Information Technology and Authentic Learning

Realising the Potential of Computers in the Primary Classroom

Angela McFarlane

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781134756179
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

As the presence of computers in the primary classroom increases and IT becomes a bigger part of learning, the book takes a realistic look at the role of the computer in the National Curriculum, and asks some important questions. The book is designed to help teachers incorporate IT into their day-to-day teaching, offering practical guidance and advice on task planning and management and includes examples of classroom practice. The book covers all curriculum areas, examining curriculum-specific issues as well as more general concerns such as pupil-expectation and self-esteem, problem solving, collaborative learning, data-handling, homework and the effects on the pupil-teacher dynamic. This book will be essential to all primary school teachers and trainees.

Chapter 1
Where are we and how did we get here?

Angela McFarlane

The computer generation

It is worth remembering that in 1980 the only experience of computers children had was confined to the realms of science fiction. The desk-top personal computer was a new invention and yet to become a consumer product. No computers of any kind had any significant presence in British schools. The ‘teaching machines’ developed during the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, using a mini-computer with networked terminals, never gained a foothold in the more child-centred UK school culture. However, in less than a generation the microcomputer has become ubiquitous; it has found a place in every classroom and workplace and a good many homes. It has also become more powerful, easier to use, smaller and cheaper—a trend which is not yet exhausted.

The evolution of the microcomputer has been as rapid as its dispersal. In the time it takes a human child to develop to maturity, the personal or microcomputer has gone from a box which was good at sums, could make beeps and whistles and draw pictures which looked as though they had been built from Duplo bricks, to an all-singing all-dancing maturity which can play Beethoven in full digital stereo, show television-quality moving pictures and which can calculate at least thirty times faster than before. Almost unbelievably, this can all be achieved on a machine that can fit comfortably into a briefcase. Possibly more significant than the competence with which the computers of the nineties can perform these operations, is the fact that this power can all be harnessed by pointing and clicking at pictures on the screen. This makes the technology far more accessible to the non-specialist user. The earlier machines required a knowledge of sequences of characters, often bizarre ones, which had to be remembered and typed in to get the computer to perform the simplest task. Finally, perhaps even more amazing than the increased power and ease of use of the modern computer is the fact that the price of a state-of-the-art personal computer has stayed more or less the same, which represents a significant drop in real terms when you allow for inflation.

It is worthwhile remembering that despite this rapid expansion of technology, there are still large sections of the population who have remained personally unfamiliar with computers. As a consequence they have a rather hazy view of the personal computer and the tasks of which it is capable, and may be unaware of the role played by computerised components of everyday technology such as microwave ovens or photocopiers. Consider the way computers are still referred to in the popular media. They are often attributed human characteristics or given powers far beyond the currently possible, for example the reasoning and speaking computers frequently found in television programmes. It is easy to forget that the current generation of computers are purely reactive machines, albeit rather complex ones. They can only execute instructions they have been programmed with, including errors in-built by users and programmers who may not have foreseen every consequence of the interaction of algorithms they put into the software. As programs become bigger and more complex these cumulative errors seem inevitable. Most large commercial word processors, for example, will crash from time to time. The easier to use point-and-click user interface has its drawbacks too. It is very easy to click on something unintended and produce an unexpected outcome, which may prove irreversible. When this happens, it is common to hear even the experienced user complain that the computer ‘did something’. This apparent tendency to autonomy on the part of the machine is understandably unsettling to the user, and does much to maintain the feeling of mild unease the loss of control engenders in many users.

