a tool with which to think and a gateway that they can use intelligently, discerningly and critically. By putting the child at the heart Page 11 of 14 Albin Wallace of the Internet experience rather than the equipment or the software, perhaps we can address in some the inequalities discussed in this essay. 

REFERENCE LIST 

Appignanesi, R. and Garnett, C., 1999. Introducing Postmodernism. Cambridge: Icon. Armstrong, D., 2005. Re-inventing ‘inclusion’: New Labour and the Cultural Politics of Special Education. In: Oxford Review of Education, 31 (1). Baudrillard, J., 1981. Simulcra and Simulation. Michigan: University of Michigan. Blake, N. and Standish, P., 2000. Enquiries at the Interface: Philosophical Problems of Online Education. Oxford: Blackwell. Booz-Allen and Hamilton, 2000. Achieving Universal Access. London: Booz-Allen and Hamilton. Butler, C., 2002. Postmodernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carver, S., Wyatt, S. and Burrows, R., 1999. Technology and Social Exclusion. London: TSE Symposium, 23rd February. Compaigne, B.M., 2001. The Digital Divide: Facing a Crisis or Creating a Myth? Boston: MIT Press. Dasgupta, S., Lall, S. and Wheeler, D., 2000. Policy Reform, Economic Growth and the Digital Divide: an Econometric Analysis. Washington, DC: Development Research Group, World Bank. Dimaggio, P. and Hargittai, E., 2001. From the ‘Digital Divide’ to ‘Digital Inequality’: Studying Internet Use as Penetration Increases. Princeton University: Sociology Department. Doherty, J., Keeling, K., Newholme, T., Fowler, D., McGoldrick, P. and McCauley, L., 2003. Stories, Myths and Metaphors: Explaining Self-Exclusion and Internet Use in the Home. Manchester: UMIST. Dutton, W., 2004. Social Transformation in the Information Society. Oxford Internet Institute: University of Oxford. Ferlander, S. and Timms, D., 2004. Different Solutions to Digital Exclusions: Local Nets versus Internet Cafés. Barcelona: E-Learning and Social Inclusion Conference, April 15-16. Foley, P., 2000. Whose Net? Characteristics of Internet Usage in U.K. Leicester: De Montford University. Haan, A., 2001. Social Exclusion: Towards a Holistic Understanding of Deprivation. University of Sussex: World Development Report. Hargittai, E., 2003. The digital divide and what to do about in. In: New Economy Handbook, Jones, D.C., (ed.). Sandiego: Academic Press. Page 12 of 14 Albin Wallace Heng, M.J.H., 1998. Postmodernist Study of the Internet. Amsterdam: Vrije University. Hoffmann, D.L., and Novak, T.P., 1998. Bridging the Racial Divide on the Internet. In: SCIENCE, 280. Horrocks, C., 1999. Baudrillard and the Millenium. Cambridge: Icon. Jahnukainen, M., 2001. Social Exclusion and dropping out of Education. In: Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties in Mainstream Schools, 1. Langer, J., 2004. About the Cultural Texture of the Digital Divide. University of Klagenfurt: Department of Sociology. Leander, K.M. and McKim, K.K., 2003. Tracing the everyday ‘sitings’ of adolescents on the Internet: a strategic adaptation of ethnography across online and offline spaces. In: Education, Communication and Information, 3(2). New York: Routledge. Livingstone, S., 2003. Children’s Use of the Internet: Reflections on the Emerging Research Agenda. In: New Media and Society 5(2). London. Livingstone, S. and Bober, M., 2003. UK Children Go Online: Listening to young people’s experience. London: Department of Media and Communications. Livingstone, S and Bober, M., 2004a. Taking up online opportunities? Children’s use of the Internet for education, communication and participation. In: E-Learning, 1(3). Livingstone, S and Bober, M., 2004b. UK Children Go Online: Surveying the experience of young people and their parents. London: Department of Media and Communications. Livingstone, S. and Bober, M., 2005a. UK Children Go Online: Final report of key project findings. London: Department of Media and Communications. Livingstone, S. and Bober, M., 2005b. Inequalities and the Digital Divide in Children and Young Persons’ Internet Use. London: Department of Media and Communications. Livingstone, S., and Bovill, M., 2001. Families, Schools and the Internet. 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Barcelona: IAMKR Conference. Sassower, R., 1998. Cultural Collisions: Post-Modern Technoscience. London: Routledge. Sellinger, M., 2004. Connected Schools. London: Premium Publishing. Steyaert, J., 2002. Inequality and the digital divide: myths and realities. In: Advocacy, Activism and the Internet, Hick, S. and McNutt, J. (eds). Chicago: Lyceum Press. Tambini, D., 2000. Universal Internet Access: A Realistic View. IPPR (1). London, Novembert. Terzi, L., 2005. Beyond the Dilemma of Difference. In: Journal of Philosophy of Education, 39 (3). Tyler, T.R., 2002. Is the Internet changing social life? It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same. In: Journal of Social Issues, 58(1). Usher, R. and Edwards, R., 1994. Postmodernism and Education. London: Routledge. Valentine, G., Holloway, S., Bingham, N., 2002. The Digital Generation? Children, ICT and the Everyday Nature of Exclusion. London: Blackwell. Walker, R. and Park, J., 1998. 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Digital literacy

Digital Literacy: Are the new technologies changing the way we read and write? 

Albin Wallace 

Abstract This paper discusses critically whether the new technologies are changing the ways in which we read and write, and examines some of the important issues raised by this possibility for teaching policy and practice. It makes reference to key theorists and draws upon primary, multi-media and other texts to substantiate the argument. As the Group ICT Director of the United Learning Trust, I have strategic responsibility for the educational use of ICT across all our schools and academies, and the implications of digital literacy are key to our decision-making on learning and teaching, especially in the context of reading and writing. The paper examines literacy broadly as a social practice and in some further detail as a digital phenomenon. Ethnography is briefly examined as a research methodology for examining this and the unique challenges it presents as a subject for examination, and a number of specific characteristics of digital literacy such as multimedia and the role of communities of practice are also examined. The pape rconcludes by discussing the ways in which technologies change the way we read and write along with implications for teaching policy and practice. The topic is a crucial one for me to investigate as not only must we drive ICT from the educational perspective, we must also be open to the opportunities afforded to us by ICT to change and improve the literacy experiences of our learners. From a reflexive perspective, I should declare my position in this essay. After studying linguistics as an undergraduate, I became a primary teacher with a major interest in literacy. Since 1984, I have been involved in the learning opportunities offered by ICT and the unique place it has in education. I will, however, limit my discussion to the effect of Internet-based ICT and its relationship to literacy. It is my conclusion that the advent of Internet Protocol-based technologies inevitably and profoundly impact on current and emerging literacy practices. For the purposes of this essay, the phrase “digital literacy” refers to online reading and writing practices and is not intended to be a synonym for “computer literacy”, which refers broadly to the development of computer skills in general rather than to reading and writing skills. 

Literacy as a Social Practice Literacy is a social practice. This is evidenced by a number of factors. Events in our world are recorded, recalled and interpreted using text and the literacy practices associated with text, often through informal as well as formal processes. Formal reading and writing of letters, memoranda, reports and essays are mixed in our lives with the informal scribbled notes, school book exercises, reading for pleasure and other paper-based forms of communication. Literacy has many manifestations at different stages of individual human and social development and in different contexts. Importantly, literacy practices serve a social purpose and these practices are demonstrated through social structures and the power relationships within them. This is true in the school, the workplace and in other social contexts. The writings associated with these purposes also provide a history of the world within which we live. Thus, literacy has a place in (and to an extent defines) history. The signs and symbols of literacy are the tools with which we communicate. These tools represent a technology which may be viewed as the traditional technology of literacy practice. As Marsh says, “Literacy is a symbolic system used for representing the world to ourselves. Literacy is part of our thinking. It is part of our technology of thought” (Marsh, 2005, p.3). Over the past 100 years, definitions of literacy have moved from being able to write one’s name, to the decoding of text through to personal expression Page 4 of 15 Albin Wallace through reading and writing, the spatial context for this learning being the school classroom. The traditional classroom is itself a complex communications technology. The components of teacher exposition, student responses, oration, silent reading, textbooks, written pieces, tests and recorded scores are all elements of this technology. The new technologies, however, are challenging the ways in which these traditional technologies construct and allow us to interpret literacy. The focus of this paper is to examine the symbiotic tension between literacy and the new technologies, especially those based on the Internet. 

