I spent much of the last ten years teaching teachers how to use thinking strategies and technologies for learning.
Although I have witnessed radical and ubiquitous family, community, business and society wide adoption of ICTs in New Zealand in this time, I have yet to observe any significant school wide adoption of effective use of ICTs in teaching and learning.
For example,
Outside of school I see ICTs in use everywhere I look, from waiting staff at local restaurants taking orders on wireless mobile devices and pinging them to them to the kitchen, to the over eighties I meet using electronic banking, texting pictures of their grandchildren to Flicker and saving money on keeping an ear and an eye on the family through Skype, to The Magnet who has yet to read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother
installing an electronic tracking device on her phone that will enable Air New Zealand to track how many times we approach the wine bar in the Koru Club departure lounge.
Within schools and classrooms I continue to see patchy use of ICTs; (e) learning practice that is too often based on the enthusiasms of individuals rather than that of whole staff. In the glossy ICT educashin magazines I continue to read articles promoting individual even idiosyncratic success rather than collective successful practice. And if your day job allows you to travel around as many schools as we do each year it is hard to claim the adoption of effective use of ICTs in teaching and learning in New Zealand as common collective activity in schools.
We are pretty good at promoting the activities of individuals we describe as “early adopters” in schools, we are pretty poor at finding and promoting schools where all the “late adopters” have arrived.
All this thinking makes me realise that a little bit of me is still hanging out for the arrival of the late adopters.
I feel foolish when I realise how long I have been waiting for something that never arrives. I am the equivalent of Estragon waiting for the arrival of a Mr. Godot. "Personally I wouldn't know him if I ever saw him."
My Mr. Godot like waiting is unlikely to surprise Cuban who identified the expectations, rhetoric, policies and limited–use stages in the use of technology in education cycle over twenty years ago, (Cuban 1986).
However waiting has its uses.
Careful observation of patterns of adoption by teachers in ict_pd clusters allows me to realise that the notion of the early adopter has limited the ways in which we understand the use or non use of ICTs in education.
Our focus on the early adopter means we are asking the wrong questions.
Each year the ictpd cluster milestone reporting has encouraged me to focus on the barriers that are stalling the “late adopters”. To survey our teachers and principals and ask them about the barriers they face in the adoption of ICTs in teaching and learning.
Each year I have faithfully collated “barrier data” from ictpd clusters; and each year I have generalised from the “barrier data” to create those “we need more” lists.
Before we can master ICTs and use them effectively in teaching and learning ...we need ...
• Professional development
• Time
• Hardware, software and connectivity
• Technical and infrastructure support
• Management strategies when students are learning though ICTs.
• Money for all of the above
However, given the improvements in; professional development, time allowances, hardware, software and connectivity, technical and infrastructure support, and management strategies available to teachers and schools in 2008 compared to what was on offer even ten years ago it is tempting to suggest that some of these barriers are “in the eyes of the beholder” barriers rather than actual barriers.
The resourcing, time and ICT environments available to all teachers in 2008 more than meet the barrier busting “we need ...” lists of schools in the late 1990’s, and yet, and yet, we are still waiting for those late adopters..
It seems to me that “barriers” are relative frustrations. Frustrations that are are independent of conditions experienced. For as conditions improve in our schools and classrooms so our expectations increase .... and as a consequence our frustrations remain the same.
If I am right in thinking that barriers are relative, that barriers are perceived and will always be with us, then focusing on identifying barriers in the ictpd clusters is a logical fallacy, institutionalised busy work .... red herring activity.
This is possibly why the content of the “we need more” lists have remained the same ever since teacher were first asked about their use of classroom radio and educational TV in the 1940’s (Teachers and Machines Larry Cuban p25 Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920
and remained the same across countries, refer Lai, Pratt and Trwern’s New Zealand research cited on p11 of E-learning Communities: Teaching And Learning With the Web
It seems we have been collecting “barrier lists” in education for a long time.
Perhaps it is time to stop pretending that identifying perceived barriers to implementation will bring the late adopters on board. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that identifying what teachers suggest are barriers to their use of ICTs in teaching and learning is akin to identifying learning styles or referring to Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience ... spurious and unhelpful. Perhaps it is time that we threw out the term “early adopter”.
For the descriptor “early” implies there will be a “late”. “Early adopter” suggests that “the late adopter is just around the corner.” This presumption of earliness causes us to focus on barriers to adoption. To identify barriers that might explain why teachers don’t use ICTs in their teaching and presumably address them we hope to encourage the late adopters to arrive. But barriers are relative notions, subjective rather than objective measures.
It seems likely that this focus on finding and identifying barriers has prevented us from understanding what is really going on when teachers fail to collectively adopt the effective use of ICTs in teaching and learning.
I suspect this focus on barriers has prevented us from asking the right questions ...
