Breakthroughs in Information and Communication Technologies Part II

In Part 1 of this series of articles, I defined what is meant by a breakthrough in ICT, listed fourteen breakthroughs in chronological order, and described five breakthroughs. In this second part of the three-part series of articles on Breakthroughs in Information and Communication Technologies, I describe four more breakthroughs: Computer Graphics, Internet, Global Positioning Systems, and the World WideW eb. As in the last part, I will justify why I consider them as breakthroughs and briefly describe each of them.     

Breakthroughs in Information and Communication Technologies Part III

In Part 1 of this series of articles, I defined what is meant by a breakthrough in ICT and listed fourteen breakthroughs in chronological order. Subsequently, nine breakthroughs were detailed in Parts 1 and 2. In this concluding part, I describe the last five breakthroughs: search engines, digitization and compression, mobile computers, cloud computing, and deep learning.     

Teacher Candidates’ Perceived Learning in an International Exchange Program: An ICT Course Example

ABSTRACT

This article reports the perceived learning of a group of Chinese teacher candidates who audited an ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) literacy course while participating in an exchange programme between Southwest University in China and the University of Windsor in Canada. Data were collected through 1) reflective notes written by visiting students and 2) semi-structured interviews conducted with them towards the end of their visit. The majority of participants stated that the learning experience helped them to realise the important role theory plays in the learning of ICT and to seek ideas of how to creatively integrate ICT in their future classrooms. Participants with limited ICT knowledge and skills reported that by being exposed to various functions of frequently used programmes and many free software programmes, they felt more confident in using ICT in their own teaching. Furthermore, those with strong ICT backgrounds found that the course helped them to understand the relationship among ICT, society, and pedagogy. The teacher candidates’ perceived learning included aspects of culture and pedagogy in addition to ICT knowledge and skills. Coming to know in ways like this is critically important to international partnerships and foundational to reciprocal learning where each learns from the other.     

Training teachers to use new technologies impacts multiple ecologies: Evidence from a national initiative

A pair of papers re-examined the evidence from a national initiative to train all teachers in England to bring them up to the level of newly qualified teachers, who are required to know when to use and when not to use information and communication technologies (ICT) in their professional practice. The first paper confirmed that multilevel evaluation of professional development was robust for ICT teacher training. This second paper contrasts the highest and lowest rated designs for ICT teacher training: an 'organic' approach that provided training in schools was highly rated, whereas a centralised computer-assisted learning approach with online access to trainers was the lowest rated design. The study supports an ecological view of the diffusion of ICT innovations in education and recommends that ICT teacher training be designed to support evolution of each teacher's classroom, school and region, as well as the training of the ICT teacher trainers.     

The role of the ‘technical fix’ in UK lifelong education policy

The integral place of information and communications technology (ICT) in UK lifelong education has been established by a series of technology-based initiatives introduced by the New Labour government since 1997. Initiatives such as the University for Industry, learndirect, People's Network and National Grid for Learning are being implemented as part of a coherent lifelong education policy-agenda fundamentally based upon the use of ICT. Yet, beneath the political enthusiasm for technology-based education, the role of ICT in lifelong learning remains largely unexamined and unproblematized, with many policy-makers and educationalists content to view technology as providing a ‘technical fix’ for many of education's problems. From this background, the present paper provides a critical perspective on the technological foundations of the UK government's lifelong education agenda. In particular, it examines the nature and form of the policies that have been introduced and then contrasts them with the rhetorical claims that are being made by government and other official actors. In this way the paper discusses how such policies continue to be shaped within a restrictive technocratic and determinist discourse of the ‘technical fix’, thus conforming to traditional narratives of society and technology. The paper then goes on to explore how such construction juxtaposes social and economic elements of the policy-drive and threatens, ultimately, to restrict the eventual educational effectiveness of these ‘new’ lifelong learning initiatives.     

New aspect of technology adoption: a case study of students’ self-made English-learning video

Understanding how students perceive and adopt technology in their daily life is particularly relevant to today’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) environment, in which versatile ICT tools are becoming more and more pervasive, almost ubiquitous in our day-to-day activities. In the context of English as a foreign language, this study investigates how Chinese students produce an English video with over-the-counter technology tools for accomplishing a language-learning task. In particular, this study probes into how youngsters today respond to a given learning task, how and why they adopt technology tools available and of use to them for the task. Data collection is through observation, students’ reports, and interviews. The focus on specific case study settings offers a closer look at how the use of technology tools is socially and technologically shaped in each individual case. Students reported that they welcomed and valued such learning experience and had in general positive attitude toward the tools and their use in learning. The results reveal students’ willingness and capability in adopting technology tools, whether familiar or unfamiliar to them, and appropriating these tools to fulfill their individual leaning needs. Implications have been drawn to provide a new aspect of technology adoption in school learning.     