Internet-Based Technologies Internet-based technologies are becoming increasingly the primary vehicle for educational, professional and social written communication, although importantly, Livingstone and Bober report that 16% of 9-19 year olds in the UK make low level or even no use of the Internet for communication (Livingstone and Bober, 2005, p 2). As well as the common applications associated with the World Wide Web and e-mail, applications such as instant messaging, web-logging, videoconferencing and application-sharing are increasing the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for both synchronous and asynchronous communication. It is significant that the old acronym of IT has been largely replaced by ICT, the additional letter representing Communication, which is rapidly becoming the ascendant technology. Although the future of ICT is difficult to predict, current technological developments indicate that devices will be increasingly small, portable, networked, wireless, ubiquitous, personal and hybrid, and will provide the connectivity so vital to this form of communication. Each of these attributes will have a profound effect on the way in which ICT will impact on educational, work and social practices. Rather than being confined to large, desk-bound workstations the technology will travel with the individual and will adapt to their work and learning practices, including their reading and writing. This new generation of machines is exemplified by portable equipment emerging currently in the marketplace. Especially with the recent development of the new generation Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and SmartPhones, portable computing devices have become a hybrid of technologies for voice, text, graphic and video images and are changing the way in which spoken, written and pictographic language is used and practiced (Ito, 2004). When computers were first used in education for the development of literacy skills in the 1970s, the hardware and software were based largely around mechanistic, keyboard driven devices, the learners’ relationship being directly with the machines. The very fact that an alphanumeric keyboard was the sole point of entry for the learner rooted the experience in a linear, written mode. The computer provided a stimulus, the learner provided a response and the computer generated feedback accordingly. Most literacy activities were built either deliberately, or through a misguided interpretation of “good learning” on a behaviourist model which usually bordered on operant conditioning in its use of this “feedback” to the learner. The student would interact using (always) keyboard-driven input. The machine processed the data and responded (always) back through a (always) monochrome, twodimensional screen. The relationship was thus between the user and the computer with the locus of control sitting firmly with the computer program. The paradox was that at this time, literacy acquisition was moving towards a more experiential approach (although the term “acquisition” itself implies a degree of performativity that does not sit entirely comfortably with the spirit of recent literacy practices). In time, during the Page 5 of 15 Albin Wallace 1980s, more constructivist models of educational IT applications evolved. Graphics, colour, differentiated sound and text combined in programs whereby students were able to create their own worlds, using the machine as a tool with which to think. Although this model was initially experimentally developed in the mathematics area, due mainly to the work of Seymour Papert (Papert. 1980), Andy Di Sessa (Di Sessa, 1980) and the Logo team from MIT, the model soon found a place in literacy, and programs such as learner-friendly word processing, desktop publishing and literacy software such as Wiggleworks© started to make an impact in literacy spaces. These were more open systems, pushing the locus of control back to the user and allowing learners to create or construct experiences using a computer. These “microworlds”, as Papert described them, (Papert, 1980, p. 7) were play and learning places that were characterised by a virtual space, constructivist tools, an often strong pedagogical process and the generation of an aesthetically and intellectually stimulating product, such as a piece of written work or a multimedia presentation. The development of more powerful, graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that incorporated multimedia input and output have combined with communications technology in recent time to create devices that are more in the spirit of portals than machines. They are windows through which the learner looks into multiple worlds, both real and virtual, in order to interact with other users in shifting, fuzzy, global networks. What is real and what is unreal is less certain. This goes beyond the traditional differentiation between literary fiction and non-fiction and challenges ontological preconceptions. Existing definitions of reality collapse in this context and are open to new interpretations. Ontology comes under scrutiny as the technology reflects and to a large extent defines the postmodern world. The Internet is seen by some writers as a number of virtual, parallel universes. It is within these universes that sometimes profound learning takes place. As Turkle says, “ When we step through the screen into virtual communities, we reconstruct our identities on the other side of the looking glass” (Turkle, 1995, p. 177). 

Learning on the Internet These online communities, although significantly about communication also contain information that is presented in a unique way that differs from previously printed information. The epistemology of the Internet is one where unmoderated, uncontrolled, inaccurate, apocryphal or deceptive information is sometimes disseminated along with a multitude of rich, diverse and interesting ideas. Livingstone and Bober highlight the need for children to develop key skills in evaluating content (Livingstone and Bober, 2005, p. 2). The search engine Google alone currently indexes over eight billion web pages of information (www.google.com). But this information is often not presented in a traditional, textual manner. The linear flow of text is broken by hyperlinks that form tangents into uncharted, often dangerous areas where content may be unmoderated and inappropriate for children, and the content itself is often transient. The words that are there today may be gone tomorrow. Publishing on the Internet may not necessarily be for posterity. Surfing the Internet means screening information and making quick judgements for the learner and teacher alike. The way in which we read can become more cynical, more reactive and more chaotic, as well as exciting, stimulating and critical. It is interesting to note, however that most children prefer using communications technology rather than information technology (Livingstone and Bober, 2005, p.2) and the provision of broadband technology into classrooms also brings with it a wealth of literacy opportunities through the use of e-mail, weblogging, chat, and the Page 6 of 15 Albin Wallace deconstruction of instant message texts on the World Wide Web. The classroom is part of a global, virtual, postmodern world where text, sound, still and video image are different modalities that may lead to new definitions of literacy; a digital literacy that not only enhances but to a certain extent replaces elements of the old. Lankshear and Knobel, although speaking of new literacies also call for “research that provides rich and theorized accounts of cultural practices that enable and encourage educators to experience them from the inside, as participants” (Lankshear and Knobel, 2004, p. 3). 

Digital Literacy as a Social and Cultural Practice Digital literacy is more than just the ability to read online. It means also understanding, creating and interpreting the ways in which the different modalities come together. E-mail is the most well-known example of this. Although commonly used for formal purposes, the use of e-mail also allows a greater degree of informality, sometimes more closely allied to speech than formal writing. Its instantaneous and democratic nature encourages informality. The immediacy and spontaneity of e-mail and instant messaging challenges the way in which we regard knowledge. Gee argues for “…..knowledge as activities and experience before knowledge as facts and information and situated as opposed to verbal understanding” (Gee, 2005, p. 4). Email as a digital literacy activity is a good starting point in defining an ICT-based social practice that centres on interactivity and situated learning. This interactivity is also true for other Internet Protocol (IP) based technologies. “In Internet conditions, writing no longer functions- as in the printed book- solely as a medium of knowledge storage, but becomes usable interactively as a synchronous medium of communication” (Sandbach, 2000, p. 72). In writing an interactive piece, whether on e-mail or through other IP-based technologies, language can become fluid and ambiguous with enhanced possibilities for enriched expression, the editable and spontaneous nature of the communications containing signs that themselves refer to other signs. The writing deconstructs with layers of meaning within meaning. The virtuality of the Internet is a feature of postmodernism, with potential benefits for learning. Lyotard, in a sense predicted this in The Postmodern Condition. He mused that “it is reasonable to suppose that the proliferation of information-processing machines is having, and will continue to have, as much of an effect on the circulation of learning as did advancements in human circulation and later, in the circulation of sounds and visual images” (Lyotard, 1979, p. 4). In a sense, online writing and reading can be viewed as post-structuralist, as well as being a feature of postmodernism, because of the elusiveness and deferral of online semantic definition. As the meanings of composed online words are thus elusive and deferred, so the very practice of observing these literacy activities is also elusive. Because of the immediacy, transience and this elusiveness of IP-based communication, observing and reflecting upon it as a researcher is potentially problematic. The tools of ethnography may assist with this. 