If everyone else on the planet is integrating ICTs in their programmes of living then something more is at work when teachers do not buy in to ICTs in their programmes of learning.
I sense we have to look past notions of "We need: ...
What I need is to explore different questions from questions that focus on barriers ... I am not sure what they might be ... perhaps I can start by asking ...
For example,
Outside of school I see ICTs in use everywhere I look, from waiting staff at local restaurants taking orders on wireless mobile devices and pinging them to them to the kitchen, to the over eighties I meet using electronic banking, texting pictures of their grandchildren to Flicker and saving money on keeping an ear and an eye on the family through Skype, to The Magnet who has yet to read Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother
installing an electronic tracking device on her phone that will enable Air New Zealand to track how many times we approach the wine bar in the Koru Club departure lounge. Within schools and classrooms I continue to see patchy use of ICTs; (e) learning practice that is too often based on the enthusiasms of individuals rather than that of whole staff. In the glossy ICT educashin magazines I continue to read articles promoting individual even idiosyncratic success rather than collective successful practice. And if your day job allows you to travel around as many schools as we do each year it is hard to claim the adoption of effective use of ICTs in teaching and learning in New Zealand as common collective activity in schools.
We are pretty good at promoting the activities of individuals we describe as “early adopters” in schools, we are pretty poor at finding and promoting schools where all the “late adopters” have arrived.
All this thinking makes me realise that a little bit of me is still hanging out for the arrival of the late adopters.
I feel foolish when I realise how long I have been waiting for something that never arrives. I am the equivalent of Estragon waiting for the arrival of a Mr. Godot. "Personally I wouldn't know him if I ever saw him."
My Mr. Godot like waiting is unlikely to surprise Cuban who identified the expectations, rhetoric, policies and limited–use stages in the use of technology in education cycle over twenty years ago, (Cuban 1986).
However waiting has its uses.
Careful observation of patterns of adoption by teachers in ict_pd clusters allows me to realise that the notion of the early adopter has limited the ways in which we understand the use or non use of ICTs in education.
Our focus on the early adopter means we are asking the wrong questions.
Each year the ictpd cluster milestone reporting has encouraged me to focus on the barriers that are stalling the “late adopters”. To survey our teachers and principals and ask them about the barriers they face in the adoption of ICTs in teaching and learning.
Each year I have faithfully collated “barrier data” from ictpd clusters; and each year I have generalised from the “barrier data” to create those “we need more” lists.
Before we can master ICTs and use them effectively in teaching and learning ...we need ...
• Professional development
• Time
• Hardware, software and connectivity
• Technical and infrastructure support
• Management strategies when students are learning though ICTs.
• Money for all of the above
However, given the improvements in; professional development, time allowances, hardware, software and connectivity, technical and infrastructure support, and management strategies available to teachers and schools in 2008 compared to what was on offer even ten years ago it is tempting to suggest that some of these barriers are “in the eyes of the beholder” barriers rather than actual barriers.
The resourcing, time and ICT environments available to all teachers in 2008 more than meet the barrier busting “we need ...” lists of schools in the late 1990’s, and yet, and yet, we are still waiting for those late adopters..
It seems to me that “barriers” are relative frustrations. Frustrations that are are independent of conditions experienced. For as conditions improve in our schools and classrooms so our expectations increase .... and as a consequence our frustrations remain the same.
If I am right in thinking that barriers are relative, that barriers are perceived and will always be with us, then focusing on identifying barriers in the ictpd clusters is a logical fallacy, institutionalised busy work .... red herring activity.
This is possibly why the content of the “we need more” lists have remained the same ever since teacher were first asked about their use of classroom radio and educational TV in the 1940’s (Teachers and Machines Larry Cuban p25 Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology Since 1920
and remained the same across countries, refer Lai, Pratt and Trwern’s New Zealand research cited on p11 of E-learning Communities: Teaching And Learning With the WebIt seems we have been collecting “barrier lists” in education for a long time.
Perhaps it is time to stop pretending that identifying perceived barriers to implementation will bring the late adopters on board. Perhaps it is time to acknowledge that identifying what teachers suggest are barriers to their use of ICTs in teaching and learning is akin to identifying learning styles or referring to Edgar Dale’s Cone of Experience ... spurious and unhelpful. Perhaps it is time that we threw out the term “early adopter”.
For the descriptor “early” implies there will be a “late”. “Early adopter” suggests that “the late adopter is just around the corner.” This presumption of earliness causes us to focus on barriers to adoption. To identify barriers that might explain why teachers don’t use ICTs in their teaching and presumably address them we hope to encourage the late adopters to arrive. But barriers are relative notions, subjective rather than objective measures.
It seems likely that this focus on finding and identifying barriers has prevented us from understanding what is really going on when teachers fail to collectively adopt the effective use of ICTs in teaching and learning.
