At the moment I am administrator of an eun community with more than 150 members from all over europe. One of the topics we are discussing is the use (or not using) of ict in the classroom.

I am curious at the experiences of the members here.

In Britain we have a major problem with persuading teachers to use computers in the classroom. It is not a problem with them using a computer. Most teachers now have a computer and many use the internet to prepare materials for the classroom. What they have a problem with is using the computer in the classroom. I have been involved in training teachers to use computers in the classroom since the early 1980s. The major problem concerns their fear that the students will know more about computers than they do. They are also very concerned that the computers will go wrong during the lesson.

Research shows that it is possible to train teachers to feel confident with computers in the classroom. However, it is necessary to constantly update that training. After a gap in time the teachers tend to think that once again the students have left them behind with knowledge about ICT (students sense this fear and usually tend to exploit it).

In my view INSET training should be about giving teachers the skills necessary to update themselves about technological change. One way of doing this is by helping them become involved in the process. For example, helping them create their own website. I think it is a scandal that students are leaving PGCE courses without this ability.

Another important factor is the provision of good technological support in the classroom. I have yet to teach in a school where this has been done to a satisfactory standard.

I see nobody has volunteered yet for this part of the forum. If you are still looking, i'm volunteering!

Thank you Sir you have the job!

Thank you!

I have done some research with history teachers and trainee teachers and in spite of recent improvements in the computer to pupil ratio in British schools, access still emerges as the biggest problem. There seems to be a general antipathy to having to book computer suites for an 'all singing, all dancing' ICT special lesson, and it would appear that history teachers would much prefer to have access to use computers within ordinary lessons, through the availability of computers in designated history classrooms, electronic whiteboards or data projectors. Unfortunatley, a lot of recent investment in ICT seems to have gone into equipping schools with more computer suites. Where there is high ICT use, it seems to correspond to where teachers have easy classroom access, and can just use ICT as a regular component of many lessons rather than the occasional 'set piece' in the ICT room.

The other big constraint is time to think of what to do with all the resources now available through ICT. The most precious resource in education at the moment is teachers' time. In the UK teachers are deluged with admin and testing and government strategy documents, and do not have enough time to integrate ICT into their lesson plans.

Investing money in more whole class projection facilities for classroom use of ICT and giving them more free time to explore the potential of ICT would be big steps forward.

Being the person in my school resposible for the integration of ict i agree with what you write. When we had computerrooms the use was very low. Some years ago we decided to equip every classroom with at least 4 pc's. The use has gone up! For 2004 the plans are to give every teacher the use of a laptop in his classroom. This combined with the use of two multimedia projectors I hope will increase the use even more.

It is now very common - normal, even - to see a networked computer with a projector or other display device in most classrooms of English primary schools. The UK government has set targets for ratios of pupils to computers, but not yet given strong guidance about getting them into different subject areas. So this scenario of a computer available for every class is still rare in secondary schools. Here the teachers of ICT (as a distinct subject) and business studies too often keep the technology to themselves.

But it need not be so. The funding of ICT in England is generous enough for any school to be able to have now, or in a few years at most, a computer and projector in every classroom. I know of one secondary school that has already done this - and am sure that more will follow.

For most teachers and students, most of the time, a room full of computers is not ideal or helpful. In the UK we invent new orthodoxies and then become prisoners of them - so we talk about "computer suites" (they are just rooms with a bunch of networked PCs) as if they were the ideal, and get hung up on expensive interactive whiteboards (just an input device - you can do the same with a mouse). But the very important things (a display or projection device, sound amplification, a scanner and software to grab documents) - we easily miss these.

Most schools in the UK also spend a lot of money on licences for proprietary software (the Microsoft tax) rather than look seriously at open source alternatives. This is really dumb - people say that the proprietary stuff is the de facto standard. But it's only that if we accept it as such. Things like www.OpenOffice.org are not only free to the school - we can ensure that all students and parents have them for free, too. The future of software programming will be heavily influenced by talented people in India and China, who have the skill to develop open source applications, but cannot afford to pay the MS tax. If we choose not to pay this annual levy, we can use the money saved to buy systems that we can run on robust free software - and we need pay only for the maintenance of these systems.