The time-scale of computer evolution means that the experience of adults and children varies very widely. Anyone born before 1970 will not have seen a microcomputer as a primary school child. In fact surveys of students entering higher education in the late 1980s suggest that few of them had any significant exposure to computers in school at all (see for example Blackmore 1992). In contrast todays children have never known a world without computers. To the present schoolchild a computer is a natural part of her culture, to be explored, played with or ignored as required. Children, unused to having mastery of much in their world, are not intimidated by the computer and its idiosyncrasies and are happy to learn here, as elsewhere, by trial and error. Parents and teachers, used to a degree of competence in dealing with the world around them, may still see the computer as a recent invader, unfamiliar and often unpredictable. The world has changed from a place where children thought they knew more than their parents into a world where they often really do. This is especially so where children meet computers in infant or junior school and parents do not use them either at home or in the workplace. The consequences of this generation gap could be more far-reaching than any created by the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Whatever this has done for the parent-child relationship, it has often shaken up the teacher—pupil dynamic, especially where computers have been placed in classrooms irrespective of teachers’ own perceived needs. The attitudes and experience of teachers and student teachers vary enormously. There are many teachers who have embraced the technology eagerly, and some who have integrated its use into the curriculum to enhance and extend children’s learning. There are many more, however, who are nowhere near this. The reasons for this lack of engagement are many, and usually interlinked. Lack of resources—computers and suitable software—are undeniably important. However, a shortage of appropriate training in the effective use of IT may be the critical missing link. Although levels of resourcing in schools continue to climb steadily, if slowly, levels of use of IT in the classroom do not (DfE 1995e). The following incident, witnessed in a busy classroom, is telling; a child of 9, previously regarded as none too bright, who had a problem with LOGO looked up at his teacher and said, ‘Miss…Oh no, you won’t know the answer to this.’ The fact that he was right was very sobering for his teacher. It is not that teachers knew everything before, it was just that they usually knew more about the task they had set than the average 9-year-old pupil. The presence of computers, and a statutory requirement to use them, has often changed that. The growth of large electronic databases, and the ease of access to them which optical storage media, such as CD ROM, and on-line services such as the Internet provide, are likely to accelerate this change as children gain competence in the ‘new literacy’ of the information age, and teachers risk being left behind. This may even force a change in the criteria which are used to accredit educational success.

When, ultimately, pupils have access to major archives at the touch of a button, what will be the value of memorised information? The majority of current assessment systems, particularly those administered on a national scale, rely heavily on testing the memory of pupils and their ability to produce certain facts on demand. Already this is of questionable value, given the rate of growth of knowledge. The ability to find, interpret and evaluate information is far more important, as are the skills relating to problem-solving and critical thinking. This skills-based, child-centred approach to learning has of course been at the heart of primary education in the UK for some decades. Recent legislation has tried to force schools away from this towards a more ‘traditional’ curriculum, which is governed by tests of students’ knowledge at regular intervals. The apparent prominence given to skill development has been undermined by the relatively minor role it plays in the formal assessment process. It seems that the political and technological tides are running in conflicting directions, and it is hard to see how this will be resolved. One thing is certain, however; the technological tide will not go away. It is driven by international commercial forces far greater than national politics or education policies. Perhaps the deciding factor will be that those people who will find gainful employment in the next century will be the ones who are flexible, independent learners capable of finding the information they need and applying it to the problem in hand. All these skills have been shown to be enhanced through the judicious use of information technology in the classroom. The school leavers who can simply write neatly, spell, and recite their tables will be joining the dole queues.

Schools may look to newly trained teachers to bring them up to date with computer use. However, data on the competence and confidence of trainee teachers suggest this cannot be relied upon. Youth or recent training are no guarantee of classroom expertise with computers, any more than maturity and experience preclude it. With the increase in time student teachers spend in schools, trainees look increasingly to qualified teachers for advice on the use of computers in the classroom. Since recent surveys suggest that up to 75 per cent of primary teachers do not make regular use of the computer in their teaching they are not in a position to help the newcomers to the profession (DfE 1995e).

How did computers get into schools?

From the earliest days of the microcomputer, there was a ground swell of opinion among some, often very vocal, educationalists and politicians that computers in schools would be ‘a good thing’. Not surprisingly, they had different views on why that might be so. Interestingly, the first UK government initiatives to put computers in schools were not from the Department of Education and Science, as it then was, but from the Department of Trade and Industry. Computers would fill the world of work, so children had better learn about them; computer studies was born.

The lobby of educationalists which saw computers as deliverers of curriculum content, via drill and practice software that would in part at least replace human teachers, was small in the UK and gained little credibility in schools. However another lobby of pro-computer educationalists took a very different approach. The most well known is probably Seymour Papert, the inventor of LOGO. He believed that the use of LOGO would revolutionise education. This computer language, which may look pretty arcane in today’s world of computers driven by mouse clicks, was a piece of cake compared to anything that had gone before. It opened the world of computer programming to children. They could make the computer do things they wanted it to do, starting with drawing and moving simple shapes. This may seem very tame to todays computer game acolytes, but in its time it was pretty heady stuff. It is one measure of the impact of LOGO that it remains the only computer language ever to have been referred to by name in the UK National Curricula.