Ethnographic Research Ethnographic research “is concerned with how people make sense of their everyday world” (Cohen et al, 2003, p.25). There is immediate resonance in this definition with IP-based communications, which are integrally so much a part of the everyday world. Ethnography can be a valuable research tool for examining digital literacy issues (Hine, 2000). The virtual and transient nature of IP-based technologies, however, Page 7 of 15 Albin Wallace presents its own challenges for researchers. These technologies will impact on any research in a number of important ways. The issue of space is particularly problematic because if physical boundaries are largely irrelevant in a virtual world, then at the very least it should be acknowledged that this virtual space within which the ethnographic research takes place is transient, mutable and open to wide interpretations. Likewise the concepts of identity of observed participants are open to challenge given the potential anonymity and aliasing that can take place online, along with the associated use of identity play and avatars (Turkle, 1996, p.354). Wellington points out that “the key research strategy employed in ethnography is participant observation” (Wellington, 2000, p.45). But observing activity in a virtual world is not straightforward. The positions of the researchers themselves need careful consideration because as observers they could be taking on a role of lurkers (one who watches but does not participate) and their impact on the participants and the research itself could not only be unknown, but potentially damaging to the practice under observation. Researchers are beginning to investigate the effect of lurkers on online communities (Nonnecke and Preece, 1999). Especially with young people, online experiences are increasingly being seen as having as a significant role in their lives as non-virtual (or “real”) experiences (Holloway and Valentine, 2003). The online participants create their own meaning out of their experiences and the associated online social practice can affect offline social practices, generally by extending rather than replacing offline relationships completely. Sometimes offline places are reproduced online where virtual identities are reflections of cultural identities. In fact, offline and online experiences are increasingly constructed together. The researcher carries a significant moral and ethical responsibility when observing and participating in these complex and interwoven online and offline worlds where the ecology is sometimes fragile and finely balanced. The relevancy of ethnographic research on digital literacy is also extremely timesensitive. “A researcher….. who returns to an ethnographic study after only a few years may find profound differences in what is reported by subjects” (Kincheloe and Berry, 2004, p. 33). This has particular resonance in ICT in education where change is rapid, uneven, unpredictable and continuous. The multi-modal nature of digital literacy increases the difficulties associated with ethnographic observation, as the modalities observed may change or mutate over time. 

Multi-Modal Discourse Analysis Technology allows the blending together of different elements of communication that may include image, text, sound and video. This use of multimedia requires higher capabilities of multi-modal operation by both the practitioner and the observer/researcher. The convergence of the different, constituent technologies makes the acquisition of the necessary operational skills increasingly necessary. It also encourages creativity in expression of meaning and the opportunity to exercise multiple intelligences. Literacy should be examined from the perspective of actions that carry communicative meaning, rather than viewing literacy as merely a function of reading and writing linear text. In an analysis of these technological multi-modal interactions Page 8 of 15 Albin Wallace Norris notes that “…..we need to extricate ourselves from the current mythic transcription conventions that are insufficient to explain these image-gesture-utterance aggregates, which are so very common in our everyday lives” (Norris, 2002, p. 118). These “image-gesture-utterance” modalities also correspond to the “graphic-videosound” elements of multimedia, which again draws attention to the hybrid nature of emergent ICT. Although language as speech will continue to be the major mode of communication (albeit often enabled by technologies such as SmartPhones), language as writing will continue to be displaced by images in an online world. The images may be static, iconic, simulated, video-based or a combination of all of these. The images reflect and create a world of new images. As Kress notes, “The world told is a different world to the world shown” (Kress, 2003, p. 12). Moral and practical challenges also present themselves in observing IP-based communication that paradoxically is both intimate and private, and also public. This is especially true given the locus of power in this form of communication. There is a shift in power brought about as there is a move from the dominance of the book to the dominance of the screen – but this is, of course only in some people’s lives, and there is often a very strong mismatch between teachers and pupils (Lankshear and Bigum, 1999). The virtual world of communication is both everywhere and nowhere. Moderated and unmoderated communities of practice emerge in the classroom, the school, within and across social, linguistic, cultural and political boundaries. They too, are new dimensions within which digital literacy takes place. 

Communities of Practice and Affinity Spaces There is a difference between those who grew up in the context of digital literacy and those who come to digital learning from a background of socialisation in physical space. The difference is that “One…..affirms the world as the same but just more technologised: the other…..asserts that the world, because of the operation of these new technologies, is radically different” (Lankshear and Bigum, 1999, p. 458). The communities of practice for the latter group embrace the new technologies more fully. It is not a matter of doing the same things differently, but creating a whole new paradigm for communication and interaction. The central features of a community of practice are that participants share experience, the community is dynamic and evolving with the creation of new knowledge in the context of a common language and it has a common purpose. Lave and Wenger define communities of practice as “a set of relations among persons, activities and the world, over time and in relation with other tangential and overlapping communities of practice” (Lave and Wenger, 1991, p. 98). The communities may also be characterised by their narrative, informal, fluid and peer-driven nature. They are also appearing increasingly as online phenomena. Whether formally established, or spontaneously occurring, the literacy practices of the communities challenge the way in which literacy is viewed. “Distances between the uses of reading and writing in school settings and the kinds of literacy embedded in new social practices continues to grow” (Merchant, 2005, p. 56). Sooner or later these distances may close. Inevitably the practice of reading and writing in school settings Page 9 of 15 Albin Wallace must respond accordingly as the interactive elements of ICT are further adopted, adapted and appropriated by learners and schools. There is therefore a link between information and communications technology, literacy and interaction. The current curriculum however, has at its core basic skills associated with print-based text and a focus on skills of print literacy. The growth of online communities challenges this. “The social capital resident in communities of practice leads to behavioural changes, which in turn positively influence performance” (Lesser and Storck, 2001, pg. 831). Notwithstanding the blatant perfomativity inherent in the language, there is a clear assumption that the gathering of experience together with the resultant changes in activity will increase the learning outcome. Digital communities of practice are inevitable and literacy practitioners need to exploit, or at least be aware of the learning opportunities offered by these virtual spaces. However, communities of practice are just one way of looking at the social phenomenon of shared, online interaction, weblogs, e-mail, chatrooms and other IPbased, social, communication opportunities. The affinity spaces described by Gee examine online practice in the context of online games, and although dominated by a male-oriented lexicon and metaphors, also provides a useful framework for examining online practices that promote digital literacy (Gee, 2004). 

Digital Literacy Activities The different literacy activities facilitated by the new technologies bring about a closer relationship between language and pictures. The synchronous and asynchronous exchange of writing through e-mail, blogging and wiki changes the relationship between the author, the text and the reader as the new literacy activities take on a life of their own. Weblogs are relatively new devices, combining the intimacy of a written diary or “log” with the public exposure of the “web”. Weblogs can be a new vehicle for improving literacy through the traditional practices of story-telling and dialogue but in a virtual, digital context. The creation of an online, personal space linked to an online community with its resultant collaboration can be a powerful literacy tool across all disciplines and each curriculum area. Weblogging is already recognised as a valuable literacy practice. “Blogs can be used to promote reading and writing, to showcase the work of students or to exchange ideas among students” (Huffaker, 2004, pg. 5). Wikis (“What I Know Is”) are websites that allow a user to add content whilst permitting that content to be edited by another user. The most well-known example of this is http://www.en.wikipedia.org. Burry et al have undertaken research on wiki and found that “wiki is a much more effective way to communicate, develop ideas, create, collect and access shared documents than using electronic mail, mailing lists, web logs, instant messaging or chat” (Burry et al, 2004, pg. 9). Despite the boldness of such a claim, again, the communications element of ICT appears as the emerging and dominant focus. Recent commissioned research explores the importance of the communications element of ICT in considerable depth. “Children’s motivation for going online centres on new opportunities and identity play. While the conversational context is often mundane, being readily in touch with their friends is important to them” (Livingstone and Bober, 2003, p.2). It should be noted that conventional ICT (i.e. the personal Page 10 of 15 Albin Wallace computer) is not necessarily the prime vehicle for communication. Smart phones with their increasingly multimedia (i.e. sound, text, graphics and video) capabilities are in the ascendancy. Livingstone and Bober note that the “Mobile phone is fast overtaking the desktop computer as a prioritised means of communication” (Livingstone and Bober, 2004, pg. 33). These technologies are impacting collectively on the way literacy is acquired and practiced. 

