The PC learning pod

Life

In the days before the Internet became ubiquitous, PC manufacturers used to always say that education was the main reason that people purchased home PCs. No doubt that has been skewed by the widespread availability of broadband which is now clearly the killer app for PC purchases.

In fact, while there used to be constant discussion in the media and other forums about how we could get PCs into classrooms and give the next generation a headstart in our increasingly technology-focused world, the debate no longer seems to attract headlines. In fact, many people working to bring technology into the education system suggest that they are frustrated that the government hasn’t got technology in education firmly at the top of its agenda. “There’s extraordinary frustration at what’s happening in the sector,” says Ken Wickstone, managing director of Diskovery, a major reseller of education software. “Most schools have the PCs and some software but they are not using it in any meaningful way. It’s only being used for special needs as they have the budgets – other than that it is just clusters of enthusiastic teachers around the country.”

A more intelligent classroom
One such enthusiastic teacher is Noel Malone, headmaster at Coláiste Chiaráin in Limerick, who recently became the first teacher outside the US to received the Dell Technology Award for Teacher Excellence. The school, which is located 12 miles outside Limerick near the Dell plant, has swelled student numbers in the five years Malone has been principal, thanks to an innovative approach to integrating technology into the curriculum based on a model called the Intelligent Classroom.

“The project has never been about the computers themselves,” says Malone. “The problem in a lot of schools is that it has been about the technology but we’ve been focusing totally on the pedagogy. It’s about making it fit where appropriate.”

Between a donation of 50 laptops from Dell and a special discount purchasing scheme, all 500 students and staff have been equipped with portable computers which can access a school-wide wireless network. As Malone puts it, wireless access has really liberated the use of technology and really allowed it to come into the classroom.

A curricular team, headed up by vice-principal Gerard O’Sullivan, examines different subject areas and looks at software and other resources that can integrated into teaching at the community college. The school has also invested heavily in digital video recording and editing technology which has enabled it to create its own materials. It is currently recording teachers carrying out science experiments which are then stored on the network and can be downloaded by students as required. “The students can pull them down to their own laptop,” explains O’Sullivan. “That means when they are revising they have their own virtual teacher to refer to. If we had higher speed connectivity we could open that up to other schools in the morning.”

Wired broadband required
This is one of the problems that Coláiste Chiaráin faces – it currently has a satellite broadband connection provided by Digiweb, however to take the project to the next level and open it up to the wider community and other schools Malone and O’Sullivan feel a wired broadband connection is needed. However, Eircom has not yet upgraded the local exchange.

According to Wickstone and other educationalists schools like Coláiste Chiaráin are most definitely the exception rather than the rule. In most schools PCs are lying idle in computer rooms for a large proportion of the time – hardly something that fits with Ireland’s stated goal of becoming a technology powerhouse in the information economy. And when they are used it is as part of a “computer class” rather than being integrated into the teaching of other subjects.

IT as a cross-curricular tool
As anyone with even a smattering of experience using a PC knows, it can be an incredibly powerful academic tool. The challenge for teachers is how to integrate that into the curriculum – particularly for secondary level teachers who are under pressure to prepare students for exams – while parents are wondering how they can support their children at home.

“The problem for parents buying software for home use is that most of the specialist education publishers are not much bigger than cottage industries,” says Wickstone. “There is a finite market for them to address – maybe 30,000 schools in the UK and Ireland. As a result they price their products high for a single licence and then discount it for schools. A one user licence can cost EUR*100 but a 20-user licence will cost just EUR*300 because they know the schools would pirate it, if it was not good value.”

Need for compelling computer apps
The risk for parents investing EUR*100 in educational software for use at home is that the products are competing for their kids attention with computer games, the outdoors and a myriad of other distractions. As Wickstone puts it if it’s not interesting they won’t do it – whether on screen or not. In 2002, the UK government awarded schools in England Stg£330 million over four years in e-Learning Credits (ELCs) that they can use towards the purchase of software. The knock-on effect of this is that the price of software from UK publishers has been creeping up.

Software with a local focus
This raises another issue – the lack of educational software that is tailored for the unique requirements of the Irish school curriculum. One initiative to tackle this is being organised by TeachNet, which is funded by the Citigroup Foundation with the assistance of Atlantic Philanthropies and the Ireland Funds and has recently received significant support from Microsoft as part of its Innovative Teachers Programme. TeachNet has funded 46 teachers to create individual elements of a library of online curriculum content that can be used by teachers in any school in the country.

With the tagline , ‘By Teachers, for Teachers’, TeachNet provides teachers in primary and post primary schools with the skills and support to disseminate their curriculum resources, all of which are based on the Irish school curriculum, to colleagues around the country. With the imminent roll-out of broadband to all schools this project will take on an even greater significance with teachers seeking Irish curriculum resources,” says John Hurley of TeachNet.

According to Kevin Marshall, academic programme manager with Microsoft Ireland, the next step is to create a teachers portal that will allow teachers to share successful experiences in the classroom. It has also worked with TeachNet to create two CD ROMs which provide examples of best practice as well as videos and learning resources which give teachers ideas on how to introduce technology into the education process.

Other initiatives Microsoft is involved in is the localisation of the international Partners in Learning programme. It includes curriculum material for schools as well as a special discount scheme to provide software for donated PCs received by schools. It also plans to introduce a peer coaching model so that teachers can be supported in their efforts to integrate technology into the curriculum. “We are in early discussions on how that would work, but there is a lot of interest in it,” says Marshall. “It doesn’t have to be the technology guy in the school, it could be the geography or history teacher, but we will give them the skills that will allow them to coach others. Those people in turn can go on to teach others – it is all about sustainability.”

Philanthrophy plays a role
While major players in the IT industry clearly have a vested interest in exposing students to technology, there is clearly a significant philanthropic element at play here as well. While the government seemed firmly focused on getting PCs into classrooms when it announced its Schools IT 2000 initiative in the late nineties, the issue seems to have slipped down the agenda. In private, the tech companies are very frustrated because they know what is possible but there does not seem to be the will to get the tools into the classroom and support their deployment. On the record a Dell spokesperson simply says “there are a lot of elements and pieces in place but they haven’t slotted into an overall programme.” It is certainly significant that the groundbreaking work at Coláiste Chiaráin has been done with absolutely no funding from the Department of Education. According to Malone the school was recently assessed as part of a new schools evaluation programme and he is hopeful the Department will soon buy into his vision. In its defence the government’s Schools Broadband Access Programme, will have put a broadband connection into every school in the country by the end of this year. Clearly, they hope that by using resources on the web teachers will be able to overcome the scarcity of Irish-specific software. For its part the National Centre for Technology in Education (NCTE) is looking at web resources that can be used as part of the curriculum – something that teachers under time pressure are unlikely to have time to do themselves unless they have a particular interest in technology. “Teachers require a plug-in scenario,” says Wickstone. “If they spend 40 minutes at this they want to clearly see what they will achieve. If you just point them to the Web with no guidance it’s too time consuming and many of them don’t have the skills. The way they see it is why should they have to learn Latin in order to teach geography.”

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