I suspect this focus on barriers has prevented us from asking the right questions ...
If everyone else on the planet is integrating ICTs in their programmes of living then something more is at work when teachers do not buy in to ICTs in their programmes of learning.
I sense we have to look past notions of "We need: ...
- Professional development
- Time
- Hardware, software and connectivity
- Technical and infrastructure support
- Management strategies when students are learning though ICTs.
- Money."
What I need is to explore different questions from questions that focus on barriers ... I am not sure what they might be ... perhaps I can start by asking ...
- Why are new practices universally adopted [by people/teachers]?
- How are new practices universally adopted [by people/teachers]?
- What determines whether a new practice will be universally adopted and sustained?
Perhaps we should be looking at the difference between visitors, tourists and residents of the digital/web2.0 age?
I keep beating my head against the wall because of the constant road blocks put up by others in the school. (let's not even talk about what equipment is there or the state of the wireless system). Here's a sample of issues/concerns put forward regarding our school website (for goodness sake!) which is hosted by Spike@School.
* Inclusion of photos/video where chn can be identified
* Parent access incl. cost
* Ocular lock
* Stunted motor skills, obesity due to lack of physical movement
* Creates more work for teachers
* Code of use (privacy)
* Can kids publish onto Spike?
* Needs to be low-maintenance
* Time commitment on top of existing dynamic programmes –very challenging prospect
* What do we let go?
* Who prepares work, marks it? How?
* How do we protect and maintain professional boundaries?
* How do we share work without inviting parent critique (happy to be accountable of course!)?
* Public domain exposes range of ability. Leads to comparison/competition (self-esteem)?
* Implications for us as people (not machines!)
And then I go to Jackie Sharp's website/wiki and see this "I can't do computers as well as teach! Do it instead of rather than as well as!
I talk with fellow educators on twitter about new ideas and what we're doing in class; we blog about those experiences; and I end up getting my ICT professional development via these online sources because there's no-one really interested to the same degree at school.
And don't even get me started at the heads that start shaking when the words "cell-phone" and "classroom" come together in the same sentence.
And I'd like to finish by saying that you've visited our school!! (Hooked on Thinking)
Posted by: Jo Fothergill | November 16, 2008 at 10:52 AM
I think that the late adapters are the educational cynics who regard all this ICT nonsense as yet another education merry-go-round, a fad that, given enough time, will pass. They sit in their classes patiently ticking down the eons until this latest education merry-go-round runs out of steam; maybe the new Government will not disappoint them. I can almost hear the clarion call for the return to basics and traditional values...
Posted by: David | November 16, 2008 at 06:27 PM
I wish it were that simple David,
Bill Farren’s blog captures it best for me – education as if people and the planet mattered – aka
The purpose of education should be to create well-being.
And even you must concede that technology has not necessarily been uniformly associated with well being.
I think the cynics are the first to identify and reject artifice ... they are the canaries in the educational mine ... we need them to protect ourselves from “extraordinary public delusions and the madness of crowds.”
The way schools are using/integrating ICTs is where our analysis should be focussed.
No one struggles to integrate a mobile phone into their lived life ... they don’t need MoE funded professional learning etc etc ... why is that?
Using a mobile phone matters.
What matters in school?
And in response to your where am I on Wednesday query ... am checking with the Magnet and will get back to you.
Posted by: Artichoke | November 16, 2008 at 06:50 PM
Ahh Jo, a head must never be beaten against the flat side of a building or room. Find an uneven surface.
And thank you for commenting.
I think your visitors, tourists and residents thinking is flawed for similar reasons to those that betrayed my "who writes the scenarios in PBL" thinking ... however, as you counter ... there is always the however ...
I cannot help but like the contrarian ... if we cannot counter their challenges than perhaps we are precipitate in our venture .. we need to learn how to do this better .. to embrace the people who afford us the courtesy of interrogating our thinking ...I know that rational argument will not sort every objection but it will take out some.
You should read Tara Brabazon in Digital Hemlock: Internet Education and the Poisoning of Teaching
some of the issues raised over your school website have already proven real concerns in the tertiary sector.
Like you my learning is almost ALL online ... and almost all of it comes through Arti’ .. how sad is that ... reminds of a relative who proudly proclaims “everything I know comes from talk back radio” .... we risk balance when we learn in an online echo chamber ... listening to other voices that are too similar to our own ... If we are to understand learning with any degree of reliability or validity I reckon we need to listen carefully to those who DO NOT twitter, blog, wiki etc .. to embrace the voice of the contrarian in our schools.