Are Technologies Changing the Way We Read and Write? The issue of digital literacy is not just one of skills and capabilities. “The interaction of different modes and of different possibilities of expression in multimodal texts and multimedia production poses questions not just at the level of text, but also at the level of cognitive processing: new demands are made cognitively (and no doubt affectively) by the new technologies and by their textual forms” (Kress, 1998, p.76). The abstract concept of virtuality is implicit in digital literacy. The concrete and the virtual worlds blur, and new ways of thinking emerge. Reading a text in the conventional, printed format often implies defined start and finish points, whereas on the web, reading is often non-linear; beginnings and ends are arbitrary and thus relative to the author’s, reader’s and the text’s positions. Hypertext, synchronous communication and threaded discussions are examples of this. Cyberspace does not physically exist in and of itself. It cannot be touched but its contents can be read and interpreted. “Yet, the non-linear discourse- made up of texts, sounds and images- could create a ‘sense’ of place” (Mitra, 2003, p.5) and these new, online places will continue to develop as spaces where reading, writing and interaction occur. The ways in which on-line materials are read are changing reading practices. Merchant argues that new writing technologies should be embedded in the literacy curriculum in ways that recognise children’s experience, identities and the literacy practices that surround them. He suggests that out-of-school identities, social practices and their associated literacies need to be incorporated into classroom life in order to provide an education that is accessible and relevant (Merchant, 2004, p. 342). This has implications for both policy makers and practitioners. Doubtless the new technologies are changing the way we read and write. This is not to imply that the printed word (especially books) will disappear. This is neither inevitable nor desirable. Although online communication will enhance and challenge many forms of traditional literacy, the book as a printed object (especially fiction) will continue to be an accessible, cherished and valuable tool in literacy. Although public library usage is declining, the steady sale of fiction in bookstores is a healthy indicator of the state of this traditional literacy practice. There is some way to go, however, in considering the implications of digital literacy for teaching policy and practice. 

Implications for Teaching Policy and Practice Where will the developments in digital literacy lead? Certainly, the increasing prevalence of small, portable, personal, wireless, networked and ubiquitous technologies will contribute to greater levels of autonomy in the ways in which literacy is practiced, and continued collaboration between online participants. There will be a wider audience for learners’ creative literacy output with a knowledge flow Page 11 of 15 Albin Wallace that is bottom-up. Schools will create rather than broadcast knowledge in an environment that focuses on localised learning in a global context. The production of digital literacy examples of work will increase. Merchant notes that “Digital media and the new forms of communication provide rich possibilities for redefining interaction and the establishing participation and production that reach out beyond classroom spaces” (Merchant, 2004, p. 355). This will provide challenges for policymakers in the re-engineering of learning spaces. There are some warnings, too. The global nature of the Internet inevitably and axiomatically places the learner in a wider world of literacy practice and “traditional classrooms and traditional bureaucratic education systems cannot provide society with what it now needs. The agenda of the new learning is to meet the needs of the knowledge society in a globalised world” (Kalantzis and Cope, 2004, p. 3). At the practitioner level too, teachers will, as always, continue to use critically the opportunities digital literacy offers and continue to exercise their discernment. Indeed, “…..teachers have not been tempted to embrace technology in their class and lecture rooms unless offering enhancement to their ongoing pedagogical practices” (Weiner, 2004, p.2). Notwithstanding the inherently anarchic nature of IP-based technologies, the teacher will have a crucial role in the development of digital literacy. From a political perspective, experiences based on a digital literacy provide the opportunity for conservative and radical viewpoints to converge. “The progressives are right in that situated embodied experience is crucial. The traditionalists are right that learners cannot be left to their own devices, they need smart tools and, most importantly, they need good designers who guide and scaffold their learning” (Gee, 2005, p. 15). Innovative online practices that are linked to a supportive framework of teachers will help maximise the opportunities presented by digital literacy practices. Policy changes for teaching should include a refocusing of literacy practice as a social practice that needs to change and evolve over time. This should accommodate the emerging digital literacy and a recognition of literacy as a means rather than an end. Especially with the emergence of new technologies, literacy as a life-long learning experience should be embraced by policy makers. Assessment too, will be touched by, if not completely re-engineered by ICT. Those responsible for literacy testing will need an approach that values all modes of literacy and take into account the context of multiple literacies when assessing an individual’s skills. Literacy practitioners, especially teachers, need to recognise and teach different literacies beginning with the needs of the learner and an acknowledgement that all teachers are literacy teachers and all literacies, including digital ones need to be valued. Alongside this, there is a need for a recognition that situated and multiple literacies also need a variety of teaching approaches. Digital literacy and its associated activities bring this to the fore. Recent research into literacy and the Internet makes some very specific additional comments on the topic. Livingstone’s key findings, based on both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies include specific policy recommendations related to literacy and the Internet (Livingstone and Bober, 2005). There is an identified need for ICT literacy skills and capabilities development with an improvement in levels of internet literacy. Culturally, there needs to be a shift from just receiving to also Page 12 of 15 Albin Wallace creating content, and there is the need for the design of educational websites to encourage computer literacy. Independent of formalised and mandated changes to teaching policy and practice, new technologies will continue to exert their own influence on both formal and informal acquisition of literacy. The unmoderated, fluid and often anarchic development of IPbased technologies in general and the Internet in particular will continue to place multimedia literacy devices in the hands of practitioners, learners and their families. How they use them are yet to be fully seen. When text messaging (SMS) became available on mobile phones, it was intended to be used as an ancillary function to the voice medium. Yet, amongst young people, it rapidly became the primary function of the phone, even with the development of its own lexicon, syntax and spelling conventions. This was unforeseen, yet rapidly developed into an international literacy that sprung spontaneously into existence without moderation, imposed rules, or an adult-developed and controlled structure. It became, and still is primarily a literacy for young people, largely irrespective of their socio-economic background or conventional literacy levels. Multimedia literacy may yet develop in this way. Already it is clear that digital literacy extends beyond text, involves the construction of information from multiple sources and is a multi-dimensional, interactive skill. The challenge for educationalists is to embrace the spirit of online learning and implement strategies that are sympathetic and conducive to literacy practice. Other researchers have also recognised that “it is essential that we also recognise the need to develop different approaches to pedagogy” (Watts and Lloyd, 2004, p. 58). As an anarchic activity, digital literacy practices are inevitable, as can be seen in the use of SMS. An embraced, ecological response for education must be strategic, and approached with an open mind and open eyes. Literacy practices as formal, educational activities are traditionally driven by the education systems within which they take place. Yet communications technologies evolve in response to a broader context. Young people will experience new communications technology well in advance of its embedding in formal educational settings. We must not let the opportunities for digital literacy pass us by. Page 13 of 15 Albin Wallace 

