“Cultural change needed to exploit ICT in schools”

I agreed with a lot of what Elliot said in her article- in many (likely, most) schools in Australia, there is an abundance of ICT resources, especially computers; but these are more often than not being ignored and more ‘traditional’ teaching methods and practices are still reigning supreme. What she said about education being “…notoriously slow to innovate” is, I think, quite true- education, essentially, has followed the same mould for many years (read: decades)- but is this necessarily a bad thing? Perhaps the reason education and teachers themselves are slow to embrace new ideas and technology is that the old ways are still effective?

Elliot is right when she says that many teachers are not confident or comfortable with modern technology, and this is why they do not integrate it into their curriculum as much as they could; I think this factor has more to do with it’s relatively limited use on the classroom, as many of these teachers probably recognize the potential positive aspects of ICT, but have no idea where or how to begin to introduce it into their lessons.

Despite so many schools in Australia being equipped with computers and other IT paraphernalia, the studies Elliot quotes show that a large percentage of these are not often used, and students do not have free access to them. Just because a classroom may have a few computers in it does not mean that they are being USED, and used effectively. When I was in primary school, we only used computers for playing games when we were good. (But when I was in year 6, we got a new principal who banned all the fun games and only let us play the boring, ‘educational’ games, like FRACTION ATTRACTION!! I think what adults see as Educational-Yet-Fun and what children see are often two completely different things, and this gap really needs to be bridged in order for me to be more won over by the prospect of greater IT use in schools.)

I’m kind of skeptical about her linking the fact that many teachers who use ICT in their classrooms for longer periods of time are more often described as “creative” or “fantastic” or “great organizers”. This seems like some slightly dodgy logic; how does high amounts of ICT use in the classroom correlate with good classroom management skills?
I understand teachers’ reluctance to fully embrace the ICT available to them; sometimes computers do not seem as ‘real’ as paper or books or boards- when reading over this article, I had to fight the urge to print it out and highlight with a real highlighter, but I guess we all have to accept that ICT is something that will definitely not be a passing phase, and must be harnessed and used for meaningful learning experiences.

But with great power comes great responsibility…