MANAGING ICT

A modern entitlement?

Digital literacy – an entitlement for teachers and students? Dave

Gibbs from Sheffield West City Learning Centre discusses

N

OT SO long ago, the means of expression available to the person in the street (or the pupil in school) were pretty limited. Written and spoken language took on a rich variety of forms. Literacy was seen as the capacity to understand,

create and critically analyse “texts”. Art also developed as a means to convey emotion and meaning, but relied on a high level of skill on the part of the artist. From Ancient Greece until the late 19th century,

rhetoric was a central plank of education. It taught students the art of using language to communicate effectively. However, the teaching of rhetoric has seen a steady decline in schools with an increasing shift towards functional literacy and “key skills”. So where did this leave the late 20th century

learner? Deskilled in the rhetorical arts, with a narrow range of media at their disposal, and heavily dependent on traditional notions of literacy. This allowed the highly literate to flourish. It also limited the success of those whose linguistic skills did not match up to their subject knowledge. Young people have disengaged with the political

process and activism is on the wane, because of an inability to sustain arguments or appreciate and evaluate those made by others. Meanwhile, reports state that critical-thinking skills of school-goers are decreasing. Are these factors related?

What’s changed?

In recent times there has been what can only be described as a “media revolution”. Now, in the home or the classroom, anyone can create digital art, animated or live-action film, music and audio, computer games and interactivity, and a mass of other “content”. According to some figures, the means of content creation are in the hands of 80 to 90 per cent of school children. Many undertake this creative process alone; some

work in friendship groups face-to-face. Others may never meet their fellow collaborators spread across the globe exploiting the ballooning numbers of social media tools freely available. The freedom to comment on the work of others; to remix and republish it, or reuse it to create new messages and meanings is unprecedented. This is the world of digital participation, and it is catching on. And where is this revolution happening? There are

more than 100 million videos on YouTube, mostly user- generated. The average age of a YouTube user is 27. The revolution is clearly led by young people but not, seemingly, in school. Back in the classroom, teachers and students suffer

the poorly presented slideshows (by teachers and students alike); the uninformative, messy “posters”; the jerky films featuring play-fighting year 9 boys struggling to communicate a message. There must surely be many exceptions to this

picture, but unfortunate experience shows it to be the general rule. So how could there be so much unharnessed creativity? This brings to mind the idea of the “digital native”

– young people born into a world where media can be made by almost anyone. Some commentators believe that they develop native skills and can communicate effectively with no need for support. It is true there are many confident, experienced

creators of digital content, adept at manipulating the tools at their disposal. The question remains – are they the very same young people who can just as easily turn their hand to spoken and written communication? One suspects these lucky few may be racing further ahead of their peers across an ever-broadening front. So why should this concern schools? There is a

growing consensus that all modern students have an entitlement to become digitally literate, to equip them not only for their future but for their present. This must be built on a firm foundation of the three Rs, but should go way beyond and allow students to play to their strengths. Many young people struggle with traditional literacy skills and while schools work hard to help them catch up, often low-achievers become

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increasingly disengaged with the process of education and underperform further. Examination boards have realised the barriers

caused by low-literacy need not prevent success in all subject areas. Edexcel and OCR have an increasing range of courses that allow submission of e-portfolios of rich-media evidence. AQA is investigating a wide range of submission options. It is true that increased digital literacy skills may not directly improve written exam performance. The positive attitude engendered through success, however, as well as the “marks-in-the-bag” from a media portfolio, can only serve to motivate.

What remains to be done?

The charity Futurelab defines digital literacy as being multi-faceted, requiring development in several related areas. It includes development of social and cultural awareness; collaboration practices; creativity; effective communication; functional skills using ICT tools; an ability to find and select information; critical-thinking; and e-safety. Many of these are already integral parts of subject curricula and competency frameworks, but seldom underpin teaching and learning in a holistic manner. Many teachers would find it hard to argue

with the value of these areas of learning. It is clear, however, that not enough is being done in schools to support their development. One issue is a generational one – most teachers grew up in an age where media content was delivered to them, with content creation opportunities limited to hobbyists and enthusiasts. This has nurtured adults with a lack of practical digital creativity, and teachers with a level of critical analytical skills insufficient to apply to actual media creation. The latest generation of teachers are entering

schools with greater familiarity of content generation and social-media collaboration and sharing. Many are straining at the leash to bring new literacy practices into the classroom. Because of a lack of digital literacy and awareness among decision-makers and school leaders, however, they are often stifled. Ofsted wishes for schools to develop “managed”