Reference List Burry, J., Burrow, A., Amor, R. and Burry, M. (2004) Shared Design Space. Last retrieved April 26, 2004: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~trebor/papers/BURR05.pdf Cohen, N., Manion, L. and Morrison, K. (2003) Research Methods in Education, London: Routledge and Farmer. Di Sessa, A. (1980) Turtle Geometry, Boston: MIT Press. Gee, J.P. (2004) Game-Like Learning: An Example of Situated Learning and Implications for Opportunity to Learn. Last retrieved April 26, 2005: http://www.academiccolab.org/resources/documents/Game-Like%20Learning.rev.pdf Gee, J.P. (2005) Learning by design: good video games as learning machines, ELearning, 2.1., pp. 5-16 Hildreth, P., Kimble, C and Wright, P. (1998) Computer Mediated Communications and Communities of Practice, Proceedings of Ethicomp’98, pp. 275-286. Hine, C. (2000) Virtual Ethnography, London: Sage Publishing. Holloway, S. and Valentine, G. (2003) Cyberkids: Children in the Information Age, London: Routledge/ Falmer. Huffaker, D. (2004) The educated blogger: Using weblogs to promote literacy in the classroom, First Monday, 9.6. Last retrieved April 26, 2005: http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue9_6/huffaker Ito, M. (2004) Personal Portable Pedestrian : Lessons from Japanese Mobile Phone Use. Last retrieved July 2, 2005 : http://www.itofisher.com/mito/archives/ito.ppp.pdf Kalantzis, M. and Cope, B. (2004) Learning by Design, Melbourne: CGPublisher. Kimble, C., Hildreth, P. and Wright, P. (2001) Communities of Practice, London: Idea Group Publishing. Kincheloe, J. L. and Berry, K.S. (2004) Rigour and Complexity in Educational Research, New York: Open University Press. Kress, G. (1998) Visual and verbal modes of representation in electronically mediated communication: the potentials of new forms of text, Page to Screen Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era, pp. 53-79, London: Routledge Kress, G. (2003) Literacy in the New Media Age, London: Taylor and Francis. Lankshear, C. and Bigum, C. (1999) Literacies and New Technologies in School Settings, Curriculum Studies, 7.3, pp. 445- 465. Page 14 of 15 Albin Wallace Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Leander, K.M. and McKim, K.K. (2003) Tracing the Everyday ‘Sitings’ of Adolescents on the Internet: a strategic adaptation of ethnography across online and offline spaces, Education, Communication and Information, 3.2, pp. 211-240. Lesser, E.L. and Storck, J. (2001) Communities of practice and organizational performance, IBM Systems Journal, 40.4., pp. 831-841. Livingstone, S. and Bober, M. (2003) UK Children Go Online: Listening to young people’s experiences, London: ESRC. Livingstone, S. and Bober, M. (2004) UK Children Go Online: Surveying the experiences of young people and their parents, London: ESRC. Livingstone, S and Bober, M (2005) UK Children Go Online: Final report of key project findings, London: ESRC Lonsdale, M. and McCurry, D. (2004) Literacy in the New Millenium, Melbourne: ACER. Lyotard, J. (1979) The Postmodern Condition, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Marsh, J, (2005) Literacy as a social and gendered practice, Sheffield: Sheffield University. Merchant, G. (2005) Digikids: cool dudes and the new writing, E-Learning, 2.1, pp. 50-60. Merchant, G. (2004) Imagine All that Stuff Really Happening: narrative and identity in children’s on-screen writing, E-Learning, 1.3, pp. 341-356. Mitra, A. (2003) Cybernetic Space: Bringing the Virtual and Real Together, Journal of Interactive Advertising, 3.2, pp. 2-15. Nonnecke, B. and Preece, J. (1999) Shedding light on lurkers, Online Communities, Ethnographic Studies in Real and Virtual Environments: Inhabited Information Spaces and Connected Communities, 24-26 January, Edinburgh. Ed K. Bruckner, pp 123-128. Norris, S. (2002) The implications of visual research for discourse analysis: transcription beyond language, Visual Communication, 1.1, pp. 97-121. Papert, S. (1980) Mindstorms: Children, computers and powerful ideas, New York: Basic Page 15 of 15 Albin Wallace Sandbach, M. (2000) Media Philosophy and Media Education in the Age of the Internet, Enquiries at the Interface: Philosophical Problems of Online Education, Oxford: Blackwell. Turkle, S. (1995) Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, New York: Simon and Schuster. Turkle, S. (1996) Constructions and reconstructions of the self in virtual reality’ In T. Druckey (Ed.), Electronic Culture:technology and representation (pp354-365). New York: Aperture. Watts, M. and Lloyd, C. (2004) The use of innovative ICT in the active pursuit of literacy, Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 20, pp.50-58. Weiner, G. (2004) Information Technologies and Education Practices: Challenging Anti-democratic Values in the Classroom, Proceedings of Annual Conference, European Educational Research Association, pp. 1-19. Wellington, J. (2000) Educational Research: Contemporary Issues and Practical Approaches, London: Continuum.

Spectres in a virtual world?

Postmodernism, Poststructuralism and ICT in Education: Spectres in a Virtual World? 

Albin Wallace

Introduction In my previous role as Group ICT Director of the United Learning Trust, I had responsibility for the strategic development of the use of Information and Communications technology (ICT) in our Academies. These are schools that are established in conjunction with the Department for Education and Skills in areas of high social deprivation and perceived low educational standards. The use of ICT is a key element of the strategy to improve the educational opportunities for students in these areas and there is the constant need to reflect on the impact of ICT in an educational context. The exploration of postmodernism and poststructuralist thought is relevant to this context of ICT, and may assist our understanding of where the educational use of ICT is placed at this time, and how it may influence the future (and vice versa). In the context of the Trust’s work in the use of ICT, and especially Internet-based technologies in education, there is an immediate resonance as the unfamiliar names, challenging ideas and apparently subversive concepts of postmodernism connect in a compelling way to the development of ICT and its role in learning. The spectres in the virtual world to which the title alludes are the changing, uncertain and occasionally subversive elements of ICT that haunt education, making their presence felt but often not fully impacting on teaching and learning due in part to the sometimes necessary restrictions imposed in the learning environment, especially schools. An example of this is the uneven and sometimes nervous use of the Internet in the school curriculum. This essay explores some of the ways in which postmodernism and post-structuralism relate to the educational use of ICT. The spectre in the title also refers to one of the two “realities” that can be seen in the use of ICT in education. This spectre, characterised by the Internet, is a virtual simulacrum that can make the other “real” reality seem vague and elusive by comparison. In relation to both prevalent notions of postmodernism and poststructuralist thought, the essay will explore recent developments in ICT in education and will critically examine the principles that govern these developments and suggest improvements for policy and practice as appropriate. For the purposes of this essay, the discussion of ICT in education will be confined to those technologies (both Information and Communications) that are either directly Internet based or use Internet Protocol (IP) as the main vehicle for their delivery. These include, amongst others, the World Wide Web, content-based online systems, collaboration tools, email, online chat, messaging, videoconferencing and interactive learning systems as well as generic or student-targeted search engines such as Google or Yahooligans. As for the hardware, I include the devices that deliver the above technologies whether they are desktop or laptop computers, personal digital assistants, interactive television, Internet kiosks or smartphones. Incidentally, there is an increasing convergence towards hardware that is small, portable, wireless, ubiquitous and personal, all of which factors will help define the educational use of ICT as part of what characterises the postmodern context. Postmodernism There is a riddle which goes like this: What do you get if you cross the Godfather with a postmodernist? Someone who makes you an offer that you cannot really understand. Doctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 4 of 15 Albin Wallace Notwithstanding the flippancy of the riddle there is a genuine perception in much of the literature that I have read on postmodernism in education that the concepts involved are difficult to penetrate. Jerry Wellington states that postmodernism is “a widely used term, impossible to define, encompassing a broad range of amorphous ideas” (Wellington 2000 p199). Likewise Paul Standish declares “’Postmodern educational theory’ has become common in educational research, but it is a regret that to an extent this usage is vague and burdened with misleading assumptions” (Standish 2004, p 489). Reference to postmodernism in education causes problems- it has become a loosely used cliché, and it has no direct philosophical place in time as it has with art, architecture, fiction etc. I will therefore deliberately try and take a simple approach in order to try and avoid falling into the above traps. In postmodernism the uncertainty of things is reflected by the development of ICT, where technology moves in unexpected directions presenting new challenges and opportunities at every turn. It has been said that postmodernism can be seen as the “end of philosophical delusion” (Grassie 1997 p1). There are no monolithic realities and one needs different theories to explain different things. This can again be directly related to developments in ICT as explored later. In a sense postmodernism is a critique on metanarratives and the concept of universal truths where the foundations of our very thinking can be challenged and questioned. But what was the world like before postmodernism? Modernism can be equated with the scientific, Western view most typically represented by the Enlightenment of the 18th Century, where human reason was seen as overcoming irrationality. It was the beginning of an age of perceived certainty. But without the insights and theories evolving from modernism there would be no postmodernism. However, writers such as Paul Standish prefer the term “poststructuralist” to postmodern as it more directly refers to the thinking of specific writers such as Derrida, Foucault, Levinas and Lyotard (Standish 2004). He also differentiates between ‘postmodernity’ as a period of time that is defined by the prevalence of ICT, virtuality etc. and postmodernism (ideas and activities influenced by the poststructuralist thinkers). Predominantly, this essay will take poststructuralism as its reference point. 