I am optimistic that the secondary schools in England (and other countries) will catch up with the very good things that are happening in our primary schools. Subject teachers are still fearful of the technology. At a conference, Marco once asked: "Is there a need?" (For innovative use of ICT in teaching.) Then gave the answer: "Yes, but we have to create it..." We have begun to do this - let's not stop now.

on this Forum, in the French speakers entry,
Serge Pouts-Lajus' paper on evaluating ICT efficiency in schools :

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=86

DL

The idea of circumventing the microsoft tax appeals to me. Together with some colleagues ( i always misspell this word, could somebody correct it for me please ) I have looked at alternatives for the common used software like Word etc.

The alternative i was impressed by was staroffice. Sadly we had already payed for our licenses so this came to nothing. However we keep it in the back of our minds.

I agree that we as 'technical persons' tend to keep the technologies to ourselves, but i also find that 'teaching' colleagues the use is a very long task. Worthwhile and very necessary, no mistake about that, but very time-consuming. This combined with the other tasks i have, eg teaching is many a time to much.

Furthermore i feel that sometimes schools invest to much money in nice looking devices, such as interactive whiteboards, instead of what they really could use, like ,as Andrew wrote,a scanner or software to grab documents. This i feel is now slowly changing. The novelty is waring of. However with the rise of dvd, the demand for copiers has already started!!!

Hi,

I'm the World Education Lead for the OpenOffice.org community. Couple of points. OpenOffice.org is the code base for Star Office. The only significant differences between OpenOffice.org and Star Office are:

Star Office has some minor additions such as a filter for Wordperfect and the Adabas database that OpenOffice does not include. These are relatively unimportant unless you have a specific need for them.

OpenOffice.org tends to get released with bug fixes more often, usually Star office comes out after a release of OO.o. So OO.o 1.1 was later released as Star Office 7. Both of these are significant improvements over their earlier versions. OpenOffice.org 2.0 is roadmapped for the end of 2004 and will again be very much improved.

OpenOffice.org is a community as well as a product with potential for pupils to take part in aspects such as Quality Assurance, provision of clip art and templates, marketing, CD-ROM distribution. What better way to learn than to take part in the World's biggest Open Source project.

Star Office belongs entirely to Sun Microsystems and is controlled by that company. Sun has influence in OpenOffice.org development but the ownership lies with the worldwide community. More than 20 million downloads so far.

OpenOffice.org can quite happily live alongside MS Office so why not install it on your network anyway and provide choice? OpenOffice.org 1.1 can save directly to pdf files which MS Office can't and the Drawing programme OO.o Draw is worth having for school use on its own. And you can burn as many CDs as you like for pupils to use at home without messing about with vouchers and such like. This is socially responsible because it helps prevent piracy and enables pupils without the means to buy commercial software to have the same access to ICT as everyone else with the same software available at home and at school. Government social inclusion policy.

You can download OpenOffice.org from www.openoffice.org. There are also links to CD-ROM distributors if you have a slow link. The OpenOffice.org Education Web page is at www.openoffice.org/education/schools.
You can subscribe to the OpenOffice.org education mailing list by sending a blank E-mail to educ-unsubscribe@marketing.openoffice.org
There is good support at users@openoffice.org for technical queries and its all free. You can also suggest improvements and "must have" features at discuss@openoffice.org.
There is also certification available suitable for OpenOffice.org at www.theINGOTs.org

If you want to find out more about FLOSS in general come to the FLOSSIE conference at the London Institute of Education 18th February. More details at http://www.schoolforge.org.uk/flossie/conference200402.html

Hope this helps.

Thank you! After the x-mas holidays i will certainly have a talk with my colleagues about this.

I agree wholeheartedly with your position on the "microsoft tax" situation. We (a London Primary School) are replacing our MS Office Products with Star Office v7.00, as and when new machines are installed.

We have one interactive whiteboard which, again I agree, had quite a lot of novelty value. The kids certainly like operating the larger image, but I am now quite firmly of the view that the same effect can be had by equipping classrooms with a projector and decent wireless mouse/keyboard, thus effecting a saving of about GBP1,500 per class.

