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Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Monday, 28 March 2011
Saturday, 26 March 2011
Technology in Education
For this paper I have investigated the literature regarding the use of technology in education. I teach A-level Media Studies as well as level 2 and level 3 vocational Creative Media Production. I teach theory skills, I teach students about print production, video production and photography. Most of these areas require some form of technological resource to practice so I am used to using technology every day in the classroom. I am what Palfrey and Gasses (2008) describe as a ‘digital native’ and my ideas on teaching are increasing technocentric.
Technologies influence on education could be traced back to the invention of the printing press. Since this time there have been many other technological impacts, most recently film and the internet. For a number of years now, information technology has been heavily invested in by our schools and colleges.
Todd Oppenheimer (2004) suggests that our obsession with technology in the classroom has lead to a reduction in the quality of teaching and learning. He points to several case studies in which schools in America have invested heavily in new technologies but have then found test results have declined. He also notes how traditional teaching areas, such as science labs, art rooms and motor vehicle garages, were taken over to provide new IT facilities which have denied students the chance to carry out practical work. Oppenheimer notes that whilst technology has changed over the decades, the promises have not. Each new technology promises a better experience for students and teachers and ultimately, better results for institutions which use it. Oppenheimer concludes that that it is not technology itself which is the problem. The problem as he sees it is that technology is seen as a replacement to good teachers and good teaching. For him, technology has its place in schools but that it will only be successful when used by good teachers who are well paid and well supported by the organisations they work in.
Liu et al (2008, p.4) suggest that the reason so many investigations into technology in education report that there is no significant difference between students who use technology and those who don’t is because there is:
“...no reason to believe that mere exposure to technology is any more beneficial in teaching and learning than is mere exposure to textbooks, teachers, schools or anything else.”
Studies far too often only look at whether technology is being used and not how it is being used.
These assertions are supported by Means (2010, p.296) who found that it was not exposure to technology or amount of access time that most influenced a students’.
Means found that:
“...78% of teachers in high-gain schools...looked at software reports for all students once a week or more, compared to 17% of teachers in low-gain schools.”
Classroom management was another factor identified as having a positive effect on results. Those who managed their classrooms effectively found that their students progressed better when using technology. No amount of technology can replace the core tenants of education. A piece of software is no more a solution to educational needs than a whiteboard. Both need to be used by experienced and dedicated teachers to get the most out of them.
David Buckingham (2007) suggests that teachers have always used technology such as books and pencils and for him the question is not if we should use technology, but how we should it.
Buckingham (2007, p112) notes that students are already using a huge range of technology before they come into contact with it in school:
“Young people’s relationship with digital technology is no longer primarily formed in the context of the school...but in the domain of popular culture.”
The Office for National Statistics (2010) notes that the percentage of homes which own a computer increased from just fewer than 50% in 2001/02 to 75% in 2009. It is worth noting that that there is a distinct discrepancy between ownership in the highest income group (98%) and the lowest (38%). Students’ previous experience with technology and their current usage is something which we should consider when integrating technology into our classrooms just as we would consider the numeracy and literacy skills of a class.
Palfrey and Gasser (2008) investigate a generation born into the digital age and the way they interact with the world and with technology. They describe how this generation of digital natives now uses different ways of learning than their grandparents used. These new ways of learning are a response to the deluge of information available today, to everyone, at any time. Although these ways of learning are different to their parents or grandparents, they are a not any less valid.
The U.S. Department of Education (2000, p.39) states:
“Teachers must be comfortably with technology, able to apply it appropriately, and conversant with new technological tools, resources, and approaches..”
I concede that things can be more likely to go wrong when using a range of technologies compared to using a whiteboard and a handout but whiteboard pens run out, printers break, even chalk snaps, but we did not abandon those technologies. We found out how to fix these broken pieces of technology and carry on. Exploring the use of new technology gives us the chance to think about what and how we teach.
So, if young people are already using technology in a variety of complex ways in a range of educational and, perhaps more importantly, social contexts, how do we, as teachers, use technology to improve the results of our students?
Richardson (2009) proposes that online weblogs (blogs) or wikis have the potential to be powerful tools in the classroom. These simplified versions of websites allow for readers of the material to post comments and responses to the work published there or, in the case of wikis, allow others to actually edit the content to produce collaborative work.
Kevin Oliver (2010, p.50), writing in Tech Trends, describes blogs as:
“...just the tip of an integration iceberg”.
This year we have pushed the vast majority of our students over to using a blog for their coursework. The benefits have been plain to see. Whilst there was some initial resistance and some teething problems, the time saved compared to using a paper folder has allowed students to produce a higher standard of work. The flexibility of the blog is what seems to be most useful. Students can easily update work unlike in a paper folder. It gives students the chance to use and to reference a greater range of media sources, such as websites and videos.
