Learning Technology

I've been involved with the use of IT in teaching science since before the ark - my earliest activity in 1974 was carrying a huge teletype up two flights of stairs to hook it up to an acoustic modem which, in turn, gave access to some clunky simulations on the Birmingham City Treasurer's mainframe. And I've been involved ever since, through the Micro-Electronics Education Programme (I'm showing my age - that must have been in 1984). But like many colleagues I have been disappointed by the limited direct impact - it just hasn't had the revolutionary effect that some of us thought it might.

 The Secretary of State has now espoused the cause, and I'm ambivalent. On the one hand, I do believe that ICT can improve the learning experience, and can be a very creative way of promoting learning. And the C part - communications - can enable access to learning experiences that would otherwise not be available - for example in rural areas. I recently visited Australia and saw the up-to-date version of the School of the Air, involving broad-band satellite links for 491 children back to their classes in Alice Springs. Very impressive; not perfect, but pretty good.

On the other hand, I read in the New York Times that there is a backlash - even Steve Jobs said, earlier this year, that "computers had, so far, made surprisingly little impact on schools'. There are schools in Silicon Valley (Waldorf School of the Peninsula, for example) that discourage the use of computers. Why is this? Well, Alan Eagle, who works at Google, says 'At Google we make technology as brain-dead easy to use as possible. There's no reason why kids can's figure it out when they get older'. There is a an increasing feeling that the nations that have invested most heavily in educational ICT, Korea for example, simply pressure young people through rote learning and late night cramming. 

To quote Rudy Crew, a former New York City schools chancellor, 'Certainly, there are opportunities r=that can be captured through technology, yet at the heart of education is the teacher-student relationship.'

I think we always knew that, and I hope the Secretary of State does not rely on his new understanding of IT to the exclusion of face-to-face learning.