I worked for several months in 2002-2003 as a NOF trainer, having been called in by one of the NOF training providers to pick up the loose threads that were left over as this massive training programme neared its conclusion. I visited around 20 different schools as a NOF trainer. What I saw was often appalling. Although all the schools had reasonable ICT facilities, they were mostly underused. Access to ICT suites was the major problem. The suites were often hogged by the ICT and Maths departments. Humanities subjects were usually left out in the cold.

Training teachers in some of the basic tasks that featured in the NOF programme was impossible, for example:
1. Web access was often subject to over-sensitive filtering systems that locked both teachers and students out of dozens of useful websites. One local education authority had blocked access to Google, making it impossible for teachers to use this excellent search engine. Sites containing certain words and phrases were often blocked. I found, for example, that a site seeking homes for retired racing greyhounds could not be accessed (a teacher was looking for pictures of dogs). Why? Probably because the phrase “black bitch” occurred several times in the texts at the site, which I was able to verify on my home computer.
2. One of the NOF tasks required teachers to evaluate a software package relating to their subject area. I am a Modern Foreign Languages specialist, and in at least one third of the schools that I visited there was not a single MFL package to evaluate, so I had to get the teachers to evaluate packages that I had installed on my laptop. An alternative would have been to evaluate an MFL website, but MFL websites mostly fall short of the standards that I expect and usually lack the facility that is indispensable in MFL, i.e. listen/record/playback, a facility that has been available on humble tape recorders since my early teaching days in the 1960s and on CD-ROMs since the 1980s! Most ICT suites that I used with my trainees were poor in terms of their ability to playback and record sound, for various reasons: soundcards being incorrectly set up, lack of headphones and microphones, lack of plug-ins, etc. I am currently contributing to the MELTEC project at Kingston University that offers training in multimedia for teachers in all subject areas: http://www.meltec.org.uk
3. The materials provided by the training provider for whom I was working were often incomprehensible – both jargon-ridden and abstruse. I therefore began to create my own training materials, which are located at http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/lspinset.htm and based on the more comprehensive materials at the ICT4LT site: http://www.ict4lt.org

You can read about the successes and failures of the NOF training programme at:
OFSTED Report, April 2002: ICT in schools: effect of government initiatives. See the OFSTED website, http://www.ofsted.gov.uk, where the report can be downloaded in PDF format: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/publications/docs/19.pdf

ICT can make an impact in education if it is handled sensibly. Concrete evidence is difficult to obtain, but a recent report on a research study conducted by BECTA, ImpaCT2, has produced a large amount of data: http://www.becta.org.uk/research/impact2. The ImpaCT2 study claims that schools using ICT in the classroom get better results than those that do not, and that there is a significant correlation between the use of ICT in MFL and good examination results. However, I remain sceptical about the way the data has been interpreted in this study. I am inclined to agree with Angela McFarlane, Professor of Education and Director of Learning Technology, Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, who writes: "What we do know, whether from personal experience as teacher or learner, or as the result of 20 years of research into the question, is that ICT has an impact on learning, for some learners, under some conditions, and that it cannot replace a teacher. We know that a key factor in impact at school level is and remains the teacher, whose role in managing and integrating the ICT-based experiences learners have with the rest of the curriculum and culture is vital and probably always will be." Times Educational Supplement, ICT in Education Online, 26 April 2002, p. 17.

It's just the very last years that I started to work with e-learning. In Virtual School I have participated in the development of international web-pages within different history topics and during the last years I have also built up the History Department site on our school’s intranet. Since I'm responsible for the History Department I'm quite concerned about developing a local curricula for History that tries to establish e-learning within the History subject.
Our senior management understands the need but we have other problems; the general lack of skills. When computers first were introduced to schools in Sweden it seemed like every school wanted to be part of the new technical development. The schools spent a lot of money on computers, printers and programs but the vaste majority of the teachers did not get any training on how to use the computers. Many of the teachers in the schools today does not have basic ICT skills and there is no sign of any drastic change in the nearest future. Even a bigger problem - The Universities with Teachers Education has nothing about the web, web design and how to use computers as a pedagogic tool in the classroom.
I have ideas about why it's like this, but the question of more importance today is - how can we change this?

