Checking the figures on the MoE site suggests Cj is right about the costliness of the colliding of ICT technology with the technology of school.
"Taking care of the sense" decisions include:
ICT Professional Development Clusters $11M p.a.
A programme to develop teachers’ confidence and capability in using ICT, operating in 80 clusters across NZ.
E-learning Teacher Fellowships $1.13M p.a.
10 teachers released per year for research into innovative uses of ICT in teaching and learning.
The Learning Federation $1.7M p.a.
Joint venture with Australian Federal and State Governments to develop high-quality digital learning objects for schools.
Laptops for Principals and Teachers Programme $18M p.a.
27,000 laptops distributed as part of the scheme as at February 2005.
Digital Opportunities $2.4M p.a.
Currently 11 projects are funded that are using ICT to explore new and innovative ways of supporting learning and increasing capability, including:
Even more troubling is that despite the numbers of NZ schools who have been part of the ICT_PD cluster programme (roughly 50% to date) when teachers ask for a school they could visit, there is a struggle to identify places where “learning through ICT” is school wide practice rather than the result of the isolated actions of a talented individual/s in a couple of classrooms. Don't think this is solely a New Zealand issue, we heard the same sort of critique of funded initiatives to integrate ICT in schools when we were at the ICCE 2005 in Singapore last year.
“despite “decades of funded study that have resulted in many exciting programmes and advances these have not resulted in pervasive, accepted, sustainable, large scale improvements in actual classroom practice, in a critical mass of effective models for educational improvement, or in supportive interplay among researchers, schools, families, employers, and communities” Chee-Kit Looi, Wei-Ying Lim and David Huang. Sustainin Innovations in Singapore Schools: Implications for Research Work 2005
And given the MoE suggestion that ICT professional development clusters comprise about 120 teachers simple maths suggests that justifying “bang for bucks” outcomes is going to be even more daunting for those 10 MoE e-fellows.
At $113,000.00 per head versus $1,145.83 per head for a teacher in an ICT cluster, the 10 e-fellows are funded at an incredible 100 times higher level than teachers in an ICT pd cluster.
Perhaps I have been looking in the wrong places, but I dunno if we have seen the “bang for bucks” outcomes these 100 times higher funding figures promise.
I am looking for refereed and published research findings, new leadership in learning through ICT in actual classroom practice in schools, or even e-fellows acting as agents for change in a way that clearly distinguishes them from those classroom teachers who have embraced ICT opportunities through the ICT_PD cluster funding.
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