ICT systems (whereby new technologies are evaluated, their educational benefits established and the risks managed); this is in its infancy and requires a significant up-skilling of the school workforce and development of new working practices. So what is the way forward for digital literacy in

schools? At present there are no agreed curriculum frameworks or progression routes for either teachers or students. For those entering the teaching profession, the Qualified Teacher Status skills tests demand a level of functional ICT skill in basic software use only. The skills tests for literacy relate only to written English, but do include some critical analysis and interpretation of texts. There is no statutory requirement for any media

or digital literacy for new teachers. Amid the tide of professional development that is a result of ongoing education reform, there remains little space for significant investment in time-consuming, universal training of the workforce; indeed there are large segments of the profession for whom (rightly or wrongly) it would be far from an immediate priority. It is surely left to those with the will to improve

the school experience through informal, step-by-step professional development. Only by engaging with the use of new media and digital tools in their own personal or professional lives will teachers develop their own literacy to a level necessary to lead their students. One of the most important skills in a teacher’s

arsenal is that of using all available resources for educational means. It is crucial that the confident, digitally literate in their classrooms are a resource that is not squandered. And the outcome of all this effort? Teachers and students better equipped to navigate the information

landscape. Learners able to recognise and exploit the rhetorical tools of the advertising, movie-making, game-publishing and music-producing communities. Safe behaviours when sharing and collaborating on an international scale. Students who can communicate their ideas in a coherent and convincing way. And ultimately, enjoyment of learning and achievement of better results, positive contributions and even economic wellbeing. So what’s stopping us?

SecEd

• Dave Gibbs is assistant manager at Sheffield West City Learning Centre in Sheffield.

Far from robotic

For the past three weeks, Futurelab has been analysing new technologies and their application in education. This week we look at robotics

TODAY, IT is more acceptable than ever before to use machines to make life easier and better for all. However, in the future, robots with human-like characteristics may be able to do anything you want them to, including assist with learning. Yet that does not mean that teachers will find

themselves redundant in the future. Most researchers expect that teachers will still play a key role in students’ learning, but they will be assisted by robots. Furthermore, it is expected that children will learn through teaching their own robots. Response and recognition is vital in order for robots of the future to become mentors, teachers and friends to children. A basic robotic machine that spouts French oral

examination dialogue in the corner of the classroom and has a limited ability to respond proactively to students is likely to become a repository for used gum within weeks. Yet imagine a robot that recognises individual student’s faces and voices and can remember what happened in the previous lesson. That will have much more enduring appeal – and use – in the personalised learning environments of the future. Scientists have been studying how to give robots

this humanoid trait of recognition for many years. One example is Kismet, the robotic platform developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2001 that was created with the idea that, for robots to fit into and work better within human society, they should take on more human characteristics such as the ability to recognise people. This would enable humanoid robots to build relationships with people, and to learn. Increasingly key to robots’ usability in the future

is the current development of modular robots. Wei- Min Shen from the University of Southern California specialises in self-reconfigurable robots, and in particular, a creation called Superbot. Superbot is a robot made of modular units that are individually intelligent, and that can work together collectively

to create an even smarter robot – one that the individual modules “sense” is suitable for traversing and working in the environment it is in. There are countless uses for a robot that is this flexible, but it could also be applied to the classroom, showing students how different modules collaborate. A simpler version of Superbot is LEGO

Mindstorms, but Mindstorms cannot self- reconfigure; it requires programming. However, the act of programming is a useful skill for students to develop. This approach opens up a raft of other possibilities – those where control is awarded to the children rather than the machine. Mindstorms is used by learners of all ages – from eight-year-old children to learned professors. It is essentially engines and sensors fitted into LEGO pieces, so children can put objects together that can then be programmed from a computer to operate in whatever way is required. Rather than putting sensors in building blocks,

Dr Allison Druin from the University of Maryland is putting them in icons – toys or parts of toys that act in a way that a child would expect them to, because of how they look, such as a toy’s hand that waves. Dr Druin is looking at how robotic technologies

can be used to enable collaboration, storytelling and learning. However she adds a note of caution: “The thing with many of these robot toys and tools that give you the control you actually need to make them useful, is that they are very expensive individually, so it’s cost-prohibitive to give a school a tonne of them. On the other hand, kids can learn powerful things from these robots and we will start to see much cheaper robotic devices being developed in the near distant future.”

• Futurelab is dedicated to transforming teaching and learning, making it engaging to 21st century learners by using innovative practice and technology. For more information, go to www.futurelab.org.uk

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