Anders asks: How can we bring about change? The NOF programme to which I referred in my previous posting was supposed to bring about change, but in spite of the large amount of money that was spent (230 million pounds of National Lottery money) it was not as effective as expected. To quote from the OFSTED report on NOF that I cited in my previous email:

"NOF training remains unsatisfactory in its overall effect. Training in around six out of every ten secondary schools and half the primaries has so far failed to tackle adequately those issues relating to the quality of ICT use in classrooms." (p. 3)

Many teachers who undertook NOF training were negative about unreliable online systems, lack of technical support and lack of online tutor support - it was found, for example, that a single tutor could not handle more than 30 trainees at one time. It was also found that face-to-face training was essential at some stage in a training course - preferably early on and at the end of a course. Providing everything online was unpopular among trainees. To quote again from the OFSTED report:

"The NOF training is most successful where senior managers in schools take an active interest in teachers’ progress, where there is effective peer support, and where groups of teachers meet for part of their training. Teachers left to their own devices to use distance-learning materials in their own time rarely make the same headway." (p. 3)

I think the most important lesson that was learned from the NOF experience is that generic ICT training does not work:

"Unfortunately, the training often lacks sufficient relevance to individual subjects […]. For many secondary school teachers, the training materials do not sufficiently engage them or make them want to explore the application of ICT to their subject." (OFSTED Report p. 4)

ICT training has to be subject-specific in order to be effective, and it has to include a substantial portion of time devoted to pedagogy and methodology - a point that I underline in my recent article:

Davies G. D. (2003) "Perspectives on online training initiatives". In Felix U. (ed.) Language learning online: towards best practice, Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.

One of the subject-specific training providers, the Centre for Information on Language Teaching (CILT), reported a far higher success rate than the average, with very positive feedback from trainees. Let's face it: Who do you ask for advice about ICT and graphic design? An ICT-literate graphic designer, of course. Who do you ask for advice about ICT and Modern Foreign Languages? An ICT-literate modern linguist, of course - which is my specialism. Ask me about sound recording and playback, speech synthesis, automatic speech recognition, etc, and I'll give you an informed opinion of their possibilities and constraints and their pedagogical value in MFL teaching and learning. Ask an ICT specialist the same questions, and you may well be overwhelmed with irrelevant technological advice.

Regarding training teachers in website design: I wrote a couple of introductory modules (for Language Teachers), which I used in workshops organised by the Association for Language Learning:
http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/webintro.htm
http://www.camsoftpartners.co.uk/webcreat.htm
See also Module 3.3 (Creating a WWW site) at the ICT4LT website: http://www.ict4lt.org - it contains general advice as well as subject-specific advice.

Furthermore, it has to be recognised that the Web is not the panacea. It has serious limitations, especially in my subject area. We still need a hybrid approach - and probably always will. Above all, don't forget that the "e" in "e-Learning" stands for "electronic" in its widest sense, not just in the sense of online learning.

Good to see that this topic is something international!

I feel that the problems as described eg by Anders are international. For me it is also a reality. Nice hardware but not much people who can use it properly. I read a funny and relevant thing in the newspaper the other day; here in the Netherlands it is a 'hype' to buy home cinema sets. dvd player, big and state of the art tv etc. According to the article people buy them because they 'need' to have it but do not now how to use it. The possibillities were grossly underused and therefore it was in reality a complete waste of money. One of the salespersons interviewed compared it to buying a Mercedes and putting wooden wheels under it.

This to some extent is also true in education today, I fear.

Anders asked how do we bring about change? I do not have the answer but I noticed that 'traditional' teaching is not the answer. At the moment increasing skills of my colleagues is low priority for me, other things have to take priority first. But in between I help them on an individual basis. That is very time consuming but it really pays of. It has resulted in eg one colleague who did not know how to turn a computer on to become a regurlar user of email. I admit it is a small step but it is a start. I realise that by the time they know how to use the hardware etc is out-dated. Therefore I feel that ict in schools should not be state of the art, but fullly usable for the persons who have to work with it. Older software meets that criteria.

The NOF programme to which I referred in my previous posting was supposed to bring about change, but in spite of the large amount of money that was spent (230 million pounds of National Lottery money) it was not as effective as expected.