Poststructuralism 

Of poststructuralism, it can be seen that all perceptions, concepts and claims to truth are constructed in language. All subject positions are transient and based on cultural discourses influenced by a number of factors including language, which is seen as a system of relationships and differences. One of the elements of poststructuralism is deconstruction, where language is open to development and text unravels thereby finding different threads of meaning which then reconnect. This unravelling can create new things. The dynamic and spontaneous use of interactive and synchronous IP systems is an extreme example of this in education where writing is not just a respository of information but becomes a tool of interaction and, with the addition of hypertextual elements, creates meaning within its own meaning. Often unmoderated, and this itself presents challenges explored later, the use of messaging, Internet chatrooms and interactive applications are examples of Doctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 5 of 15 Albin Wallace communication where the author, the text itself and the reader contribute new layers of meaning spontaneously, often anonymously and over distances. Deconstruction, however can be used at deeper levels than this. To critically analyse a previously accepted educational, or indeed any social scientific theory, one ‘deconstructs’ the basis upon which it is founded by showing that this foundation is actually the end product of some other cause. Sometimes the connections are shown to be tenuous. For instance, many applications of ICT in a Managed Learning Environment (MLE) may at first view seem to be progressive, radical and pedagogically innovative. However, they are often are based on strict, almost positivist models of learning as the original use of MLEs was in the military to train personnel how to quickly master the skills of complex and dangerous machinery in a virtual way. The addition of colour, multimedia and attractive packaging does not necessarily lend itself to, for instance, use in a literacy class where the models of learning upon which the teaching is assumed to be based are actually different, if not diametrically opposed. But, a great deal of ICT usage in education is in the eye of the beholder. All experience of reality is subject to interpretation and this interpretation is in turn influenced by the cultural and personal values of the interpreter. These interpretations and their associated issue can be seen as being related to the classical discipline of hermeneutics, which, although having its roots in a pre-digital past, has become a paradigm for understanding postmodernism and which also has relevancy to the use of ICT in education. The hermeneutic approach examines the intentional construction of the author, the textual meanings that exist independently of the author and the reader’s presuppositions that will influence the way in which the text will be understood. This can be extrapolated to the area of ICT in education where even greater degrees of hermeneutic complexity can be added, as the organic dialogue of Internet-based communications crosses language, cultural, age, demographic and sociological boundaries. Ricoeur explains hermeneutics as a circular problem with prejudgement directing exploration, which in turn determines understanding before informing prejudgement yet again (Ricoeur 1986). The instantaneous nature and spontaneity of ICT-based written communication can be seen is this context, especially in the synchronous world of messaging and virtual chat where the written word is exchanged more rapidly than in any other form of textual interchange. Due to the anarchic and unmoderated nature of IP-based communications, there are always potential surprises to be discovered in the method of communication and the content itself. Dillon says, “For poststructuralist thinkers, not only is there more to life than meets the eye, that ‘more’ is never something that will ultimately make its appearance in the domain of representation” (Dillon 2000, p15). Again, examples of this type of paradox can be apparent in the use of ICT in education where the distinction between what is real and what is simulated often becomes difficult to maintain, especially in the virtual world of the Internet. Developments in ICT in Education There are at least two ways in which “Developments in ICT in Education” can be interpreted. There are the developments in ICT (in education) per se, and there are the developments in the application of ICT within the educational context. An interesting Doctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 6 of 15 Albin Wallace observation is the fact that education (teaching and learning) can drive the usage of ICT, but also that ICT has the power to drive education. It is easy to resist the latter, arguing that ICT is “just a tool” but to a certain extent this does not acknowledge how ICT can change education itself when it is seen as a potentially subversive phenomenon that challenges the way in which education is “delivered” in the classroom. One of the difficulties of describing future developments in ICT in education lies in the fact that the hardware and software upon which the developments will be based have not yet been invented and the uses to which the technology will be put have not been developed. Based on current technological trends however, we can anticipate that the future will focus on Internet-based technologies and ubiquitous, small, personal, wireless devices for communication, content creation, interpretation and absorption. These characteristics will present new challenges and opportunities for teaching and learning. Le Cornu et al describe how “ICT opened up new places and spaces for learning to teach, and thus, new opportunities for serious pedagogical engagement” (Le Cornu, Mayer and White 2001, p1). These opportunities will constantly be re-invented in a perpetually contemporary technological world and will lead to the development of principles that will help describe approaches and attitudes. Aviram and Tami (2001) describe some developing principles for ICT in education and discuss the associated approaches and attitudes. The approaches have been described as falling into a number of categories. The didactic approach states that ICT will bring about inevitable change, the organisational approach states that ICT will bring about organisational change whereas the systemic approach describes how nothing will change until systems change. In postmodern terms however, the cultural approach shows how ICT will have a powerful impact on our lives and is generally part of the fabric of cultural change. A more extreme approach is the ideological one where the basic prevailing values are challenged. Associated with these approaches are a number of attitudes with which one may approach developments of ICT in education. Attitudes may be agnostic with no clear opinion, conservative where one believes that they may survive ICT with minimal change or moderate where one is prepared to change for the sake of integration. More far-reaching poststructuralist attitudes can be radical, implying a change in relationships and a change of one’s reliance on space and time or even extreme radical, where developments in ICT can be seen as potentially destroying prevailing educational systems from within. Taking the above approaches and attitudes there can be seen three emerging paradigms of ICT and education; the technocratic where there is no discussion on educational change, reformist where ICT is regarded as a tool in education or holistic where ICT is seen as an agent of cultural change. Given the directions of technological change, the rapidity at which young people become immersed in the technology and the slowness of teaching structures and learning systems to respond I believe that we may be heading towards a future of immense cultural change where learners become increasingly empowered. Hernwell believes that “children in this postmodern age are the active users of media of the second media age, where they at the same time can be receivers, readers and produces of messages or information” (Hernwell 1999, p1) Doctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 7 of 15 Albin Wallace Cultural and Epistemological Relativism Given these potentially radical cultural changes, our perceptions of knowledge may be opening to radical re-interpretation. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge and “in modern, Western societies schooling is invariably organised as an epistemological practice” (Osberg and Biesta 2003, p83). However, future developments of ICT in education indicate that everything may be open to interpretation, including our perceptions of knowledge which may be relative to our various positions. Farrago describes a type of epistemological relativism (Farrago 2002) where there is no knowledge, just beliefs. Some writers also believe that “more particularly there is held to be a correspondence between the way that people understand the process of knowing and the way they justify their beliefs” (Knight and Collins 2001, p 2). Knight and Collins also state that “relativists take the very act of holding a belief as justification for that belief” (Knight and Collibns 2001, p 3). This again has relevance to the use of IP-based technologies in education where the unmoderated nature of the World Wide Web presents some ethical and moral and epistemological challenges in education. The postmodern context particularly presents a challenge when it comes to moral or ethical applications of ICT in education, where educators have a duty of care to their students that can often be only made explicit by the imposition of narrowly-defined and non-negotiable safeguards. An example of this is the use of filtering, caching, monitoring and censoring tools for the use of the Internet. Although this can be seen as manipulating children’s use of the Internet into a set framework, there is clearly a need to ensure children’s safety and to put in place appropriate barriers. This is based on an implicit moral understanding in schools. Knight and Collins make a similar case, stating that “relativism about morals is dangerous” (Knight and Collins 2001, p5). A similar but separate argument can be made regarding the moderation of Internet-based content. Knight and Collins also state that “relativism about empirical or scientific knowledge too, is false” (Knight and Collins 2001, p7). This too needs to be considered, where children as learners need some degree of certainty in their acquisition of knowledge. To present some education as immutable and implicitly true may be necessary, especially with younger children, to provide the scaffolding for their education. This is partially the reason why the use of intranets is becoming more prevalent in schools. They provide a more controlled, focussed and structured version of the Internet. In this way, the virtual world can be contained to a limited extent. The spectres of these virtual worlds however, can also be ourselves. Mannheim argues that the world created itself only in reference to the subject. If one wishes to see how this reference functions, one needs to look at oneself as just another subject of this reference (Mannheim 1985). This is at the core of Mannheim’s relativism; a subject who cannot avoid individualisation- but at the same time cannot be alone. The use of the Internet in education is rich in examples of this seeming paradox; a virtual environment that exists nowhere but is omnipresent, in which an individual can exist as a unique avatar (or number of avatars) in communities that are constantly crosspollinating, cross-referencing, spontaneously coming into existence, flourishing, dying and creating new hybrids. Not only does the existence of an objective reality become contentious but one’s identity within this world is also fluid. Personal identity itself becomes a topic for debate. Doctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 8 of 15 Albin Wallace 

