{"id":1586,"date":"2010-12-13T09:12:24","date_gmt":"2010-12-13T13:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/?p=1586"},"modified":"2012-09-27T10:37:25","modified_gmt":"2012-09-27T14:37:25","slug":"what-is-reasonable-to-expect-from-information-and-communication-technologies-in-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edutechdebate.org\/computer-configurations-for-learning\/what-is-reasonable-to-expect-from-information-and-communication-technologies-in-education\/","title":{"rendered":"What is reasonable to expect from information and communication technologies in education?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Two months ago a heated discussion<\/a> took place in Educational Technology Debate after an article by C. Derndorfer described what seemed to be a hopeless outlook for the Peruvian OLPC program. What Derndorfer described were not problems with a particular ICT strategy but the daily problems you face when trying to improve an educational system in which many things have been failing at the same time for decades. <\/p>\n

You simply don\u2019t get three hundred thousand well educated, passionate, committed teachers overnight, nor you overhaul ninety thousand schools in two or three years. This article describes one possible way to face the challenge of improving the Peruvian public education system by using a mixed strategy: <\/p>\n

Let children and teachers have ICT available and explore it in a non threatening way, try not to get involved in the quasi religious discussions between those who \u201cbelieve\u201d in the Wintel approach and those who interpret Negroponte as an enemy of teachers, and face what happens in the real world where there is no easy way to 100% Internet access, there is no money to give every child one computer, there is no way to \u201ctrain\u201d teachers who haven\u2019t been properly prepared to teach, and teachers\u2019 salaries will not improve overnight. <\/p>\n

This article outlines the considerations for implementation of massive computing access projects aimed at systemic low impact long term improvements through what we call “Technology Resource Centers”, where teachers and students may have access to ICT and additional technologies at their own pace and in their own terms.<\/p>\n

Several authors: Holt<\/a> (1983), Kozol<\/a> (1993) and Conroy<\/a> (1987), have suggested that school education, as we know it, has lost its value as an instrument in the development of the individual. With different arguments and perspectives, they point out how the interest in processes and methods has shadowed the required genuine concern for the personal growth of students, transforming the educational system in a purposeless organism where everybody pretends: Teachers pretend to teach by delivering information according to established methods, students pretend they are learning by passing tests requiring repetition of the information received and society as a whole pretends this is good. <\/p>\n

Some authors, Perelman<\/a> (1992), Holt<\/a> (1964) even suggest that there is no possibility for improvement in school education and the only hope for improving it is to replace traditional education with a completely new mechanism. <\/p>\n

Gardner<\/a> (2000) is more hopeful, he advocates for an Education aimed to the teaching of truth, beauty and morality and questions theorists who focus in the instrument rather than the purpose of Education. What can we do in an educational system where even the traditional is poorly performed and we are not able to attain even the modest aspirations of traditional educational settings? How can we prepare our new generations to cope with the challenges of the XXI century in a system where many want us to believe good teachers are the exception, infrastructure is poor and society as a whole seems to have been ignoring Education (in spite of discourse and writings about it) for decades? Guggenheim\u2019s movie \u201cWaiting for Superman\u201d seems to be documentary aimed to demonstrate how poor is the American Public Education but has been severely criticized<\/a> (also read R. Weingarten<\/a> and G. Stager<\/a>) for its lack of objectivity and biased point of view. <\/p>\n

A few days ago I attended the opening of a demo center where a supposedly ideal ICT4E setting was showcased. It was really impressive in terms of the technology available: Fully wireless connected computers of all sizes, interactive networked whiteboards, etc . etc. I really got some really good ideas and information of what is available, my only objections were: <\/p>\n

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  1. It was all conceived based on children and teachers as consumers of content; and<\/li>\n
  2. In order for the wonderful things described to happen great teachers in charge were needed. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I am not against consuming good contents, my concern is children usually learn more when they are producing contents than consuming it, unless it is really interesting for them, which takes me to the ideas R. Bao and myself wrote about in 2004: the lack of meaning crisis<\/i> in the educational system. A crisis happening in spite of a well thought sensible curriculum designed and validated to be a tool for development of competences preparing children to succeed in the XXI century. Some specific characteristics define that meaning crisis: <\/p>\n

