MANAGING ICT

After the SecEd symposium on the future of ICT in education,

hosted with Dell in March,

Dr Mark Weston, Dell’s

global education strategist,

discusses how ICT could help teachers to quickly identify and intervene with struggling students

learn in different ways and at different rates. Visit most classrooms and you will see this is the case. Two, standardised education practices offer little

T

room for “double-loop learning”. Feedback loops are important in the learning process because educational practice improves via on-going cycles of feedback and adaptation. Alan Bain, in The Self-organizing School, illustrates this point perfectly, demonstrating that tight feedback loops drive continuous and dramatic improvement of complex systems such as schools. Three, research only minimally informs typical

instructional practice. As John Hattie reveals in Visible Learning, not all educational practices are equal. For instance, feedback, self-report grading, and formative assessment have much greater affects on student learning and achievement than other practices. Four, the approach engages parents too little, too

IMING MATTERS a lot in education, especially when teachable moments are lost and the educational clocks of students stop ticking far too soon. Four aspects of the one-size-fits-all

approach to education contribute to a high rate of such occurrences.

One, the approach rarely acknowledges that students

late and too lightly in their student’s learning. In sum, learning and instruction suffer when a classroom does not reflect these aspects. Consider how the four aspects play-out in the case

of Paul, a year 9 student who failed his first term of algebra. Unable to keep up with his lessons, Paul knew on

the sixth day of lessons that he was lost. Mr Mathis, Paul’s teacher, recognised he was struggling on school day 15 and Paul’s parents became aware of it on school day 53 when the report card arrived home. Two weeks later, day 63, Paul, his parents, and teacher met to discuss the situation – over a third of the way through the 180-day school year. At that late stage, with no readily available remedy

on hand, it was accepted that it was too late to help Paul. Did things have to end this way for Paul? Certainly not.

As the scenario makes apparent, Paul’s needs were

recognised and attended to far too late. The critical point of recognising that the optimal time to intervene with Paul’s learning was between days six and seven was missed. Having a double-loop learning process in place to generate feedback on Paul’s performance, or lack thereof, would have informed practice in real-time. Imagine, for instance, that when Paul turned in

his first set of algebra coursework via the classroom web-portal, a bubble window had popped up on his computer desktop asking: “What grade would you give the work you’re submitting?” Paul’s one-click response – “I give my work a D grade” – would have created an actionable data-point. Paul’s mouse click would trigger an alert to Mr

Mathis, who could then take direct action. Furthermore, Mr Mathis would have offered Paul personalised tutoring and some web-based materials (text, simulation,

Keeping everyone

in the loop

manipulative, and video) as homework that might give Paul a better understanding of the concepts and content with which he had been struggling. Mr Mathis would close the loop thereafter by

immediately alerting Paul’s parents via email to the situation, additional tutoring and the suggested online materials for them to review with Paul. Ms Theos, the headteacher of Paul’s school,

actively monitors her teachers’ and pupils’ work via a digital dashboard. She too would have received an alert when Paul gave himself a “D” and overseen the actions taken by Mr Mathis. If she had received alerts about Paul’s classmates and students in other classrooms having similar difficulties her actions would have included bringing teachers together to adapt their instruction. On the morning of day seven, Paul stops by Mr

Mathis’s classroom and he gives Paul a problem to solve, which he does. That afternoon, Paul and his classmates move forward with their algebra lessons. The speedy resolution of Paul’s teachable moment

stands in stark contrast to his 63-day experience. In the former, his parents were passive participants, ICT was something students and teachers were given access to, and a skill learned and taught. In the latter, ICT supported and reinforced emergent school-based learning and research-proven practices. Paul’s mouse click triggered a chain of events – self-

report grading, formative assessment, and differentiated instruction – forming a feedback loop that drove continuous improvement of instruction at Paul’s school while reducing the cognitive load of the key players. Superhuman efforts were not required of Mr Mathis, Ms Theos, Paul and his parents. Yet each became better at playing their role in Paul’s education. Time waits for no-one, certainly not Paul. Applying

ICT in service of good practice, fewer teachable moments are lost, teachers and parents are engaged more timely, and the educational clocks of more students keep ticking.

SecEd

• Dr Mark Weston PhD is the global education strategist for Dell Inc. His work focuses on improving the learning and instruction of all students through the effective use of ICT. He can be reached at mark_weston@dell.com

Further information

A full consensus report from the SecEd Symposium, ICT and the Future of Education can be downloaded from www.sec-ed.co.uk. Click “supplements” for the PDF and “digital editions” for the digital version.

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SecEd • May 20 2010

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