Personal Identity and Narrative 

With the use of IP-based technologies in education, the distinction between the individual and the technology, and between nature and technology is blurring. This is taking place partially because of the use of chat rooms, multiple avatars and the use by children of email, simulation and role playing. The ICT and the learner can share and exchange identities, take on different facets of postmodern multiple identities or even create new, virtual identities. In many role-playing educational software applications children are actively encouraged to play with virtual identities as they do in other forms of their play. Turkle explored the concept of virtual identity more than 20 years ago (Turkle, 1984), before the advent of the World Wide Web, chat rooms etc. This is even more relevant today. Despite ethical and safety issues about the use of IP-based technologies for education it may be also seen that “learners utilise best by doing, and their thinking can be seen as related to their engagement in action in the context of ICT usage” (Lahti and Marjomaa 2002, p 1). ICT is an integral part of the educational experience and children’s exposure to ICT outside the school should be built upon and exploited in a positive way. Language and Power One of the features of postmodernism is the way in which language, text and symbols are seen. Postmodernists such as Baudrillard (1994) describe how the world is mediated by signs and symbols. ICT is predominantly about the manipulation of these elements in a digital way. Both asynchronous and synchronous communication in ICT uses the symbols of communication (both alpha-numeric and iconic) to create layers of meaning that shift and change across the networks. The capability of IP-based technology to transmit written, spoken, pictographic and video-based language adds potential degrees of complexity to the communicated message and to the message of communication. The locus of power too, constantly shifts according to who creates, transmits, receives, interprets, distributes or edits the message. IP-based technologies confront the relationship between language and power. This is important in a world where some writers believe that “…..the language of education is also under threat of becoming ‘irrelevant’ in a highly technocratic world” (Webster 2002, p1). The shifting locus of control between the “teacher” and “learner”, the “lecturer” and “student” within the context of the Internet is challenging the traditional relationships. The terms themselves can be seen as being under siege. Le Cornu et al claim that “Dichotomous terminology reinforces bounded and unhelpful distinctions which seem to create barriers to professional learning for all participants in the practicum and perpetuates modernist views of learning” ” (Le Cornu, Mayer and White 2001, p3). Current debates on education should challenge any concept of “teaching” that implies a one-way, bounded relationship and an implicit metanarrative about education. Postmodern concepts blur the traditional boundaries of roles, space and time. Concepts such as teacher/student, school/not-school and school-time/home-time are also increasingly challenged by IP-based technologies and the opportunities they present for shifting the locus of control, the place and the time of learning. ICT Doctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 9 of 15 Albin Wallace especially allows all participants in education to move in and out of roles- students teaching teachers, teachers teaching teachers, teachers teaching students, students teaching students and most important, independent learning where the learners teach themselves. All participants in the world of education are ultimately learners. Roles change constantly creating new, hybridised educational relationships. Increasingly, we see all participants learning by doing. ICT creates new learning spaces within which this can happen. Within these learning spaces, there can be a shift of social power and therefore a change in the value of one participant’s view interpretation over another. The criteria for evaluating the value of one interpretation over another is a reflection of social power. Indeed, knowledge can be defined by power and in some respects regarded as synonymous. This is also explored by Foucault where the complexity, ambiguity and paradoxical nature of knowledge and power is acknowledged (Foucault 1980). Postmodernism attempts to expose power-knowledge. The inevitability of powerknowledge structures successively arising demonstrates the constant state of change which is the context within which postmodernist thinking takes place. The evolving transient and mutable state of the Internet (and therefore also the Internet in an educational context) reflects this. Indeed, the fluid and non-linear nature of hypertext, itself an integral part of the Internet, disrupts the balance of power, with the narrative moving within and without the text, ultimately uncontrolled by the original authors(s). Postmodernism is partially characterised by a rejection of the positivist theory of language and a recognition that all forms of communication are internally selfreferential. Previously accepted metaphoric language or communication can be reversed. Whereas once, the use of the Internet adopted metaphors from the nondigital and natural world (e.g. “the web”, “surfing”), increasingly the world of the Internet has not only entered common vocabulary (e.g. “hyperlink”, “blog”) but has itself become a metaphor for objects and activities in everyday life, including in teaching and learning. Inevitably the language of the Internet will continue to enrich and distort vocabulary and semantics, with the practice of ICT in education formulating and reformulating theory. Atkinson claims that “postmodern thinking can continue the work of challenging the power relationship between theory and practice” (Atkinson 2000, p 90) Critique of Governing Principles of ICT Development Aviram and Comay state that “It is a balanced and dialectical approach that on the one hand conceives ICT as the epitome of the new, inevitable and irreversible culture involving new cognitive, emotional, organisational, social and economic structures (rather than a set of neutral tools). On the other hand, it conceives ICT as being double-edged when judged in light of basic, desired social and educational values (rather than on the automatic manifestation of ‘progress’ or ‘advancement’” (Aviram and Comay 2000, p1). This approach implies the necessity for a cultural rather than a technological understanding of ICT. It also encourages a critical view of the above in a postmodern society. This presents us with the challenge of channelling of ICT culture into socially responsible and empowering ways, especially in schools and homes. Increasingly, postmodern society will need to rethink its educational objectives in the light of this. Doctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 10 of 15 Albin Wallace The integration of ICT, education and learning will need to be achieved within a morally and ethically sound framework. Recent research by Atkinson claims that the gap between what parents believe their children are doing on the Internet and what the children are actually doing is wide. For example, in a survey (n=1257), 5% of parents believed that their children had given out information on the Internet that they should not have, whereas 46% of children claimed that such an exchange of information had taken place (Atkinson 2004, p14). Although schools and systems continue to develop and implement ICT ‘solutions’ there is a paucity of rational discourse on the subject. This has meant that the same trends have repeated themselves over time within education systems, trends which have focused around performativity and the materialistic acquisition of ICT. This is a trend which is explored, amongst others in a collection of papers edited by Blake and Standish (Blake and Standish 2000). It seems that in some ways, education systems have not learnt from history. Educational ICT ‘solutions’ have been either evangelical and naïve or cynical and expedient. The ICT industry has responded accordingly with faster, slicker, more futuristic claims, often at the expense of the relationship between the learner and the ICT. Recent other research into the investigation of 9-19 year olds’ use of the Internet has compared girls and boys of different ages, demographic and socio-economic background to examine how the Internet may be transforming children’s cultures (Livingstone and Baber 2004). The research combined qualitative interviews and observations with a national survey (n=1511) and concluded that although the educational use of the Internet is the target for investment by schools and schooling systems, children actually see it primarily as a communication medium; one that is mainly about the creation, exchange and interpretation of signs and symbols. However, there is an emerging divide signalling inequalities in the quality of Internet use. If there is a need for policy intervention, this must qualify as one the highest priorities. Increasingly, it is difficult to moderate the quality of Internet information accessed and indeed questionable as to whether we should attempt to do so. Notwithstanding this however, we have a responsibility to children, especially young ones, to expose them to what is true, valid, fair, reliable or morally responsible. The difficulty lies with the limited way in which we can attempt to moderate what is essentially an unmoderated world i.e. the world of the Internet. Blocking and filtering of undesirable sites (e.g. pornography/gambling/hate sites) is difficult enough without having to address the problems of validating views that may, for example present a creationist rather than a Darwinian view of dinosaurs. Livingstone and Bober also believe that “attention is also needed to the distinction between information-based and communication-based uses of the Internet” (Livingstone and Bober 2004, p 413). But can we have it both ways? Is not the communication-based application more powerful than the information-based one because of its interactivity and the shifting locus of power? Is this not why children use it? ICT can be seen as part of what we mean by postmodernity and the application of postmodern analysis to developments in ICT in education is well-suited due to its pragmatic nature. Indeed ICT can be seen not just as connected to postmodernism but as an integral part of what defines postmodernity. As the “truth” of an interpretation is understood not through direct correspondence to reality but through the practical consequences of its applications, so ICT in education (and specifically those InternetDoctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 11 of 15 Albin Wallace based applications) lends itself well to this approach. Many Internet-based educational applications are solutions waiting for problems to solve, so the user will bring their own unique requirement to the Internet, possibly one not previously considered. Historically, there are many examples of this, including chat-rooms, web-based email, videoconferencing, web-logging and a host of Internet Protocol (IP)- based applications waiting to be invented or uncovered. To merely narrowly focus available and emerging technology