And I do remember the connection ...we were playing in edu_landscapes on the Kapiti Coast again last week
Posted by: Artichoke | November 16, 2008 at 08:46 PM
this is awesome - i love discussions like this - i rarely get them in real life - it doesn't matter if i agree or not - as long as i'm challenged in some way to take a fresh look at what I am doing ...
just as an addon is this interesting blog article Whenever I go to school I have to power down by Andrew Churches and this article from the Guardian UK which is where the title quote of Andrew's piece comes from
Posted by: Jo Fothergill | November 17, 2008 at 05:44 PM
The line fed by conventional change literature is put the energy into the tipping point, ignore the luddites and the early. Problem is, people are not that stable and the real world is so much more messy than such change theory suggests. I think you identify what really is more useful when talking of what in the network sustains what is.
My experiences have been more like this:
First there were losses, then there was a plan of change, and then there was an implementation, which led to unexpected results. (Czarniawska & Joerges, cited by Weick & Quinn, 1999, p. 362)
I also note that cutting edges often leave blood on the floor.
Posted by: ailsa | November 26, 2008 at 09:37 PM
Schools have changed a lot over the decades, eg. there is no longer a white line in the quad with boys on one side and girls on the other
But how can we judge how radical any of those changes to have been?
How does waiting for the effective late adopting computer teacher differ from waiting for the effective late adopter of Dewey or Vygotsky or Bruner or Papert or Osborne/Freyberg (learning in science) effective implementer?
btw I thought alan kay had a pretty good crack at these questions (mixed in with lots of other very interesting history) in his recent talk about waiting for 40 years for the Dynabook:
http://billkerr2.blogspot.com/2008/11/40th-anniversary-of-dynabook.html
Posted by: Bill Kerr | November 30, 2008 at 06:42 PM
Seems to me it just takes time. LOTS of it.
No secret, no surprise, just slow and steady culture change.
Posted by: suet | December 01, 2008 at 09:28 AM
Change takes years, and can be disheartening when you think you have made major inroads to find that there has been token change. We are asking teachers to move out of their comfort zones and change their teaching style. A small number will make dramatic changes, most will make small concessions, some will refuse to change and become the proverbial ostrich. So what is my job as a facilitator? To cajole, to excite, to offer solutions, to empower, to encourage 'shift' as quickly as each individual can manage!
Posted by: Jacqui Sharp | December 03, 2008 at 12:07 PM
I don't understand why we cannot change in a moment; and I don't think I am impatient in this ...so when we don't change I think we need to look carefully at the reasons given ...
For example, I don't for a moment believe that change takes years and years, or that we have to move in some kind of turgid meander towards a goal ...
When we find ourselves moving at a rate that leaves an uber molluscan mucus trail through education we need to ask deeper and different questions of ourselves.
We are so good in education at finding examples that corroborate our "change is slow" predictions ... If we looked, really looked, I wonder if we might create a list of examples where people have adopted educational change with alacrity ...
Posted by: Artichoke | December 07, 2008 at 08:35 PM
"How do social groups interpret and use technical objects? This makes a difference to the object! What the object is determines what the object becomes. We can only understand technological development by studying the sociopolitical situation of the involved groups
- Feenberg, 2004, quoted in Maxwell: Tracing the Dynabook"
Although there is more freedom and so more take up outside of school than inside of school (where the computer is seen as an instrument to enhance the existing old fashioned curriculum) I would see your outside / inside examples as still limited in comparison to what someone like Engelbart envisioned as possible for a computer-human symbiosis in 1968.
Posted by: Bill Kerr | December 09, 2008 at 01:27 AM
Outside/ inside is too limited an analysis Bill. And that is probably why I can't seem to get any leverage from it.
This is much better ..."We can only understand technological development by studying the sociopolitical situation of the involved groups"
Thanks
If use is limited by the sociopolitical situation of the involved groups it explains why inequalities - all that elitism, sexism, racism, discrimination based on sexual orientation etc etc have all continued to thrive in the ways technologies find expression in school.
Posted by: Artichoke | December 09, 2008 at 07:24 AM
I've just finished reading an article on digital natives [born after 1980] and digital immigrants [pre 1980] - 1980 being used as the birth date of the personal computer. Most of our teachers are immigrants and what impact does this have on the tipping points of change for the wholesale embedding of ICT into learning in schools. Most teachers have mobile phones some of them still leave them on during lessons which is a source of frustration so why not ICT into our practice????
I think the issues go deeper than just ICT usage it's about how we view how knowledge is created, it's about how de-privatised our instructional practice is and it's about our view of education serving 21st century learners. Having the dialogue about these issues helps embed ICT - for teachers start to see the purpose, that it's about our collective practice over the years not just the early adopters. Leadership in schools modelleling this with teachers and setting high expectations and monitoring these are also a key. Why do I say these things it's because I'm a principal who is trying and close to the tipping point on embedding ICT into learning - everyone's learning.
P.S. I still have the lists.
Posted by: Mark Walker | December 18, 2008 at 07:51 AM