It
is an interesting time to be working in education. I am a professional teacher.
I used to teach in an inner city school and now I run and tutor at the Kip
McGrath Education Centre in Southampton. As a result, I follow news stories related
to education with considerable interest.
Let
me quote from the BBC website from 28th December, 2010 - A million UK children 'lack access to computers'
It
is warning that many of the UK's poorest children face being severely
educationally disadvantaged by their lack of access to technology.
My
secondary school took delivery of its first computers two days before I
left. I remember it because my tutor, Mr Rivel, was head of maths and
keen to show off these new machines to us. We wondered what place they
had in education. Why on earth would a school need such things?
At
that time (early 1980s), the idea of home computers for other than the geeky
was laughable. We carried heavy bags full of text books crammed with information
that we needed to remember. Among the
things that we learned was to draw conclusions and make a reasoned argument. We
wrote essays, drafting out on paper first and then used dictionaries to check
for spelling mistakes before completing the final version. Computers were
the things of science fiction.
Now
many Schools can’t even afford textbooks and a great many lesson plans are
based on material found on the Internet. This is not a problem specific to the
UK. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed that schools should abandon the
idea of text books entirely since California (not a poor state) cannot afford
to buy books. Please see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8090450.stm
So
is the loss of heavy text books a problem? Apart from the burden of
carrying them, what else have our children lost? Have maths problems or
equations changed and got out of date? Has history changed or how science
works? No, not in any fundamental way.
With
the Internet as a source of educational material how do we ensure that the
quality of that information is maintained? Many children go automatically
to Wikipedia; a website that can be updated by anybody. There is no guarantee
that this or any website is accurate. News sites can be skewed by opinion
so we need to teach our children how to identify bias or spot the more subtle
advertising. Of course, there is always a concern regarding online
safety. Many parents are not equipped to protect their offspring from
trojans, malware or viruses. Another concern is the illegal downloading
of music and video material. Under the Digital Economy Act that could result in
loss of Internet access for a household. This then takes us back to the
first point of children disadvantaged by a lack of access to computers.
There
can be no doubt that there are a lot of really great educational resources
available on the Internet. At my education centre, I will soon be
delivering online tuition as well as face-to-face tutoring. However, I am
as reluctant to follow Arnies’ proposal of abandoning text books as I would be
in giving up on teaching children handwriting in favour of typing.
So,
is online learning a bad thing? No, clearly not. It can be the only way when
the teacher and the student are physically separated as happens in
some parts of the world. Computers can, with the correct educational software,
be a great teaching tool - I use them daily for this purpose. However, there is something to be said for the old approach of using textbooks and that something
is that they work. Undirected learning from the Internet tends to be
hijacked by social email and the use of Facebook. Old and new can and should be
combined and, with a teacher or parent helping, do work. However, the textbook
is not dead even if our schools can no longer afford them. Education is about
learning and teaching is about using multiple tools to help the student learn.
With
educational stories never far from the headlines, I am sure that I will have a
great deal more to say.
Until
then, I hope you enjoy the rest of the holiday.
Jan Long
Centre Director
Kip McGrath Education Centre (Southampton)
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