It's interesting (but at the same time discouraging) to see that we (Sweden) are not the only country who spends millions (billions) on computer related projects that does not work. Between 1999-2002 the Swedish Government invested 1.7 billion SEK (US $150 million) on a National Action Programme for ICT in Schools, ITiS (the Action Programme covered the pre-school class, compulsory school, special school, sami school, upper secondary school, municipal adult education and, during 2002, folk highs schools).
This Action Program put a computer in the hands of each participating teacher (about 70 000 teachers were offered a computer - that they got to keep after the project was done) and the teachers were instructed to form groups where ICT related tasks were supposed to be done. I know that a few schools and districts learned and produced good material, but the vaste majority took the computer, went to the obligatoric meetings and produced a report - with no more obligation! This was an expensive and very discouraging experience. One of the weakest part of this experiment was the fact that many of the co-ordinators responsible did not have basic ICT skills!!!

Graham brings up part of the answer to my previous question - we need to relate it to our subject -
ICT training has to be subject-specific in order to be effective, and it has to include a substantial portion of time devoted to pedagogy and methodology

and the training of teachers has to be done by individuals that are professional in the subject and "ICT-literate" -
One of the subject-specific training providers, the Centre for Information on Language Teaching (CILT), reported a far higher success rate than the average, with very positive feedback from trainees. Let's face it: Who do you ask for advice about ICT and graphic design? An ICT-literate graphic designer, of course. Who do you ask for advice about ICT and Modern Foreign Languages? An ICT-literate modern linguist, of course - which is my specialism. Ask me about sound recording and playback, speech synthesis, automatic speech recognition, etc, and I'll give you an informed opinion of their possibilities and constraints and their pedagogical value in MFL teaching and learning. Ask an ICT specialist the same questions, and you may well be overwhelmed with irrelevant technological advice.

Another important factor that Graham points out is the individual technical (and subject) support -
"It was also found that face-to-face training was essential at some stage in a training course - preferably early on and at the end of a course. - - - The NOF training is most successful where senior managers in schools take an active interest in teachers’ progress, where there is effective peer support, and where groups of teachers meet for part of their training. Teachers left to their own devices to use distance-learning materials in their own time rarely make the same headway."

Marco also points out the importance of individual support but he writes about one big problem - Time!
At the moment increasing skills of my colleagues is low priority for me, other things have to take priority first. But in between I help them on an individual basis. That is very time consuming but it really pays of.

Graham writes that online support was not very popular -
Many teachers who undertook NOF training were negative about unreliable online systems, lack of technical support and lack of online tutor support - it was found, for example, that a single tutor could not handle more than 30 trainees at one time. It was also found that face-to-face training was essential at some stage in a training course - preferably early on and at the end of a course. Providing everything online was unpopular among trainees.

The conclusion for me is that ICT in school should be subject related. The training should be done by professionals within the subject who has the necessary ICT skills. To be able to make this work it has to be done on an individual basis...
Will this not take a lot of time? Can it be done in a different way?

Anders asks: The conclusion for me is that ICT in school should be subject related. The training should be done by professionals within the subject who has the necessary ICT skills. To be able to make this work it has to be done on an individual basis...
Will this not take a lot of time? Can it be done in a different way?

It does take time, of course. But it is time that is worth investing. I found on my visits to schools that sitting with a small group of 5-6 teachers for 2-3 hours and guiding them step-by-step through basic ICT tasks I could achieve a great deal. I only used my online materials to reinforce what I had taught them, e.g. they could access the online materials as a reference source and email me with questions if necessary. Once they had acquired the basic skills, every trainee had to produce a lesson plan, showing how they intended to use ICT in the classroom. They were then encouraged to put their plan into action and report on its successes and failures.

Yes, I agree that it is a very effective way of integrating ict skills. But there is of course also a financial side to all this. Schools get money to buy nice and shiny machines, but perhaps no money for teaching people how to use them!

How is this arranged in other countries?

Yes. Cross-curricular IT (or ICT) has failed because the resources to train and motivate teachers were never provided. The main resource is time and it is in very short supply.

