|
|
Beyond the blackboard
An interview with Professor Rosamund Sutherland on the InterActive project
By Clare Richards |
Ros Sutherland
InterActive Education Project |
It's September - Back to School - and business is brisk in stationery shops all over the country. But will school children in the future still use pens and paper, rulers and compasses? Or will most of their learning be mediated through ICT? The InterActive Education Project: teaching and learning in the information age, based at the Graduate School of Education in Bristol University, has spent two years looking at how children learn with new technology. Their results demonstrate exciting possibilities for the use of ICT in the classroom but also suggest that there are times when traditional tools work best. |
Over 50 teachers in 10 schools and colleges in Bristol and South Gloucestershire have been closely involved with the research. They were released from their teaching duties for 15 days over two years to develop and evaluate ways of using ICT in the classroom. Professor Rosamund Sutherland, one of the directors of InterActive, explains their innovative approach: "We've worked in partnership with teachers and that's kind of new. Teachers design new learning experiences in collaboration with us and then together we analyse and evaluate what happened using video captured in the classroom. We call this a design team approach."
One of the aims of InterActive was to get a better understanding of how the use of widely available software, such as PowerPoint, Word, Publisher and Excel, and of under-utilised software in areas like dynamic geometry and music composition contributes to learning. The project has also been investigating how e-mail and the web - now more widely available in schools - can be used most effectively. "We've worked in creative ways, and we've found that there are ways in which you can use ICT to enhance learning in the classroom," says Rosamund. "We've got strong results on ways of using dynamic geometry to help children learn mathematics and a way of using a package called WordRoot to help children learn spelling. And we've got similarly encouraging results on some quite simple ways of using drop-down menus in Word to help children write in a foreign language."
The range of work undertaken is quite breathtaking so here are just a few examples (for details of all the Subject Design Initatives visit the InterActive website).
Simon Mills, a teacher at Teyfant Community School in Hartcliffe, likes orange Smarties but often gets the feeling that there are fewer orange ones. He put this to the test with his Year 4 class. The children tested the colour variation in 29 tubes of Smarties and used Excel to analyse the results. They then used Publisher to display their work and e-mailed Nestlé with their results. Unfortunately, and perhaps rather short-sightedly, the company did not take advantage of this original research and only sent a fact sheet back, so the mystery of the scarce orange Smartie endures.
  
Pat Triggs leads a double life, performing both the roles of mild-mannered university researcher and part-time Viking. She worked with Emma Scott-Cook, a teacher in a primary school in an Education Action Zone. They wanted to do something that would develop the children's writing and decided to use e-mail as part of the children's project on the Vikings. The children could e-mail either Freya or Thor - both roles played by Pat - with their questions about Viking life and history. Pat explains the motivation behind the idea: "One of the aspects of writing that we wanted to focus on was the increased awareness of how the notion of a reader actually shapes what the writer does and also that if you give developing writers models of writing then they quite frequently follow them. So we thought that if we could provide a 'real person' that they could write to that that might help them to get the sense of how you adjust your writing depending on who you're writing to."
Marnie Weedon, a teacher at Fairfield School, used the dynamic geometry environment of Geometer's Sketchpad with her Year 9 pupils to help them make conjectures and develop mathematical proofs. Pupils worked on laptops in pairs over the course of four lessons. "I am convinced the pupils developed a deeper mathematical understanding. We also experienced working collaboratively, and they are very proud of the products of their hard work and enthusiasm," says Marnie.
Despite the successful uses of ICT in InterActive, Rosamund is careful to point out its limitations: "There's absolutely no guarantee that just because you've used ICT in the classroom that you're going to have enhanced learning. In fact, we've got other cases where the teacher has devolved too much of the responsibility for learning to the computers." Rosamund cites an extreme example where a history class was instructed to use the web as a source of information about the Renaissance and a couple of students spent quite a while investigating Florence in the United States. The science design team, Rosamund explains, are facing the complex issues associated with subject-specific software. What is lost and gained when teachers use simulation software? What learning is lost when we remove the messiness of experiments?
 |
So do these innovative uses of ICT in the classroom mean that technology may be able to replace teachers in the future? Rosamund is emphatic in her response: "No. The learning and the knowledge that we want children to engage with at school doesn't exist separately from a social community, which means that in order to learn something you have to be within a social community. Kids might create their own social communities around something to do with popular culture at home but in school they're very unlikely to build one around learning about the Renaissance, for example. Teachers are the people who do that, and I can't really see that changing."
The project is coming to an end in six months but Rosamund is very keen to see the work continuing: "We want to keep the community going so that the capacity that's built around those particular research projects continues. We want it to be sustained in the schools that we've been working in. We want to be able to expand it locally, and we're working more closely with Bristol LEA on that, and then on the national level too." |
As a result of their work with InterActive, 11 teachers have been awarded Best Practice Scholarships by the DfES, which is enabling them to take their ideas further. At a time when we are asking more of our teachers than ever before, the InterActive project is a tantalising glimpse of what is possible if they are given the time and support to think beyond the blackboard.
The project's partners are: City of Bristol College, Colston's Primary School, Cotham School, Easton CE VA Primary School, Fairfield High School, Filton High School, John Cabot CTC, Sir Bernard Lovell School, St Michael's CE VC Primary School, Teyfant Community School.
Links
For more information about the InterActive project visit their website, which contains full details of all the subject design initiatives.
www.interactiveeducation.ac.uk
The InterActive project is part of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP), which is funded nationally and managed by the ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council).
Teaching and Learning Research Programme www.tlrp.org
Economic and Social Research Council www.esrc.ac.uk
September 2003
|
|
