Giving Children the Tools is Not Enough

Planning for technology integration in classrooms needs to be done with a big pair of binoculars, ones that preferably can see into the future. I can remember when I planned my first suite of computers in a school all I talked about was “future proofing” everything. It was like some rubber stamp I had marked everything with. But planning for the lifespan of the hardware is one thing, where it fits in with your school’s vision is another.

Sometimes schools can get a bit fixated with provision. We like to reel off a list of the various and wondrous hardware that adorns every nook and cranny of the school building. But it is not simply about provision. I have often heard that “an interactive whiteboard does not make a poor teacher any better”. well in the same vein, “technology provision alone does not make independent, confident learners.”

One of the first steps towards the independent use of technology to support learning is developing a sense of ownership. The 18 laptops we have in my classroom are in a permanent cabinet, they are not shared with anyone. The children manage the organisation of them and we have laptop monitors every week who look after everything and keep it tidy. The technology is not mine, it belongs to the children and this, I feel, helps to develop their confidence around the equipment. This simple organisation develops personal confidence when choosing to use it on their own.

If you have the opportunity to make provision a permanent feature of a learning space or classroom, I would always advise to grab it. Making the technology just another resource available to the children will invariably lead to a more relaxed mind-set about technology in the classroom. We want our students to choose to use technology when it is most appropriate. And in a blended learning environment the laptops are freely available alongside anything else (dictionaries, library books, calculators etc) that will support their learning.

Does your curriculum provide the space for learners to develop independence and to make appropriate choices regarding what best resources to use? This is a big challenge. In England the Primary Curriculum has been through the Rose Review and is set to change., supposedly giving more freedom. Nick Jackson picked up on the need for time and space in the comments and explained how important it is to give people time to “play” and freely explore a tool to become familiar. I rarely read manuals or how-to guides, I just get started and “play” with the software or hardware. I expect the guides to answer my questions later on. This is my way to tackle new things, no doubt a percentage of my class will feel the same – others not so.

Unless classroom technology is the same in every classroom, teachers are often left trying to develop and nurture a mindset, an open ethos of approprate use in a single year. This is of course set to the backdrop of the usual school pressures. These are some of things I find important:

• Find your classroom cornerstones – those applications/tools that just stick, they have depth and can be used across the curriculum.
• Introduce these tools early on in the year in a simple supported way – give the children routes to easy success.
• Talk with the children about different ways you can use different tools, “If I wanted to make X then I could also use this…”
• Highlight the alternatives to achieve different outcomes, “You could do this using…”
• Don’t be afraid to direct children to certain outcomes as they are building their confidence. Seek to be less didactic about the outcomes as the year progresses.
• Underestimating the abilities of your class to pick up new ideas will lead to missed opportunities.
• Encourage children to play with different things you have introduced  in free time.
• Build the sense of ownership in the beginning of the year by putting the emphasis on the class.
• In the beginning of the year have narrow expectations in terms of choice. Broaden these as the year goes on.
• Help develop the children’s repertoire of choice of application and find ways to incorporate these into topics.
• Find ways to say to your class, “You can choose to show me what you have learned in which ever way you think is best.”

On reflection much of this is centred on the classroom and the point of learning. Whilst this is important, high expectations from the top-down and a whole school approach would serve to make some of these obsolete. For example if in the lower juniors the children have been using a range of multimedia tools, when they get to me we can hit the ground running in the Autumn term.

A whole school approach comes directly from the Head Teacher and school leadership team. A shared vision of what learning looks like at the school. I hope to be able to have a more direct impact on this in my new role after Easter. Developing this positive ethos for learning, which makes the most of what technology can do well, takes time but is key to establishing centres for learning that are making kids ready for their future part in wider society.

If it is not all about provision, what else can we do in the classroom to develop independent and thoughtful use of technology to support learning?