教育信息化的宏观政策与战略研究

教育信息化是伴随着信息与通讯技术的迅猛发展,全球化进程中教育实践的深化发展以及信息与通讯技术在教育领域中的渗透与应用,而逐渐受到世界各国广泛关注的全球性热点问题之一。在过去的几十年间,世界上许多地区、国家以及国际组织都纷纷制定了各自的教育信息化宏观政策与战略,并积极推动这些宏观政策与战略的落实与实施。通过系统分析教育信息化的内涵与外延,对我国教育信息化事业的发展进行简要的回顾和对“教育信息化宏观政策与战略研究”系列文章的目的、研究对象、研究方法与过程进行介绍,进而深入分析了此项研究对于推进我国教育信息化与学习型社会的建设的理论与实践工作的重要意义与价值。     

Un profil de compétences pour les professeurs d’informatique de l’enseignement secondaire camerounais

A competency profile for teachers of Computer Science in Cameroonian secondary education – In 1998, the Cameroonian government decided to introduce Computer Science as a school subject. To implement this decision, it began to train teachers of Computer Science according to the same training model used for teachers of other disciplines. Despite the consensus that seems to be emerging from the scientific community regarding the need to give priority to a cross-disciplinary use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in primary and secondary education, some countries, such as Cameroon, have opted to teach Computer Science. While such a political choice might in principle appear to be inappropriate for the development of students’ ICT skills, the article shows that it nevertheless introduces teachers into the system who have a predisposition to act as catalysts for the pedagogical integration of ICT. Such a development could occur provided these teachers are trained in a range of additional skills – those proposed in the article – which would enable them to contribute effectively. If this approach were implemented, sub-Saharan countries such as Cameroon would, in their Computer Science teachers, have access to human resources capable of quickly generalising the cross-disciplinary use of ICT in the education system.     

ICT learning experience and research orientation as predictors of ICT skills and the ICT use of university students

Since our first studies of information and communications technology (ICT) skills and ICT use at universities in 2004, ICT and its use by students has changed greatly. In order to obtain a more detailed picture of ICT skills, we first construct a new instrument to measure the self-perception of ICT skills (49 items) and of ICT use (53 items) by students. This allows us to find some patterns for ICT skills and ICT use. In order to explain these patterns, two basic hypotheses are formulated. The first suggests that positive ICT learning experiences at home, in school, and with peers could contribute to mastering a higher level of ICT skills and more frequent use of ICT among bachelor’s students, a hypothesis that aligns with Dewey’s learning theory. The second hypothesis suggests that there is a similarity between the characteristics of information systems and scientific research, and that students who identify more with scientific research would be more likely to have greater ICT skills and a higher frequency of ICT use. Both hypotheses are tested among bachelor’s students, using some important contextual variables (gender, domain of study, ICT course in secondary school or at university, and education level of parents). It can be concluded that there is a relationship between the ICT learning experience and the research-oriented identity commitment of bachelor’s students on the one hand, and their command of ICT skills and the frequency of use of computers, ICT instruments, and ICT programs on the other.     

Images of school principals' information and communications technology leadership

This article describes a qualitative study designed to investigate information and communications technology (ICT) leadership by considering the lived experiences of principals in 10 carefully selected ICT-enriched schools in Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. To encourage further discussion regarding the impact of ICT on educational leadership practice, I have outlined a framework that suggests eight categories of ICT leadership. Although this study focussed on principals of ICT-enriched schools, the practical wisdom of the study participants has potential to assist other educational leaders who are expected to ensure that ICT becomes a tool to enhance learning, teaching, and leadership.     

Information and communication technology (ICT) in secondary schools: the role of the computer coordinator

A study was conducted in 2002 to evaluate the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in 21 secondary schools in one region of New Zealand. As part of the study, the role of the ICT coordinator was investigated. All the ICT coordinators were surveyed and 14 of them were interviewed in‐depth. It is found that they were all well‐equipped to take up a significant leadership role in their schools and some of them have already demonstrated visible leadership. This paper also identifies some obstacles that have reduced their effective leadership in ICT use in their schools.     

