Despite the Department of Education and Skills outlining a purchasing framework for schools investing in information and communications technology (ICT), many in the education sector claim successfully integrating technology into the classroom is done on an “ad hoc” basis throughout the Republic, often relying on “one person to take the lead” in individual schools.
Adrienne Webb, who is on the national executive of the Computers in Education Society of Ireland, says that often an individual can be left to act as ICT manager, tech support and teacher “all in one”.
“There are a lot of schools up and down the country where a teacher who happens to express an interest” in ICT are handed over complete responsibility for it, she says.
Webb, who is quick to add that she’s “blessed to have a principal who invests in maintenance” of technology in St Michael’s Holy Faith Secondary School in Finglas, was reacting to recent UK research which claims that hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of technology is under-utilised in schools and of little use to a pupil’s education.
The research, carried out by Nesta – an independent charity which promotes innovation – stated that while technology can “offer opportunities to transform learning and teaching”, there was “no strong evidence of this transformation taking place”.
‘Very disappointed’
Here in the Republic, Clive Byrne, director of the National Association of Principals and Deputy Principals (NAPD), says he has heard of several school inspectors who have been “very disappointed” with the use of available technology such as interactive whiteboards in the classroom.
“They have the technology there but often it isn’t used as much as it could be, either through reluctance of the teachers to use it in case it won’t work when the inspectors are in, or they’re not comfortable with the technology,” says Byrne.
There is perhaps a feeling from some teachers that technology can end up "replacing them", admits Simon Lewis, principal of Educate Together National School in Carlow town and founder of primary education innovation website Anseo.net. Lewis, who uses computer games, programming languages and tablet PCs among various other IT-focused education tools each day in his school, isn't alone in thinking that way.
Cristina Luminea, who created maths-based educational iPad app Numerosity, talked to several Irish teachers while researching her product, and says: “At the moment, teachers are used to teaching in a certain way and I believe a lot of them are actually afraid that they will be replaced by technology and that might be the reason for being resistant to it.”
Both Webb and Byrne were keen to stress though that there is a “huge amount” of teachers using technology in the classroom in innovative ways and to the benefit of students.
DCU multimedia lecturer Dr Miriam Judge, who has conducted a great deal of research in the area of ICT in education, says teachers can’t be blamed for having some trepidation about involving PCs, tablets or other devices during their classes.
She says that if something goes wrong with one or more of those devices during a 40-minute class, it leaves teachers spending “half their time” trying to figure out a technical issue.
“Teachers don’t have a system of support whereby they feel confident that the technology is going to be repaired and it’s going to be in perfect working order,” she says.
Experiment
While there is funding out there to provide technology in schools, Judge says the big issue is a lack of assessment when it comes to “total cost of ownership, what it actually takes to use that system, maintain that system and keep it functioning”.
Angela Rickard, a lecturer in NUI Maynooth’s education department, thinks “supporting good teaching and supporting teachers to have conversations with each other about technology” is vital in the next few years to gain real value from ICT spending.
Having a more open, national discussion on the topic, she says, can “transform learning”. Rickard adds though that quite often due to pressing demands on the teacher’s time there’s “an absence of an opportunity for teachers to experiment, explore and think about how they will do things differently”.
Judge is keen to add that there is a “huge vacuum” in terms of policy for getting value out of technology in the classroom. “The headline policy,” she adds, “should be what do we want technology to do in schools? Technology has to be more than just substitution; it has to be better than that.”
She continues: “To a large extent that vision has to be driven by the department. It has to be there to enhance the whole teaching and learning experience. What does school in the 21st century need and what does school in the 21st century look like? I don’t think that discussion has really taken place at a national level.”
For its part, the Department of Education and Skills says that “between 2009 and 2011, €92 million in ICT infrastructure grants was provided to schools” which were asked to prioritise equipping each classroom with a computer and digital projector, after which they could “spend any remaining balance on other ICT equipment and software, according to local needs”.
The commitment to roll out 100MB broadband to second-level schools was also reaffirmed in the recent Budget, with a further 200 schools expected to be connected “by September of 2013”.
In terms of training teachers in how best to involve technology in the classroom, it points out that “face-to-face courses, online courses, blended learning courses and summer courses” are available through the department-backed National Centre for Technology in Education.
The assistant general secretary for education and research with the Association of Secondary Teachers Ireland, Moira Leydon, says that when looking at the findings of the Nesta report, direct comparison between the levels of IT spend and integration in UK schools versus their Irish counterparts is somewhat unfair.
European counterparts
“We’re in a radically different situation to the UK – first of all we haven’t had year-on-year investment in ICT in education for the last decade,” she says, adding that in the Republic there was a “burst of spending around the year 2000”, followed by “nothing” until 2009.
Indeed, the NAPD’s Byrne says that back in 2000 “schools were given equipment and training, then that was almost as if it was ‘job done’ ”. Leydon admits it’s now a case of “playing catch-up, but it has to be done intelligently”.
Bizarrely, that decade gap between large-scale funding may be of ultimate benefit to the future ICT infrastructure of Irish schools, says Judge. She reveals that some European counterparts are starting to look upon the Republic “with envy” as we have no widespread “legacy systems” to maintain or replace throughout primary and secondary institutions.
“Technology has moved on,” she says. “So in a strange, kind of perverse way because of our lack of investment in infrastructure over the last eight to 10 years, we actually probably have a very good opportunity in Ireland to do something really exciting and really different over the next three or four years.”
New frontiers ‘It’s not just enough to buy technology and place it in schools’
Back in 2009, Peter Creedon, principal of St Aidan’s Primary School in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford, chose to buy a number of iPod Touch devices instead of laptops as teaching tools for his students. The touchscreen interface, along with longer battery life and greater mobility, were the key reasons behind the decision.
“Once the devices are in the classroom all the time as opposed to being in a separate computer room, they become a teaching tool and I think over time they’ll become an integral part of what’s expected to be in the classroom, the same as pencils, pens and erasers,” he says.
Since that initial investment, the school has gone even further and introduced iPads, with St Aidan’s pupils from four to 13 using them on a daily basis.
“Definitely at the beginning there was some trial and error,” admits Creedon, adding that since those initial hiccups the technology has been a major boost with several principals from other schools paying a visit to Enniscorthy to view how they’ve integrated touchscreen devices into their daily routine.
For four to six-year-olds the devices are used by Creedon’s staff to reinforce “literacy, numeracy and learning objectives”. However, he says that as students grow older “we try to introduce them as learning tools where they can access their information in a digital form, be that images, a piece of video from YouTube or a website where they can get information”.
Asked about recent United Kingdom research claiming technology is often under-utilised in classrooms, Creedon agrees that “it’s not just enough to buy technology and place it in schools”.
He continues: “Schools need to decide what they’ll actually use them for, they need to prepare to upskill teachers and pupils in their use and to realise that they underpin the curriculum.
“They don’t become the curriculum.”