Opening up this new world of personal expression and empowerment to children was going to revolutionise the classroom; it was even predicted by some to lead to the end of schools. Papert and his followers underestimated the ability of schools to resist change. Computers were absorbed and their use controlled. Whether or not LOGO ever was the tool to change the face of education beyond recognition is debatable. One thing is certain; it never got the opportunity if only because in mainstream schools no one ever had the money to provide enough machines to have children all sitting using LOGO, or any other software, day in and day out. Even though the UK government education departments spent some £189 million on IT between 1981 and 1994, and the money spent on computers has at least been matched by school and parent funds, 1995 still found us with only one computer for every eighteen children in the average primary school. The advent of the truly personal portable computer is likely to make a significant impact on this situation in the near future. The value of these machines in schools has been shown unequivocally by the National Council for Educational Technology’s national pilot evaluation, funded by the DfE (Stradling et al. 1994). The smallest and cheapest are equivalent in price to a new bicycle or electronic game system. There are already indications that where parents are aware of the contribution these machines can make to their child’s education, and the school cannot provide one for exclusive individual use, some of them are buying a portable for their child to use in school. In time, the problem of inadequate central provision of computers is likely to be overtaken by the personal ownership of portables by the majority of pupils. Schools will only need to supply machines for those unable to provide their own, rather as in the case of calculators today.

We have been promised by many pundits since the early 1980s that schools would never be the same after the information revolution, but this has not happened yet. Political change in the shape of the National Curriculum, and changes in teachers’ terms of employment have done far more to affect the day-to-day world of someone who has been a schoolteacher or pupil during the 1980s and 1990s. However, computers are slowly and surely invading every classroom. The support for computers in schools in the UK, especially as provided through local education authority advisory staff during the 1980s and early 1990s (before their recent decline) promoted a computer-based pupil-empowerment culture. This is still present in UK schools; it is even embedded—albeit somewhat disguised—within the National Curriculum Information Technology Capability requirements, which are a statutory part of the curriculum for all pupils aged from 5 to 16. The requirements dictate that pupils must have exposure to the computer as a tool: learning to use it, for example, to communicate effectively and to collect, handle and interpret data. Knowledge of these powerful processes can be very effective in the development of so-called higher-order thinking skills, as later chapters will discuss. Using these processes can promote flexibility and independence in the learner.

By law, teachers have to teach IT, which is given the status of a separate subject in the National Curriculum. Although IT can be taught as a separate subject, and certain elements often are, there is in addition a requirement to incorporate its use into the curriculum ‘where appropriate’. Whether teachers feel sufficiently well resourced or competent to do this is another matter. In 1995 the DfE proudly announced that 90 per cent of teachers had had ‘initial awareness’ training in IT. They were quieter about the fact that 75 per cent had had nothing more. It would be an over-simplification to suggest that shortage of computers and software were the only reasons that children are not having more experience of information technology in schools. (There are instances where a single computer can support an activity, as evidenced here in Chapters 2, 3, 6 and 7.) But whilst there has been an effort to supply resources and basic awareness training to teachers, there is still little information readily available on what constitutes valuable computer use in educational terms, and even less on how we may recognise the positive outcomes of these experiences. Word processing is the most common use of computers in schools by a long way, yet this can all too often mean typing in a story written by hand so that a child has a neat copy with correct spelling. It is hard to see what revolutionary learning gains the child may make as a result of this experience. Computer use alone, without clear objectives and well-designed tasks, is of little intrinsic value. It is entirely reasonable that many teachers are sceptical about computer use in the absence of sound evidence that it is of proven value, or clear guidance as to what that value is.

What do computers do best?

It may be helpful at this point to sketch some of the main uses of the computer, and categorise the types of activity they might support, particularly in the classroom.

Handling information

Computers are very good at searching, sorting and displaying information in a wide variety of forms. Text, numbers, pictures, sound, animated sequences and now even video can be stored and manipulated using a computer. Moreover, because they can do this manipulation very fast, very large collections of information can be handled.

