Thank you for the paper Mary.
Last year we managed a projeect which gave 110 teachers in 55 primary
schools multi-media portable computer... for them to 'own". In some cases
this was both of the teachers in samll rural schools. Our experiences
were therefore different from yours, but I hear many echoes.
Along with the computers we also gave 55 digital cameras (much more of
which some time).
We tried to run with thinking away from the computer:
Virtual literacy festivals and providing an "authors-on-line" experience.
However this statement rang bells for me:
"Participants tended to describe what children produced with particular
kinds of technologies (e.g. writing a story using word processing
software), rather than to focus on how the use of a new medium affected
the process, or why the change was pedagogically worthwhile"
In the "activity system" that is currently the UK Primary school system
what seems to be valued in the "community" are:
- be a good record keeper: make sure you are seen to do that which
authority requires of you
- not being too innovative
My teachers were keen to tell me how the gift was used, and were keen to
tell me how the gift was used for specific evidence of "the results" were
used in terms of the currently most prominent statutory requirements upon
them. There was no incentive to report beyond.
However the digital camera had a major effect in some of the schools.
There was a clear new tool which allowed children to report on and
communicate ideas in different ways and they were changes which the
teacher did not overtly report about... but are there for the observer to
see....children reporting on science, and environmental studies by means
of photograph annotated by text is not common practice before the digital
camera has enableds the practice. It leads to a different relationship
between the activity as the activity is carried out ("what can be used a s
visual evidence?" becomes a question), and the reporting of the activity
after the activity is carried out.... "what is the balance between writing
and picture?.
I want to return to ask the teachers why they did not report this shift as
a major change in their practices.
Luddism is problematic in so many ways. I recall in the late 60's and 70's
as printing moved away from hot meta,l standing shoulder to shoulder with
striking Print workers. Today there are far more jobs in the printing
industry. There is far more editorial material, there are far more
"better", "cleaner", intellectually taxing jobs in the generation of the
printed word than there ever where in the old days. The union chief at the
particular printing house is now far happier as a rural postman.
I was attracted to socio-cultural approaches to addressing issues because
it eschewed determinism and didn't necessarily see the prefix "tech" as
pejoritive. It recognised a seamless web between humans as toolmakers and
tool users shapping their world.
When Orvill and Wilbur made their historic leap, I do not imagine for one
minute that they thought the consequence of their actions there would be
fresh asparagus in the shops in Wales in at Christmas ( and consequences
on agriculture in Zimbabwe). The changes which information and
communication technologies may have on classrooms may not be the outcomes
that bureaucratic evaluation of development programmes even begin to
envisage.
Martin
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