Using the website Slideshare.com allows students to embed PowerPoint presentations into their blogs. I find that PowerPoint can be a very useful tool for students as it offers a simple and flexible way of presenting work which mixes lots of different media types.
From a teaching perspective, the ability to see a students work at any time and leave feedback is a good thing. I have found that students who use this feedback to improve their work are producing much stronger pieces of coursework. The current second year all used paper folders in their first year and then struggled to adapt to using a blog (which is mandatory) in the second year. I expect to see even higher gains when this first year progresses as they will have a deeper understanding of how to use a blog when they start their coursework in the second year.
A research tool I have found useful is Surveymonkey.com. There is a free, albeit basic version, which students can sign up for which allows them to create online surveys. The site then produces a link which can be posted on the students blog, on their social network site or message boards in order to gather information. The site then collates the information. Students have used this to gather much better research this year in terms of volume and quality than the previous year when traditional paper based questionnaires were produced. Once again the main benefit is time. The students don’t have to directly collect the data and so can get on with other tasks and return to find the results a few days later.
The possibilities opened up by easy to use, and importantly for institutions, free tools are very varied. Presentation tools, such as Prezi, allow users to create engaging presentations but perhaps more importantly, these presentations can be published online so others can see them and give feedback.
Organisation tools, such as Shelfari, allow you to create a virtual bookshelf where you can display book that you have read, review them, make notes and discuss them with other members. I intend to use this in the coming year to support a course blog and use it to create a reading list for students. I hope that this might engage the students more than a traditional list at the back of a handbook.
All of these tools have potential uses across a range of learning environments. The key is to use appropriate tools for your students. Teachers need to explore new technology and see what it could do for them. They need to find tools that will be useful to their students which enhance their learning, not replace their teaching with these tools. It may take some effort to get the students comfortable with using these types of technology and for us, as teachers, to understand them but it is worth the effort.
Technology can never replace good teaching or good learning. It should simply be used to make it easier to do things so that students can spend less time finding, sorting and presenting information and more time learning about the information.
I will admit that it is a learning process and not everything I have tried has worked. This year I started a Facebook group for each course I teach on with the misguided idea that students might use it. I started off trying to engage them with further debate on the subjects taught in class but that didn’t go anywhere. I then tried to use it instead as a community to share ideas and collaborate on coursework. That also did not work. I finally use them as places to post interesting links which might be of use to the students but again this has had limited success. This is an area I want to explore further and see how others use it. Maybe moving on to social network sites is a step too far and for students marks the boundary of education and social life and they see it as an encroachment into their virtual space.
To make any of these tools educationally valid, they must have purpose. Gathering information, from a book or the internet, is only valid if that information is looked at and discussed and referenced and learnt. New technology tools give us the power to have those discussions, to record them and review them. Technology should never replace good teaching or good learning. It should simply make it easier to do things so that students can spend more time learning. Simply cutting and pasting information from Wikipedia does not constitute good research but neither does simply writing out a quote from a book. In all subjects and with all methods, gathering the information should only be the start.
I think the arguments that I have discussed have been summed up best by Buckingham (2007, p.111), who states:
“Over the past 20 years, there has been a massive investment in providing information and communication technologies to schools. To date, however, the emphasis has largely been on providing access: some policy makers still appear to assume that ‘wiring up’ schools will produce automatic benefits, irrespective of how these technologies are actually used.”
I believe that it is us, the teachers, who need to take up the challenge of integrating technology into our classrooms. We need to explore what is possible and ultimately try to shape the way technology is viewed within education. There is no single solution. More computers alone won’t help. Abandoning technology for the parchment and the ink well will disadvantage our students when they reach the job market. A new piece of software is unlikely to turn a failing school into a successful one.
Technology in education needs to be viewed with a holistic approach with the aim being to grant our students the best education possible and prepare them thoroughly for the challenges they will face in the future.
Buckingham, D., 2007. Beyond Technology, Children’s Learning in the Age of Digital Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press
Buckingham, D., 2007. Media Education Goes Digital: An introduction. Learning, Media and Technology, 32(2), pp.111-119
Lui, et al. 2008. Assessment of Integration of Technology In Education: Countering the “No Significant Differences” Argument. Computer in the Schools, 25(1), pp.1-9.
Means, B., 2010. Technology and Education Change: Focus on Student Learning. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 43(3), pp.285-307
Office for National Statistics, 2010. Living Costs and Food Survey. [online] Available at[Accessed 10 January 2011].
Oliver, K., 2010. Integrating Web 2.0 Across the Curriculum. Tech Trends 54(2), pp.50-60
Oppenheimer, T., 2004. The Flickering Mind, Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology. New York: Random House
Palfrey, J. And Gasser, U., 2008. Born Digital, Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books
Richardson, W., 2009. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press
U.S. Department of Education, 2000. The Power of the Internet for Learning: Moving from Promise to Practice. [online] Washington D.C: Web-Based Education Commission. Available at[Accessed 16 January 2011].