purely on an existing educational paradigm is also to miss the point. There is no ultimate educational application of the Internet but the potential to increasingly harness a wealth of learning opportunities. Policy Improvement Some issues regarding policy improvement have been discussed above, but there are several other issues that need to be considered, not least of which is the fusing of the ICT with concept of knowledge as a commodity. Standish states that “the multifaceted and much vaunted idea of the ‘knowledge economy’ has dovetailed with the commodification of knowledge” (Standish 2005, p1). As a primary instrument of knowledge exchange, the Internet itself is a vehicle which increasingly and inevitability classifies and purveys knowledge as a global commodity. Commodification and performativity both present complexities in the area of ICT in education. Smith complains that “education now permits little discussion of ends” (Smith 2002, p6). He implies that educational values, ends and purposes are now redundant and that ultimately it is the market that will triumph. Knowledge as a commodity in this market is something that can be “measured”, weighed and given a value. This may be borne out by the heavy reliance by the current administrations’ emphasis on league tables, pseudo-scientific data and the reliance thereon, especially in the context of school inspections. A radical postructuralist viewpoint might say that there is a need to dismantle the dominating and monolithic structures of educational systems that are driven by political and populist imperatives. ICT could certainly have a role in this. A change in power structures could be facilitated by further application of Virtual Learning Environments for learning, and devolved Management Information Systems for schools to manage their own data on student learning. As previously discussed, there is an imperative for a change in the relationship between the “teacher” and the “learner”, one which will empower all parties. As ICT continues to pervade education so there may be a continuing break-down of the artificial barriers between theory and practice. Elements of action research are already assisting with this in areas of both primary and secondary education. The teacher as a learner, the learner as a researcher and the emergence of grounded theory in the classroom are evident in the use of ICT where new, digital innovations for learning and teaching are emerging from the learning and teaching interface itself. Curriculum developers may also come to acknowledge that knowledge is not immutably fixed within the curriculum but is subject to organic change, especially on the World Wide Web. Along with this may come the acceptance that scientific objectivity along with concepts of validity and reliability are always open to (careful) challenge. Doctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 12 of 15 Albin Wallace Devolution of responsibility to schools with assistive ICT may help break down the artificial and bureaucratic structures of authority such as those set up for inspection, teacher training, curriculum development and examinations and the replacement of those with supportive, enabling agencies that provide guidance and support but recognise that the philosophical foundations upon which they are based will be forever shifting. Practice Improvement With the increasing role of ICT in education, we need to rethink assumptions made about emotion and reason and the “playful” nature of IP-based technologies. ICT has an important role to play in expression and in emotional experience in everyday life. Concepts of truth and knowledge are not free of emotional influence and emotional experience can be enhanced through the use of ICT. Emergent examples of this are the use of computer conferencing, interactive video and synchronous/asynchronous interaction using the IP-based technologies described earlier. Real-time streaming video of world and local events also provide added dimensions of emotion and evocation as learners can respond to events as they unfold. Zembylas and Vrasida describe how “the use of ICT in education may produce a blurred but intense emotional experience” (Zembylas and Vrasida 2004, p 122). They go on to propose that the role of ICT is not a matter of more or newer technology but the development of a pedagogical rationale that is rationally and emotionally influenced by the relationship between reason and emotion in learning and teaching. As an improvement to practice, it may be time to further open the discourse on methods of assessment and evaluation of student learning. The use of ICT in education challenges the concept of objective assessment, and encourages us to consider descriptive, informative and challenging ways of thinking about the measurement of learning and academic progress. I believe that in a poststructuralist context, one of the most significant practice changes that ICT in education can bring about is the acknowledgement that all content and views are open to interpretation, perhaps even more so given the organic content of the Internet. However, the issues regarding Internet safety and children reminds us that morality and ethics are not discrete subjects to be taught in isolation but should pervade and be integral to all learning, especially in the use of the Internet at home and in school. Given the fluid relationship and constantly shifting locus of control when using ICT, the importance of the teacher’s role as leading the learner towards the subject is even greater. However, bearing in mind that texts are open to multiple interpretations we are reminded that there is a need to develop teachers’ skills so that there is a greater sensitivity to the atmosphere of the learning environment and the multiple roles that are possible within learning spaces. The “teacher’s role might be seen as that of ‘a conductor of intensity’” (Standish 2004, p497), the electrical metaphor using the subject matter , the teacher and the learner as organic components of the system. Doctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 13 of 15 Albin Wallace Conclusion In conclusion, we can also see how the application of ICT in education can be made in the spirit of a Nietzschian emphasis on the intensity of experience, where participants can lose themselves in the flow of an activity, especially using the Internet. This is a world where there are potentially no time constraints, no space constraints and a changing dependency on others. The application of IP-based technologies can be in a creative, independent and even subversive way compared with the structured and controlled environment of the modern classroom where there may be a tacit conformity to accepted structures. McKie describes how “in the ‘alternative’postmodern reading of technological advance the new media break down ‘unilinear structures’ and ‘centralized perspectives’. The foundation of established knowledge is undermined” (McKie 2000, p 127). Given the reliance that education systems have on structure, it seems unlikely that this postmodern concept will be embraced by the authorities. As such, it may be that the teachers, researchers and the learners themselves will become the agents of sustained ecological change both of and by the use of ICT in education. Doctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 14 of 15 Albin Wallace Reference List Atkinson, E. (2000) The promise of uncertainty: education, postmodernism and the politics of possibilities, International Studies in Sociology of Education, 10.1, pp. 90- 95. Atkinson, S. (2004) Children’s Internet and Mobile Use: Identifying the Trend, London: Neil Stewart Associates Aviram, A. and Comay, O. (2002) From ‘computers in the classroom’ to the critical radical adaptation of educational systems to the new emerging ICT culture, Proceedings of the EDEN Fourth Open Classroom Conference, November 19-21, pp. 1-5. Aviram, A. and Tami, D. (2001) The Impact of ICT on Education: The Three Proposed Paradigms, the Lacking Discourse, Brussels: European Commission for Education and Culture,. Baudrillard, J. (1994) Simulcra and Simulation, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press. Cohen, L., Mannion, L. and Morrison, K. (2000) Research Methods in Education, New York: Routledge Falmer Dillon, M. (2000) Poststructuralism, complexity and poetics,Theory, Culture and Society, 17.5, pp. 14-17. Farago, P. (2002) Relativism in the sociology of power, Periodica Polytechnica Ser Soc Man Sci, 10.1. Foucault, M. (1984) The Foucault Reader, ed by Rabinow, P., New York: Pantheon Grassie, W. (1997) Postmodernism: what one needs to know, Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, March 1997, pp. 1-6. Harnwell, P. (1999) Children, cyborgs and cyberspace- computer communication in the world of children- Discussion paper, Sites of Learning Conference CSSC, September 1999. Knight, S. and Collins, C. (2001) Cultivating reason giving: the primary purpose of education?- Discussion paper, ATEA Conference- Teacher Education: Change of Heart, Mind and Action, 24-26 September 2001, pp. 2-6. Le Cornu, R., Mayer, D., and White, B., (2001) Pedagogies for the Practicum- Discussion paper, ATEA Conference- Teacher Education: Change of Heart, Mind and Action 24-26 September 2001, pp. 1-5. Lahtin, J. and Marjomaa, A. (2002) Scaffolding in innovation, implementation and evaluation of ICT supported education- Discussion paper, The World Congress Doctor of Education Assignment Spring 2005 Page 15 of 15 Albin Wallace Networked Learning in a Global Environment: Challenges and Solutions for Virtual Education, May 1-4 2002, pp. Livingstone, S. and Bober, M. (2004) Taking up online opportunities? Children’s uses of the Internet for education, communication and participation, E-Learning, 1.3, pp. 410-421. Mannheim, K. (1985) Ideology and Utopia, San Diego: Harcourt, Brace and Jovanovich McKie, J. (2000) Conjuring notions of place, Enquiries at the Interface:Philosophical Problems of Online Education, (Blake N and Standish P), Great Britain: Blackwell Publishers Osberg, D. and Biesta, G. (2003) Complexity, representation and the epistemology of schooling, Proceedings of the 2003 Complexity Science and Educational Research Conference, October 16-18 2003, pp. 79-92. Ricoeur, P. (1986) From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, Evanston: Northwestern University Press Smith, R. (2002) ‘Sustainable learning’ The Trumpeter, Vol 18 No 1 Standish, P. (2004) Europe, continental philosophy and the philosophy of education in comparative education, Comparative Education, 40.4, pp. 485-493. Standish, P. (2005) The Ownership of Learning, Sheffield: Sheffield University Turkle, S. (1984) The Second Self: Computers and the Modern Spirit, New York: Simon and Schuster Webster, S. (2002) Is Education Becoming Irrelevant in our Research? Melbourne: Monash University Wellington, J. (2000) Educational Research: Contemporary Issues and Practical Approaches, London: Continuum Zembylas, M. and Vrasidas, C. (2004) Emotion, reason and Information and Communications Technology in Education: some issues in a post-emotional society E-Learning, 1.1, pp. 119-128.

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Professor Stephen Heppell

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Professor Tanya Byron

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