ICT Support and Delivery in schools
Before reading, please remember this is all based on my own experiences, observations and ideas from training to be a teacher, obtaining a degree in ICT & Computer Sciences and working in the education sector for 5 years. My current job role encompasses ICT Manager, Network Manager, and all levels of hands-on support.
Now more than ever, “ICT” is so engrained within our lives that we hardly notice much of it anymore. How much thought do you give when you use your mobile phones, games consoles, mp3 players, televisions and whatever you may be using to read this right now? I’m guessing not much; as something you use every day it is just ‘there’ for you to use. And as well it should be; the goal of any piece of technology hardware is to become transparent to the user so as to allow the flow of information to be accessed with ease.
So why is it then, that when transposed to the education sector, ICT so often becomes such an obstacle, such a difficulty, such an annoyance? In the past the finger could have been pointed at the manufacturers for making unfriendly interfaces for devices and software, or to the sharp-suited salesmen who promise far more to unknowing schools than the technology they are providing can really deliver. But we live in a world now where devices are easier than ever to use (just look at the wealth of videos on YouTube of 4 year olds using iPads with ease, or the amount of 8 years olds who have smart phones, games consoles and their own laptop at home) and where salesmen know that with a bit of time using Google almost anyone can find out more information about their product than can be delivered in a meeting.
So with friendly devices, and easy ways to avoid being taken for a rider by smooth-talkers, where do we look now? The answer; these days it all comes down to in-house management. Effective management of ICT within a school will provide engaging, interactive technologies that teachers feel comfortable delivering lessons through and which pupils will gain enjoyment from learning with. Bad management will lead to the path of half-empty laptop trollies gathering dust in a storeroom somewhere, inflexible access to ICT devices provided solely from a timetabled slot, unenthused teaching staff and disaffected pupils who get more effective use of ICT at home than they do at school.
Speaking of ICT access at home, this is one of the key things to consider when thinking about the delivery and use of ICT in an education environment. All too often the “new” devices brought into schools either amaze of confound the teaching staff - yet the children remain unfazed. Look at the example of Interactive Whiteboards. In the past few years, between work, conventions and training sessions I have continually encountered adults from all levels of education (from pre-school nursery assistants to deputy head teachers) who are still unfamiliar with the most basic workings of these boards; at the same time, the pupils in their classrooms are too busy playing with their multi-touch-screen phones or comparing the specifications of their home gaming PC’s to even take notice of a single-touch projected image, which by today’s standards, is a fairly tame piece of technology.
And so we have reached 2012, a time where the current situation is a classroom where many pupils know how to operate the school’s ICT devices better than the adults in the room. Exactly how does this inspire the children to learn, when from their perspective, they already outrank their teacher in capability? This is an issue easily rectified by training. Yes, that word may provoke eye-rolling or sighs from already-stressed classroom workers, but only because ICT training seems to be delivered on a merely ad-hoc basis. Literacy, Numeracy, supporting EAL and SEN; these things have timetabled training sessions every year for teaching staff, while ICT struggles to find a timeslot within a busy term schedule to squeeze in 10 minutes of rushed instruction. No wonder teaching staff become stressed when it comes to introducing a new ICT device or practice - they get no real warning or training to effectively deal with it. Something as simple as a 45 minute session on a training day introducing the whole teaching ensemble to the new device or software could spare many of the frustrations encountered with the current “learn as you go” approach.
Earlier I mentioned “in house management” of ICT, and I truly believe this is key. Yes, of course I am going to say that working as the ICT Manager for a school myself, but I have seen all kinds of approaches to IT management. External companies brought in for half a day a week who do nothing more than keep the most basic levels of access ticking over; ICT teachers struggling to find the time to be a tech when needed; part-time IT Technicians who struggle to keep up with the demands of their jobs on only 20-odd hours a week; term-time only IT Managers like myself, who end up working tons of overtime in holidays to keep on top of things; and full-time IT Managers and Technicians to support them. No external company or IT teacher is ever going to understand, support and grow a network and its infrastructure in the way a dedicated on-site team can. Now, that seems a simple enough idea when on paper - of course a specialist who is employed to take care of something full-time will be able to bring more to a job than anyone else who can only volunteer a few hours a week. So why does this fact seem to escape so many management personnel? I am fortunate in that the management team of the school I work for are communicative, receptive to ideas and appreciate the advantages of having an always-on-site techie, but I know there are far more education establishments out there who do not share this view.