New South Wales Primary School Teachers' Perceptions of the Role of ICT in the Primary Science Curriculum – A Rural and Regional Perspective

A series of interviews was conducted with NSW primary teachers, working within a rural context, to obtain their views about the benefits of using ICT in the delivery of the primary curriculum and specifically primary science. The interviews were also used to determine how these teachers were using ICT and if they had any specific training needs. Some teachers were using ICT creatively in their teaching in science and other curriculum areas. However, despite considerable political pressure to increase ICT use in the classroom, most expressed frustration at the lack of in-service training available to them. Given the costs involved in in-service training in regional New South Wales, with groups of teachers scattered over large distances, this finding is perhaps not surprising. This article proposes a possible cost-effective strategy for in-service training to help overcome some of the problems raised by the participants in this study. The suggested strategy involves the use of action research to develop confidence and self reliance amongst primary teachers in a region where government funded training is always likely to be limited due to its prohibitive cost.     

Curriculum variables,theory and goals: A comment on Begle's Critical Variables in Mathematics Education

The following text was prepared for the Begle Memorial Series on Research in Mathematics Education of the IV ICME Congress at Berkeley in August 1980. Several sessions of this series were devoted to Begle's¹ last book Critical Variables in Mathematics Education, and I was asked to discuss one of its chapters. However, in my view, the more interesting questions Begle's survey raises concern basic problems related to the study as a whole, though these may be identified in each of its parts. Therefore, I have divided my text into two parts: the first sticks more closely to the chapter on curriculum variables which I was to review, and the second is devoted to a more general view on the problems. This procedure may be justified beyond the original purpose: reconstructing one single part of the book may supply a concrete basis for the reflections subsequently explicated and may help in visualizing them.     

Students' information and communications technology skills and their use during teacher training

Abstract

Two surveys of the 1997–98 cohort of Postgraduate Certificate of Education students in the United Kingdom showed that students had a wide range of information and communications technology (ICT) skills at the start of their course; much of their experience had been gained during their undergraduate studies or at home. They also had considerable enthusiasm for learning more skills and using them in their future careers as teachers. However, as many other researchers have also found, students were not always able to transfer their skills to use in the classroom, although they very often used them in preparing both classroom materials and assessed coursework. Significant differences in ICT use were found between students studying different subjects; availability of ICT facilities in schools (varying between subjects) also affected use of ICT. The results are discussed in terms of attitudes to ICT in schools.     

From ``Computers in the Classroom' to Mindful Radical Adaptation by Education Systems to the Emerging Cyber Culture

Despite the huge investments in the last two decades in the introduction of ICT to education and the grandiose expectations accompanying them, ICT has not been widely integrated into educational systems throughout the post-industrial world; furthermore, there is no clear evidence that ICT leads to the improvement of students' outcomes, enhances desired modes of learning or teaching of desired social values. Indeed, on the basis of the outcomes realized to date, one could characterize the rapid and costly response of Western educational systems to the ICT revolution as “much ado about nothing”. This paper focuses on the two questions stemming from awareness of this state of affairs: ? Why have so few outcomes resulted from the huge investments in ICT? ? What must happen in order for educational systems to successfully adapt to the ICT revolution? In contrast to some recent writers on this issue who have criticized the rush to computerization of education, this paper argues that educational systems cannot abstain from joining the ICT race. Abstention is not really an option since the ICT revolution is an important aspect of a deeper and broader cultural revolution that is changing Western culture from modern (or, industrial) to postmodern (or post-industrial) and schools, if they want to survive, have no option but to adapt themselves to the era in which they function. However, successful adaptation requires: 1. a radical breaking of the organizational “glass ceiling” (i.e. school's modern organizational structure) now preventing the true adaptation of education to postmodernity, 2. the accompaniment of this radical restructuring by a well-formed strategy based on a clear understanding of the new emerging culture and explicit values and educational aims. The paper argues that currently, computerization processes in post-industrial societies suffer acutely from total ignorance of the need for such radical organizational restructuring and for its accompaniment by a cultural-ideological strategy – hence the explanation to the above “much a do about nothing” phenomenon.     

Framing ICT, teachers and learners in Australian school education ICT policy

It is well over 20 years since information and communication technologies (ICT) was first included as part of a future vision for Australia’s schools. Since this time numerous national policies have been developed, which collectively articulate an official discourse in support of a vision for ICT to be embedded in our schools, and routinely used by ‘digital’ learners and ‘competent’ teachers alike. The purpose of this paper is to critique how ICT, teachers and learners are positioned in this vision by an analysis of national school-education ICT policies from 1989 to the present day, including the National Goals of Schooling policies, the Learning in an Online World suite of policies, several Ministerial Statements relating to ICT and the recent A Digital Education Revolution policy. This paper suggests that determinist views of technology and a utopian vision underpin these representations, which creates a flawed, future vision for ICT in school education and its use by teachers and learners.     

