למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

State schools spent £1 billion on cutting-edge information technology last year but 80 per cent of them are failing to make full use of it, according to experts.

Pupils now handle equipment worth thousands of pounds, with some using laptops, interactive whiteboards or hand-held smartphones. The Government claims that Britain is a European leader in installing IT in the classroom.

However, Becta, the Government’s adviser on IT in schools, says that many teachers are intimidated by the equipment and struggle to cope, and that children have a better understanding of how it works.

In the developed world, ICT permeates middle class citizens' lives (including teachers') generally. So perhaps the real problem is the way that "technology for my work" is often so different from "technology for my life". The reason that you use Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, The Trainline, etc etc is because these services help you with the "stuff" of your life. The key to getting ICT used in schools is to have it designed, supported, and run in a way which helps learners, schools, and teachers with the "stuff" of education. That this is not the case in many schools is a complex issue, which should not be reduced to "teacher technophobia".

Simply stated, schools that expect teachers to build Web pages are making a mistake, and wasting hours of time and money on “training."

to step into technology use, most teachers have to see a return on their investment; they have to see an impact on learning, and this is a healthy expectation.... And please don’t suggest that teachers can link to things like blogging, wiki, and social bookmarking sites to add that component. By doing something like that - joining a collection of independent tools together - the skills and understanding and support required to make that a realistic component to learning is probably beyond most.

תוויות: מורים