Mentioned above, communication is essential when you have on-site IT staff, especially with ICT Manager & Network Manager levels of staff. Now, I run the risk of here of appearing egotistic or self-serving, but the fact is that if IT Managers and Network Managers were brought in to the SLT meetings, included in the planning of the ICT curriculum for the term ahead, and kept up-to-date with the ICT vision the Head has for the school, things would run a lot smoother. Offering advice on timescales, costs, if something is even possible and the impacts it will have at the time of initial discussion would be of far greater use than being passed an email 3 weeks after management have decided the project is going ahead regardless, with IT support being left to pick up the pieces afterwards.
It is mistake to think that someone who, from your perspective, sits in a room typing all day and emerges occasionally to put a new toner in a printer doesn’t know what classroom staff need to help them teach, or what resources would suit what purpose. It is a good bet that IT support staff who work in schools see more of the day-to-day goings on than most other job roles in the school. Management personnel are often preoccupied in meetings, elbow-deep in budgets or preparing for an upcoming OSFTED visit. Teachers are busy teaching their own class, as are TAs. EAL and SEN support staff are focussing their attentions on certain pupils. But IT staff, we move around the school all the time. We see what devices get used and when, what for and how successful they are. We see who likes certain pieces of software, and why. We are asked for and offer advice as we pass people in corridors, we overhear conversations in the staffroom about upcoming topics and we know where ICT could help teach it.
Your IT support staff are your best help when it comes to planning the expansion and development of ICT across the school, as well as embedding ICT in your other subjects, so don’t think of them just as toner-replacers or those whom you only see when something is not working. Most of us have a wealth of knowledge and advice about developing ICT across our school as well as delivering the curriculum, even if we don’t know the curriculum in the detail the way teaching staff do.
Having mentioned ICT in other subjects, there is no doubt that this the best way to expose pupils to ICT as much as possible. Don’t get wrong, there is a time and place for ICT and is shouldn’t be used for the sake of it, but there are plenty of opportunities within every curriculum subject for ICT to make a contribution, and if done right, create an improvement in the teaching and learning taking place.
A few quick examples of cross-curricular ICT use from my school alone includes: Using a Nintendo Wii for a PE lesson in dance, which saw 60 children in a school hall using a Wii connected to a projector all exercising dancing along to the Michael Jackson Experience. Brilliant and innovative, and far more fun for the pupils than simply running laps around the hall.
A class of pupils taking Easi-Speak microphones (mp3 recording mics) with them when they met the Mayor of Luton, later transferring the MP3 files and photographs they had taken to a laptop, arranging them in Movie Maker and posting the result on the school website for the other pupils and parents to listen to.
Pupils needing additional numeracy practice being invited to use “iProgress” online numeracy software on for 10 minutes a day, each day at lunchtime. Within a week there were improvements to their maths skills.
Another way to deliver some cross-curricular ICT is allowing the pupils themselves to decide if and when to use ICT, something that with time should become a natural part of their school life, and of course classrooms need to be outfitted accordingly to allow this. Teaching a history lesson on the Kings & Queens of England? A pupil should be able to choose whether they want to help themselves to a classroom textbook, a computer, or even use their own internet-enabled mobile device to do the research. Instructing pupils on when and how to use ICT should become a thing of the past - allowing them the choice of when to use it should be the norm now. After all, almost all of us have that choice in everyday life. If we do not know something, we usually Google it; why should a pupil not have that choice?
Accompanying this should be a shift in the way ICT is directly taught to pupils too. The overexposure to ICT that many children receive means they would be far better taught how to do their own research via effective internet searching than being given a series of pre-scanned websites to visit by their teacher. Don’t instruct children in how to change font sizes and colours in Word 2003, or how to make stick figure animations in Pivot; teach them the general ICT skills, not how to use one certain piece of software. The poor results of this approach are all too apparent when observing anyone who has been on a course where they were taught how to use MS Word 2003 - give them a copy of Word 2010, Lotus Notes or OpenOffice and they are lost, simply because the menu system looks different.
To round this article off, I will simply say this. Technology is here to stay. It will keep growing, evolving, becoming ever more integrated into our lives. As individuals working in the education sector, we have a responsibility to the children to provide them with the very best, most well-rounded education we can, and ICT is one of the best aids we have to do this. We all know that children generally learn faster than adults, and with more and more children being exposed to technology before they even reach school age, it is more important than ever that we make the effort to keep ourselves armed with the best weapon we can; knowledge.