Technologies influence on education could be traced back to the invention of the printing press. Since this time there have been many other technological impacts, most recently film and the internet. For a number of years now, information technology has been heavily invested in by our schools and colleges.
Todd Oppenheimer (2004) suggests that our obsession with technology in the classroom has lead to a reduction in the quality of teaching and learning. He points to several case studies in which schools in America have invested heavily in new technologies but have then found test results have declined. He also notes how traditional teaching areas, such as science labs, art rooms and motor vehicle garages, were taken over to provide new IT facilities which have denied students the chance to carry out practical work. Oppenheimer notes that whilst technology has changed over the decades, the promises have not. Each new technology promises a better experience for students and teachers and ultimately, better results for institutions which use it. Oppenheimer concludes that that it is not technology itself which is the problem. The problem as he sees it is that technology is seen as a replacement to good teachers and good teaching. For him, technology has its place in schools but that it will only be successful when used by good teachers who are well paid and well supported by the organisations they work in.
Liu et al (2008, p.4) suggest that the reason so many investigations into technology in education report that there is no significant difference between students who use technology and those who don’t is because there is:
“...no reason to believe that mere exposure to technology is any more beneficial in teaching and learning than is mere exposure to textbooks, teachers, schools or anything else.”
Studies far too often only look at whether technology is being used and not how it is being used.
These assertions are supported by Means (2010, p.296) who found that it was not exposure to technology or amount of access time that most influenced a students’.
Means found that:
“...78% of teachers in high-gain schools...looked at software reports for all students once a week or more, compared to 17% of teachers in low-gain schools.”
Classroom management was another factor identified as having a positive effect on results. Those who managed their classrooms effectively found that their students progressed better when using technology. No amount of technology can replace the core tenants of education. A piece of software is no more a solution to educational needs than a whiteboard. Both need to be used by experienced and dedicated teachers to get the most out of them.
David Buckingham (2007) suggests that teachers have always used technology such as books and pencils and for him the question is not if we should use technology, but how we should it.
Buckingham (2007, p112) notes that students are already using a huge range of technology before they come into contact with it in school:
“Young people’s relationship with digital technology is no longer primarily formed in the context of the school...but in the domain of popular culture.”
The Office for National Statistics (2010) notes that the percentage of homes which own a computer increased from just fewer than 50% in 2001/02 to 75% in 2009. It is worth noting that that there is a distinct discrepancy between ownership in the highest income group (98%) and the lowest (38%). Students’ previous experience with technology and their current usage is something which we should consider when integrating technology into our classrooms just as we would consider the numeracy and literacy skills of a class.
Palfrey and Gasser (2008) investigate a generation born into the digital age and the way they interact with the world and with technology. They describe how this generation of digital natives now uses different ways of learning than their grandparents used. These new ways of learning are a response to the deluge of information available today, to everyone, at any time. Although these ways of learning are different to their parents or grandparents, they are a not any less valid.
The U.S. Department of Education (2000, p.39) states:
“Teachers must be comfortably with technology, able to apply it appropriately, and conversant with new technological tools, resources, and approaches..”
I concede that things can be more likely to go wrong when using a range of technologies compared to using a whiteboard and a handout but whiteboard pens run out, printers break, even chalk snaps, but we did not abandon those technologies. We found out how to fix these broken pieces of technology and carry on. Exploring the use of new technology gives us the chance to think about what and how we teach.
So, if young people are already using technology in a variety of complex ways in a range of educational and, perhaps more importantly, social contexts, how do we, as teachers, use technology to improve the results of our students?
Richardson (2009) proposes that online weblogs (blogs) or wikis have the potential to be powerful tools in the classroom. These simplified versions of websites allow for readers of the material to post comments and responses to the work published there or, in the case of wikis, allow others to actually edit the content to produce collaborative work.
Kevin Oliver (2010, p.50), writing in Tech Trends, describes blogs as:
“...just the tip of an integration iceberg”.
This year we have pushed the vast majority of our students over to using a blog for their coursework. The benefits have been plain to see. Whilst there was some initial resistance and some teething problems, the time saved compared to using a paper folder has allowed students to produce a higher standard of work. The flexibility of the blog is what seems to be most useful. Students can easily update work unlike in a paper folder. It gives students the chance to use and to reference a greater range of media sources, such as websites and videos.
Using the website Slideshare.com allows students to embed PowerPoint presentations into their blogs. I find that PowerPoint can be a very useful tool for students as it offers a simple and flexible way of presenting work which mixes lots of different media types.
