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OPENING PANDORA'S TOOLBOX
How digital tools empower learners and teachers
6-7 November 2002, National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford
Overview by Keri Facer, Head of Learning Research, Futurelab |
How might digital technologies empower teachers and learners? This was the question that the second Futurelab conference at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford sought to address. The unique Futurelab combination of speakers and delegates from the fields of educational research, practice and policy and from software, games and telecommunications industries provided a fertile ground for debates about the nature, quality and role of emerging digital technologies for learning.
A radical vision of the future of telecommunications and digital tools was portrayed by several speakers. Professor Jim Norton (UK Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology) painted a picture of universal broadband access, of rapidly increasing processing power and of ubiquitous technologies in the none-too-distant future. Professor Michael Wilson (UK & Ireland Office of the World Wide Web Consortium) described the progress of the influential W3C organisation in attempting to transform the world of information into a world of useful and usable information through the development of the 'semantic web'. Together, these presentations provided an understanding of the technological developments we should expect and prepare for in the educational field over the next 20 years.
A key theme of the conference, emerging from this back-drop, was that of the impact of mobile, personalised technologies. As Jim Norton suggested that the future lay with mobile technologies, and questioned certain computer giants' readiness for these developments, Professor Mike Sharples (University of Birmingham) provided an insight into what this future might look like for learners and teachers. He described projects carried out at the University of Birmingham enabling students to gather, record and analyse data on handheld devices. Similarly, Tony Wheeler (TAG Learning) contentiously argued that the time might have arrived to move away from centralised ICT suites, towards 'tiny bits of technology' owned and used by teachers and children. Jo Booth (National Museum of Photography, Film and Television) demonstrated through her photography projects that the having a feeling of 'ownership' over technology, and the freedom that digital technologies gives to make mistakes without fear, can enable young people to develop confidence and motivation.
The theme of the empowering nature of digital technologies was not restricted to mobile technologies. Norman Johnston (Fleming Fulton Special School, Belfast), for example, highlighted another move away from the traditional ICT suite. He demonstrated how simple modifications to hardware combined with great teaching and inspirational determination, could enable young students with a range of physical and cognitive disabilities to achieve results on a par with mainstream students in science. Carl Gilbertson and his team (Merseygrid) similarly demonstrated how effective results can be achieved not only with the 'whizz bang' of next generation technology, but with well-thought-out applications of already familiar tools.
Rather than simply focusing on the potential of digital tools to enable learners and teachers to do the same things 'but better', an important theme of the conference was looking at the ways in which the use of digital technologies can have a transformative effect. Martin Freeth (Futurelab) pointed to a dramatic transformation in communications, arguing that digital technologies now were enabling a 'democratisation' of media production - enabling smaller teams, young people and those without million pound budgets to participate in the processes of film-making. The panel discussion that followed, led by Professor Diana Laurillard (DfES), emphasised that these tools were challenging traditional notions of expertise.
The powerful outcomes of collaboration between media professionals, young people and digital technologies were highlighted by the presentation from James Durran (Parkside Community College, Cambridge) and Dr Andrew Burn (Institute of Education), describing a long-running animation project in Cambridge. The work produced by children during this project indeed challenges the idea that children's work can only ever be measured against 'children's standards'.
This work emphasised further that the use of digital tools does not simply 'speed up' activities, but potentially transforms them. Burn and Durran described the range of different 'literacies' that children were developing through their animation work. Similarly, Paul Hollins (BTL Group) provided an insight into the types of literacies children were developing through computer games played outside school, and Donna Burton-Wilcock (Immersive Education) explored how animation enables different ways of 'reading' texts.
These concrete examples of the development of different sorts of literacy through the use of digital tools were complemented by the research workshop run by Professor James Wertsch (Washington University in St Louis, USA). In the workshop, Wertsch introduced the audience to a powerful theoretical framework for considering how the ways in which we think and work are transformed according to the tools - whether language or animation packages - that we use. Similarly, Terry Marsh (consultant in digital media strategy) pointed out in her workshop how digital tools enable us to see and represent complex ideas in a manner impossible without them.
These transformations in the relations between teacher and taught, between expert and amateur, and in the ways in which we represent and understand the world were highlighted as key themes of an impending digital revolution in learning.
However, Professor Angela McFarlane pointed out that at present our assessment systems continue to lag behind these transformations. In an incisive critique of criticisms of the teaching profession, McFarlane argued that teachers necessarily aim to support children to achieve success within our current assessment system. While the assessment system continues to privilege individualised learning, paper-based assessment and 'content' testing, she argued, it is unsurprising that some of the potential of digital technologies to empower teachers and learners is yet to be realised.
In response, Chris Jones (QCA, on behalf of Ken Boston) described the longer term objectives for the assessment system, in which recognition would be given to changing notions of literacy, and the transformative impact of digital technologies would be acknowledged. For the time being, however, he asked for teachers, researchers and designers to work in partnership with the QCA to evolve new forms of assessment. This theme of partnership was also taken up by Stuart Lee (University of Oxford), who provided a cautionary tale of failure in the design of tanks (by the navy!) during the first world war. If we are to get the assessment systems we need, if we are to get the tools we need, he argued, as did many of the conference delegates - we need to find ways of bringing the different parties together in the design of digital technologies.
OPENING PANDORA'S TOOLBOX did just that. Bringing together teachers, lecturers, software designers, policy makers, telecommunications industry, there are bound to be tensions - between the reality of life in schools under our current assessment system and the visions of the future that we are offered in case studies of inspirational computer use, and between the experiences of children playing powerful computer games and the levels of investment in ICT in schools.
What emerged from the conference, however, like 'hope' at the bottom of Pandora's Box, was an awareness of the potential of digital tools to enable empowering learning for learners and teachers, and the determination to find ways to achieve this.
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