This information might have been provided by a publisher or collected by the children in the school, collectively or individually. It could be as diverse as a commercially published collection of pictures, text, and sound clips on the exploration of space, a story written by a child, or a collection of weather data made by a class. The advantage of having the space exploration information on a computer is that it can be searched and viewed according to the interests and present needs of the user. This makes it easier for you to find relationships between items, make your own cognitive links, and so build personal knowledge. In a well-designed title it should also be possible to extract information and incorporate it in a composition of your own. It may even be possible to add information to the existing collection, so personalising the database. However, what you can do with the information will depend very much on the quality, quantity and format in which it is available. It must be remembered that someone has made decisions about what to include and what to leave out of the collection, no matter how large it is. These can imply a variety of value judgements, real or apparent. Informed use of the material, as with any other information source, must take this into account. Chapter 5, ‘IT and thinking skills in humanities’ and Chapter 10, ‘Computers in the classroom: some values issues’ explore these ideas further. Chapter 11, ‘New technologies’ also explores the use of IT tools and resources in the development of children’s learning skills.

In the case of a story the advantages are rather different. Clearly there is a relatively small amount of information, so the speed of handling is less important. However, a story in computer-readable form can be reworked: edited, extended, reordered, with very little manual effort and without compromising the appearance of the finished work. The impact that this facility can have not only on the development of children’s writing but also on their thinking is explored in Chapter 8, ‘Thinking about writing’. New possibilities are presented by the current generation of computers, which can be used to view, produce and manipulate high quality images, as well as words and numbers. The processes of developing and refining an idea are as relevant when working with visual information as with written text. Processes previously only found in the studios of artists and designers are now practical in the school room. Chapter 9, ‘Working with images, developing ideas’, considers the role of IT in visual education.

The weather data reveals another aspect of the flexibility of use possible when information is stored in a computer. The measurements can be collected by the computer, using sensors, over a period of time even when the children are not there. They can be viewed in tables or a variety of graphs to help find patterns and relationships. (Chapters 6 and 7, ‘Investigating science’ and ‘Developing graphing skills’ examine some practical possibilities.) Through telephone links these data can be swapped with measurements made in other schools, possibly even in other countries. In addition, systems which monitor the prevailing weather and control heating and ventilation accordingly can be modelled. (Chapter 11 examines the use of E-mail to swap data and Chapter 3 looks at sensing and control systems.)

Reacting to the user

As well as simply handling information, and displaying it, computers are also good at responding to input from a user. If a child is reading a book and comes across a word she does not know, she has a number of options. These include skipping over it, trying to sound it out, asking someone what it is, referring to a dictionary. Text on screen can be programmed to offer some of these alternatives directly without leaving the task; clicking on a word may give you the pronunciation, or a definition, or both. It may also offer you alternative information on other topics related to that word. These are very simple examples of responses to the user. At the other end of a very wide spectrum are the complex microworlds, from adventure games to simulations of nuclear reactors. Here, as a process unfolds, the whole course of events can be changed as a result of choices made by the child. This can provide an ideal stimulus for the development of skills relating to problem-solving and genuine collaboration. This area is explored in Chapter 2, ‘Developing children’s problem-solving: the educational uses of adventure games’.

In simple terms then, the computer offers access to information in a flexible format, which can be manipulated and explored by the child. It also offers scenarios where events are altered as a result of a child’s actions. These aspects of flexibility and responsiveness are at the heart of the legitimate role of the computer in the primary classroom. These activities can provide tools to think with, frameworks for making the abstract tangible; this is a theme developed in Chapter 4 ‘Understanding and using variables in a variety of mathematical contexts’.

Another variety of reaction to the user is offered by the drill and practice type programs which can tell the child immediately tha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1: Where are We and How Did We Get Here?
• Chapter 2: Developing Children’s Problem-Solving
• Chapter 3: Children’s Learning Using Control Information Technology
• Chapter 4: Understanding and Using Variables in a Variety of Mathematical Contexts
• Chapter 5: IT and Thinking Skills in Humanities
• Chapter 6: Investigating Science
• Chapter 7: Developing Graphing Skills
• Chapter 8: Thinking About Writing
• Chapter 9: Working with Images, Developing Ideas
• Chapter 10: Computers in the Classroom: Some Values Issues
• Chapter 11: New Technologies: Multimedia and Going Online
• Chapter 12: ...and where Might We End Up?
• Appendix of Software
• Bibliography