From a teaching perspective, the ability to see a students work at any time and leave feedback is a good thing. I have found that students who use this feedback to improve their work are producing much stronger pieces of coursework. The current second year all used paper folders in their first year and then struggled to adapt to using a blog (which is mandatory) in the second year. I expect to see even higher gains when this first year progresses as they will have a deeper understanding of how to use a blog when they start their coursework in the second year.
A research tool I have found useful is Surveymonkey.com. There is a free, albeit basic version, which students can sign up for which allows them to create online surveys. The site then produces a link which can be posted on the students blog, on their social network site or message boards in order to gather information. The site then collates the information. Students have used this to gather much better research this year in terms of volume and quality than the previous year when traditional paper based questionnaires were produced. Once again the main benefit is time. The students don’t have to directly collect the data and so can get on with other tasks and return to find the results a few days later.
The possibilities opened up by easy to use, and importantly for institutions, free tools are very varied. Presentation tools, such as Prezi, allow users to create engaging presentations but perhaps more importantly, these presentations can be published online so others can see them and give feedback.
Organisation tools, such as Shelfari, allow you to create a virtual bookshelf where you can display book that you have read, review them, make notes and discuss them with other members. I intend to use this in the coming year to support a course blog and use it to create a reading list for students. I hope that this might engage the students more than a traditional list at the back of a handbook.
All of these tools have potential uses across a range of learning environments. The key is to use appropriate tools for your students. Teachers need to explore new technology and see what it could do for them. They need to find tools that will be useful to their students which enhance their learning, not replace their teaching with these tools. It may take some effort to get the students comfortable with using these types of technology and for us, as teachers, to understand them but it is worth the effort.
Technology can never replace good teaching or good learning. It should simply be used to make it easier to do things so that students can spend less time finding, sorting and presenting information and more time learning about the information.
I will admit that it is a learning process and not everything I have tried has worked. This year I started a Facebook group for each course I teach on with the misguided idea that students might use it. I started off trying to engage them with further debate on the subjects taught in class but that didn’t go anywhere. I then tried to use it instead as a community to share ideas and collaborate on coursework. That also did not work. I finally use them as places to post interesting links which might be of use to the students but again this has had limited success. This is an area I want to explore further and see how others use it. Maybe moving on to social network sites is a step too far and for students marks the boundary of education and social life and they see it as an encroachment into their virtual space.
To make any of these tools educationally valid, they must have purpose. Gathering information, from a book or the internet, is only valid if that information is looked at and discussed and referenced and learnt. New technology tools give us the power to have those discussions, to record them and review them. Technology should never replace good teaching or good learning. It should simply make it easier to do things so that students can spend more time learning. Simply cutting and pasting information from Wikipedia does not constitute good research but neither does simply writing out a quote from a book. In all subjects and with all methods, gathering the information should only be the start.
I think the arguments that I have discussed have been summed up best by Buckingham (2007, p.111), who states:
“Over the past 20 years, there has been a massive investment in providing information and communication technologies to schools. To date, however, the emphasis has largely been on providing access: some policy makers still appear to assume that ‘wiring up’ schools will produce automatic benefits, irrespective of how these technologies are actually used.”
I believe that it is us, the teachers, who need to take up the challenge of integrating technology into our classrooms. We need to explore what is possible and ultimately try to shape the way technology is viewed within education. There is no single solution. More computers alone won’t help. Abandoning technology for the parchment and the ink well will disadvantage our students when they reach the job market. A new piece of software is unlikely to turn a failing school into a successful one.
Technology in education needs to be viewed with a holistic approach with the aim being to grant our students the best education possible and prepare them thoroughly for the challenges they will face in the future.
Buckingham, D., 2007. Beyond Technology, Children’s Learning in the Age of Digital Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press
Buckingham, D., 2007. Media Education Goes Digital: An introduction. Learning, Media and Technology, 32(2), pp.111-119
Lui, et al. 2008. Assessment of Integration of Technology In Education: Countering the “No Significant Differences” Argument. Computer in the Schools, 25(1), pp.1-9.
Means, B., 2010. Technology and Education Change: Focus on Student Learning. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 43(3), pp.285-307
Office for National Statistics, 2010. Living Costs and Food Survey. [online] Available at
Oliver, K., 2010. Integrating Web 2.0 Across the Curriculum. Tech Trends 54(2), pp.50-60
Oppenheimer, T., 2004. The Flickering Mind, Saving Education from the False Promise of Technology. New York: Random House
Palfrey, J. And Gasser, U., 2008. Born Digital, Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. New York: Basic Books
Richardson, W., 2009. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press
U.S. Department of Education, 2000. The Power of the Internet for Learning: Moving from Promise to Practice. [online] Washington D.C: Web-Based Education Commission. Available at
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