Computers are great for motivating pupils but when pupils are arriving in Year 7 already saying "Oh no not another powerpoint presentation" this advantage is lost.

A good rule of thumb for education is that the only reason to teach something to somebody is that it is useful to them or it is interesting. "Some Mandarin told me to teach it" is nothing like a good enough reason!

IT is about motivating pupils. If they are keen to learn how to play a game they will spend all the time it takes to learn it. The same thing applies to any computer-based learning - if it is exciting they will make the effort ; if it is just a task then they will only see the difficulties.... The government is full of experts on shooting down imagination in mid-flight without prior warning.

We have to subvert (creatively adapt) the Mandarins' plan.

Derek writes:



Do a search with Google for the phrase "death by PowerPoint". I found 2420 occurrences! In my 25-year teaching career I have also had near-death experiences with overhead projector slides and film strips.

The main problem in the UK, as I see it, is that the government regards ICT as the panacea. They've wasted money on ICT. We have the National Grid for Learning, BECTA, the e-Learning Strategy Unit, Curriculum Online... ...and what have they achieved? There's nothing special about ICT. It is just as easy to bore the pants off someone with ICT-based materials as it is with chalk and talk. ICT in itself is not exciting - v. the spectacular crash of the UK E-University (UKEU) last month: it simply failed to recruit. ICT has a role to play, but ICT-based materials have to interest, stimulate and provoke in the same way as all other types of educational materials.

But ICT continues to encroach upon education, while we see schools cutting muscilessons, sports activities and offering modern foreign languages only up until age 14.

We've seen it all before, i.e. technology as the panacea. Oppenheimer sums it up:

In 1922 Thomas Edison predicted that 'the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and [...] in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.' Twenty-three years later, in 1945, William Levenson, the director of the Cleveland public schools' radio station, claimed that 'the time may come when a portable radio receiver will be as common in the classroom as is the blackboard.' Forty years after that the noted psychologist B.F. Skinner, referring to the first days of his 'teaching machines,' in the late 1950s and early 1960s, wrote, 'I was soon saying that, with the help of teaching machines and programmed instruction, students could learn twice as much in the same time and with the same effort as in a standard classroom.' (Oppenheimer 1997:45)

The cycle began with big promises backed by the technology developers' research. In the classroom, however, teachers never really embraced the new tools, and no significant academic improvement occurred. (Oppenheimer 1997:45)

Oppenheimer T. (1997) "The Computer Delusion", The Atlantic Monthly 280, 1 (July 1997): 45-62:
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/97jul/computer.htm

Graham says

How true that is! Ever been to a conference where the speaker has an all singing, all dancing Powerpoint which they then proceed to read to you?

It is equally the case when Derek says


Teachers have all been 'trained' in the use of ICT to some extent but in a majority of cases have failed to be inspired in what can be achieved by students and their teachers whilst using ICT. Most teachers have not been brought up in the 'digital age' and continue to find it a very alien and scary environment.

Perhaps those of us who do feel inspired are partly to blame in that we have not yet managed to share our feeling of inspiration, or the expertise that we have gained through our continuing interest, with fellow educationalists.

Time is certainly a key element - it takes time to achieve competence in using any (box of) tools which is, after all, what ICT is. Perhaps we are all so busy extending our own competence that we are not helping colleagues in acquiring a level of competence that they feel comfortable about showing off in a classroon situation!

Children, however, do not have the reluctance or fear that adults have when confronted with technology. They take it on board and are inspired to be creative in amazing ways. We need to help teachers to accept that they can actually learn from and with their students - I do this every time my classes work on computer based tasks!! It's a case of 'how did you do this - show me - show the class', or I may say 'this is another way of doing this - try it and see what you think'.

We (nerds?) all have a responsibilty to actively support colleagues and children in their use of ICT. It is easy to blame others for the 'death by powerpoint' syndrome but if we really feel that ICT has a significant part to play in education perhaps we need to get up and help a bit rather than simply criticising!

I feel that the negative reactions from many teachers towards ICT are mainly justified … simply because the official government advocates are simultaneously quite hostile to good teaching, because good teaching requires empowered, well-paid, fairly independent teachers.

