Task 1 - LOGO

Conceptualising the relationship between ICT and Education

To begin my journey of conceptualising the relationship between ICT and education I read 'Understanding the relationship between ICT and education means exploring innovation and change' by Watson (2006) who discusses four main points. These are: Technology and the learner, Enduring Issues, A complex and multifaceted relationship, and Understanding innovation and change. He discusses that there is no hard evidence that ICT enhances student learning but believes student learning is greatly enhanced when students are collaborating, creating and inquiring using ICT's. His article states that teachers need to want to use ICT and feel the PD around ICTs in the classroom is low and not done WITH teachers but AT teachers.

I then watched some iVideos created by students at the University of Technology, Sydney. They discussed issues such as teacher professional learning, Curriculum issues, Social Ethical Legal and Equity issues and Technology Skills. I played around on The Learning Place, Education Queensland's comprehensive eLearning environment and was surprised to see how many different ways teachers are successfully implementing ICTs into the classroom because I had not seen this in practice in schools before. I had always seen the students trudging to the computer lab for 20 minutes or so, creating a PowerPoint or using MS Word and this being the extent of their ICT experience in the classroom.

After viewing these iVideos, exploring The Learning Place website and reading the article by Watson (2006) I created the above logo. This logo represents my initial reactions to the theory and practice presented to me. Watson summarises that introducing ICTs into classrooms create a number of tensions for teachers that professional development does not necessarily resolve and that the professional development feels like it is done to them rather than with them. This led me to my initial idea that some teachers create their own barriers to learning with ICT. Many teachers are scared of not being in control of the lesson due to 'technical difficulties' and for teachers that do not have enough computers for the entire class, most of the lesson is taken up by walking to/from the computer lab and logging on/shutting down the computers. There are many ways for teachers to work around these issues and 'break down the barriers' they have created in their excuses. I saw when viewing the Learning Place that some teacher have smashed down these barriers and are doing some wonderful things in the classroom.

Viewing some of the other logos created by my peers in response to the same stimulus greatly impacted my conceptualisation of ICT in education. I was surprised at the vast differences between all of the logos and viewing them gave me a new way to look at the information I collected and opened my mind to different interpretations and ideas. I feel that the main thing I got out of this task was that  ICTs are integral to education and learning. Students are digital natives and already so adept at using these technologies. This is where their interests lie. We as teachers need to capitalise on this and implement lessons that use ICTs as a deep cognitive enhancing tool. For two concrete examples of how ICTs are used to solidify learning while engaging students and eliciting higher order thinking from them see my other two posts, Task 3 - QR Codes and Task 5- IWBs.

References:

Watson, D. (2006) Understanding the relationship between ICT and education means exploring innovation and change. Educ Inf Technol (2006) 11: 199–216