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    1. Students do not perceive the educational system, as useful, or having a purpose, and conclude education is meaningless. In many cases, failing students regard formal education as useless. <\/li>\n
    2. School curriculum requires what Spiro<\/a> calls oversimplification (Spiro, 1990, 1991, 1992) or reductive bias in order to be taught in the required periods. The result is that students usually forget most as soon as they pass tests. This can be easily demonstrated by asking simple questions about any school subject to adults who have been disconnected of the school environment for a while.<\/li>\n
    3. Teaching methods emphasize memorizing and repeating information. Even when teachers try to change these methods they are not concerned about giving students reasons why it should be important for them (the students) in their real lives to acquire any piece of knowledge. Teaching should emphasize a key factor in knowledge construction: cognitive flexibility (see Boher-Mahall paper<\/a>)<\/li>\n
    4. The constructivist approach, which aimed at transferring control from teachers to students and set the foundations for learning in the students\u2019 willingness to learn, can also fail if the teacher lacks the required knowledge to become an informed guide in the quest for knowledge construction. An ignorant constructivist teacher can be as negative as a well informed behaviorist one as described by Cromer<\/a> (1997).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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      Let\u2019s try to describe the educational reality of Peru: There are 8.6 Million students: 75% public, 25% private; 80% urban, 20% rural, 200,000 children attend almost 10,000 one teacher schools. Of a total o 490,000 teachers 65% are public school and 35% private; 83% urban and 17% rural. There are 75,000 Schools, 75% Public 25% Private; 52% Urban, 48% Rural. Pre-K & K coverage is 66.3% . Primary (1-6) coverage is 94.4 and 76.5% for secondary school. According to 2009 reports almost 80% children 12-14 have finished primary school (6th grade) and over 60% of 17-19 youngsters have finished school (11th grade). In all cases the trend is growing. <\/p>\n

      In spite of the above the Latin-American average coverage ratios, quality remains an issue: Peru rated among the worst in Math reasoning and Reading comprehension in 2001 PISA (the last reported year available). Irresponsibly, Peru opted out of PISA and returned in 2009 (results to be reported in 2010). A census evaluation applied to 180,000 teachers in January 2007 showed 62% were below primary school level reading comprehension with 27% at 0 level; also, 92% were below primary school level in Math reasoning. Since then US$ 300 Million have been spent in teacher in-service education. <\/p>\n

      Test results on entry evaluations to teaching positions show dramatic increases since then. DIGETE alone has trained more than 80,000 teachers but it should be easy to understand these teachers need much more than training, they need to be completely re-educated. The Peruvian response is being developed in several simultaneous fronts:<\/p>\n

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      1. We have developed a curriculum structure<\/a> which aims to develop skills and competencies and is not based in specific items of certain disciplines to be covered (Ministry of Education, 2004);<\/li>\n
      2. A massive initiative to improve quality of teachers is being put in place;<\/li>\n
      3. Information and Communications Technology is being distributed to students and teachers to saturate the system with learning and teaching tools that are simple to use and available in a nonthreatening environment and long term.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        The 1 to 1 One laptop per Child approach has been described and is being discussed globally, I will try to describe what we call the Technology Resource Centers as a first step towards 1 to 1 that allow us to get the benefits of ownership without waiting for the computers, connectivity and great teachers to arrive. We will show how this strategy can actually be a leap to better teaching and learning. <\/p>\n

        The whole idea was born one day Walter Bender<\/a> entered my office and transformed my personal computer in a Sugar based machine just inserting a memory stick and downloading his Sugar interface into it. He actually transformed my workstation into his computer. <\/p>\n

        I wondered what would happen if we could find a way of making a child\u2019s own personal computer to reside somewhere in such a way anytime they got hold of any computer it may turn into his or her computer. By then we had already developed the \u201cportable Internet\u201d: a 2GB memory stick with enough content from educational portals to give primary teachers and students the actual feeling of navigating the web without connectivity and more educational contents than would have been expected for their whole lives under their \u201cnormal\u201d conditions. <\/p>\n

        We had also found that children loved to share interesting things like building artifacts with Lego bricks, making videos or solving puzzles (with or without computers). Of course these are not new ideas but would allow us to share resources in such a way that four children working with one Lego robotics kit and one laptop will have the feeling of having all the computers they need. The same thing happens when one teacher shares with the class some interesting contents using one laptop and a multimedia projector for as many as 36 children: Everyone feels they have all the computers they need. <\/p>\n

        The whole idea was to allow children and teachers to get involved in the construction<\/a> of personally meaningful artifacts, whether they are graphic presentations, video pieces or computer programs as advocated by Seymour Papert. <\/p>\n

        Our approach to the project differs with most educational computing initiatives which have not necessarily helped answer the basic question: What purpose does Education serve for students? If we take into account the way Viktor Frankl (1959) quoted Nietzche in his book Man’s Search for Meaning<\/a>, “He who has a why to live for, can bear with almost any how”, we may conclude that the educational system fails because it is more involved in supplying how’s and lacks the ability to provide why’s. <\/p>\n

        This also reinforces the findings by De Volder and Lens<\/a> (1982), because seeing education as instrumental in reaching personally significant goals in the future is providing students with an answer to the basic question of why should I learn what I am expected to.<\/p>\n

        Systematic observation of schools\u2019 outcome shows that, even for students with high GPA, most of the information acquired during school years, is lost and has to be relearned when it becomes necessary. During a series of meetings with parents associations, school boards, teachers training seminars and educational computing conferences from 1988 to 2001, Becerra and Bao (2004) attendees were asked some simple questions about concepts, facts and figures that are part of the school curriculum. The result was invariably they did not remember anything. On the other hand, skills and information not lost by students share certain characteristics:<\/p>\n