The role of the Internet in teachers’ professional practice: activities and factors associated with teacher use of ICT inside and outside the classroom

Evidence shows that teachers’ use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the classroom is still limited in variety and frequency. However, their use of ICT outside the classroom, while more frequent, has been less studied. Our research aims to identify personal factors associated with teachers’ ICT use inside and outside the classroom. Data from a questionnaire administered to a nationwide sample of 6932 teachers in Chile was used to characterise their activities and perceptions associated with ICT. Multiple regression analyses were applied to determine relationships between them. The findings show first, that teachers use ICT more frequently outside the classroom for class preparation; second, that their perceptions of ICT impact on professional practice is the main factor associated with their use of ICT inside and outside the classroom; third, that less experienced teachers use communication tools with colleagues and students more often; and finally, that there is a need to examine teachers’ use of (ready-made) Internet resources.     

Promoting Mr. ‘Chips’: the construction of the teacher/computer relationship in educational advertising

The £1 billion government drive to integrate information and communications technology (ICT) into UK schools and colleges has been firmly focused on the technological transformation of the teaching profession. In particular, the establishment of a National Grid for Learning (NGfL) remains dependent on the successful ‘selling’ of ICT to teachers; many of whom have previously proved unwilling to use computers. In practice much of this task has been left to IT firms, eager to promote their products to a potentially lucrative educational marketplace. From this basis the present paper takes a detailed examination of educational computing advertising material currently being produced by IT firms in the UK. In particular it concentrates on how advertisements construct both the process of education and the teacher as a potential user of ICT. Four dominant themes emerge from this analysis: ICT as problematic for teachers; ICT as a problem solver for teachers; ICT as a futuristic form of education; and ICT as a traditional form of education. Despite the conflicting, and often contra-factual, nature of these four discourses the paper argues that educational computing advertising is consistent in its disempowering portrayal of the teacher at the expense of both the computer and IT firm. This ‘demotion’ of the teacher is likely to have negative effects on the way that teachers approach ICT as part of their professional routine, running contrary to the underlying aims of the National Grid for Learning initiative.     

Locating ICT for primary education in a reformed Greek-Cypriot national curriculum: A documentary analysis approach

This paper argues that educational technology in the Greek-Cypriot educational system has reached a critical point since ICT now appears for the first time in the newly reformed national curriculum. This study primarily illuminates the ways in which ICT is depicted in this curriculum with regards to primary education and, secondarily, explores whether the approach adopted appears consistent. The methodology employed involves a documentary analysis of the reformed curriculum in terms of four domains: rationale, content, teaching methodology as well as achievement processes across the 15 subject areas. Findings indicate that references to three ICT-related words are only made in some subjects. In addition, these references reflect either the socio-economic rationale towards ICT competency -also expressed in the general aims of the new NC- or the educational rationale, underlying the contribution of ICT to teaching and learning. Consequently, the approach towards new technologies fails to emerge as systematic across all primary school subjects. In this regard, although the inclusion of ICT in the reformed NC of the Greek-Cypriot educational system is certainly a way forward, the intended curriculum needs to be revised to reflect a clear approach, resembling either a focus on ICT competency or the educational perspective, or both. Furthermore, in anticipation of the implemented and attained curriculum, school structures as well as teacher professional development arise as issues for further consideration.     

Training with ICT for ICT from the trainee’s perspective. A local ICT teacher training experience

The introduction of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) presents new challenges for teachers and often meets with their belief that ICT, as well as other changes present a factor, which can cause several changes in school. Although there have been many education reforms regarding teachers’ training policy in recent years and the number of training programs has been increased, they have not been able to satisfy teachers’ needs to a substantial degree. In this research the results from an exploratory study conducted within the framework of a national training programme in Greece on ICT known as "In-service teacher training in the use of ICT in Education" are presented. Based on a specially constructed questionnaire intended for the educators, this research elicits teachers’ attitudes towards this programme. Some of the main results point out the preparedness of these teachers to use ICT in the daily school practice. Furthermore, they expressed their wish for further in-training programmes concerning the pedagogical development of the ICT use in class practice.