Sometimes ICT fails because politicians try to solve budgetary problems with supposedly educational means. I read about the 'Arnold Schwarzenegger Math Program' in Newsweek many years ago (around 1982 … but I've lost the original reference). In the New York public school system it was very difficult to recruit maths teachers. I don't know exactly why, but I'd put my money on poverty, poor resources, inadequate back-up - in other words, all those issues which politicians would like to avoid. The 'solution' was to fund the writing of the 'world's best math course', written by outside academics, which would be made into a series of TV programmes, hosted by someone the kids of New York would see as a role model: Arnold Schwarzenegger. These programmes would then be broadcast to each classroom from the principal's office via the school's closed-circuit TV system, and, hey presto, there's the problem solved. Guess what, it didn't work!

The other problem I've come across is the desire to ignore the limitations of ICT in specific educational situations. "In Search of the Virtual Class" (Tiffin and Rajasingham, RKP) is an excellent book on ICT-based education. Here are two accounts from the book which highlight what I'd call the limitations of ICT:

In the 1970s, the Brazilian government shipped TVs out to the Amazonian jungle and started educational TV courses without qualified teachers (because there weren't any). Tiffin once witnessed a discussion about equilateral triangles in which the majority of the class won over a dissenter who maintained that the sides of such triangles had to be straight lines. No, said the majority, can't you see that they're curved (like the TV screen)?

In the 1980s there was a similar scheme in Mexico, where rural pupils, who didn't have access to proper schools, could follow the national curriculum via educational TV programmes. One year the pupils who performed best of *all* schools in Mexico (conventional and 'TV'-based alike) came from one of these groups, who lived in the shadow of a volcano. This meant that they could only receive sound on their TVs, no pictures. It seemed, in other words, that the rich visual medium of TV was actually inhibiting education, not promoting it.

Now I use ICT a lot on my courses - but I emphasise the 'C' (communication), rather than the 'I' (information). The question is: how do you encourage critical and open communication between people so that they learn things? It strikes me that this is essentially a pedagogical question, not a technological one. But in my experience you can only start to use ICT effectively when you start with this question.

David’s latest contribution to this discussion reminds me of a personal experience. In 1982 I was invited by The British Council to give a paper at the first major South African conference on computers in education at the University of Stellenbosch. At the time I had developed a few programs for modern foreign languages on a Commodore Pet microcomputer, which I had been using with my students at a college in London.

When I arrived at the conference venue I immediately noticed that representatives of the Control Data company were there in force, promoting the mainframe-based PLATO computer assisted learning system. Academics from the USA associated with PLATO had the lion’s share of the keynote papers. I was one of the few presenters working with microcomputers. Control Data had pulled out all the stops. The conference was clearly a hard sell for PLATO. The reason behind this was that the then (pro-apartheid) South African government had perceived a mainframe-based learning system as a means of improving education and had installed PLATO on an experimental basis in a number of “black” and “coloured” universities. It was a way (they thought) of overcoming acute shortages of teachers, and they favoured mainframe systems because they offered more control over educational content. At that time British universities and schools were moving in the opposite direction, putting more effort into developing programs for microcomputers - a development that The British Council was helping to promote worldwide.

A couple of years later a teacher trainer from a black township in South Africa came to work with me at my college in London, having won a British Council scholarship. He had been using PLATO. He hated it. One student, he told me, came into his training college to work on PLATO, only to be told by the system, after working on it for about 20 minutes, that she was being logged out as she had not reached a satisfactory grade and needed to put in more work on the subject – and she had made a one-hour bus journey in order to get to the college!

I taught the teacher trainer all I knew about using microcomputers and one year later went to visit him in his college in South Africa. He had set up a microcomputer with a projector (in 1985!) and was using it for whole-class teaching. He showed me a couple of videos of himself working with students of English – great stuff, with the computer being used mainly as a stimulus for oral work. The PLATO system had been removed.

There's another forum with quotes in it (thanks for the congrats, by the way, Graham), but Graham's post reminded me of one of the books I read when I was studying politics. The author started each chapter with a quote from Snorri Snurlasson's Saga. One of them fits ICT in education particularly well:

"It looks like snow, said the Lapps, who had skis to sell."